Despite John McCain's self-assertion of a "maverick" and his statement six months ago that he wants nothing to do with negative campaigning that impacts harshly on America, his campaign has slid into that familiar Republican mud throwing mode that has characterized what was formerly the party of Lincoln so many times in the post-World War Two years.

After the U.S. eagerly resisted Nazi totalitarianism in a war fought while two Democratic presidents were in charge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman respectively, it took little time for the demagogic Senator Joe McCarthy during the sharply divisive 1952 campaign to call the two decade tenure of the Democrats under the two aforementioned leaders "20 years of treason."

It should also be mentioned that, many charges and humongous amounts of consumed alcohol later, after Republican President Dwight Eisenhower froze him out of the party apparatus and cut off much of his publicity spigot by urging non-cooperation with the witch hunting McCarthy Committee, the nefarious solon apologized to what was left of his zealot supporters while adding "4 more years of treason" to Eisenhower's watch.

After having seen the way the political winds were blowing, McCarthy's former ally and partner in slime, then Vice President Richard Nixon, decided it was time to tiptoe away.  After all, he was hoping and ultimately became party nominee under the same Eisenhower that McCarthy was convinced was part of the nation's vast "treason" apparatus.