The ACORN doesn't fall far from the tree: Palin on the attack

Today, Sarah Palin continued a line of attack about ACORN that McCain injected into Wednesday's debate. During the debate, McCain outrageously claimed that ACORN, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Palin gleefully picked up the battle cry and told the crowd at an Ohio rally that Barack Obama is in cahoots with ACORN, a group under investigation for potential voter registration fraud. Palin claimed that Obama hasn't been forthcoming about his ties to ACORN and said,

"This group needs to learn that you here in Ohio won't let them turn the Buckeye State into the Acorn State."

Palin must not have been watching the Wednesday night debate where Obama discussed the topic at length after McCain tried the same line of attack. Here's what he said:

"Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.
It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them [in the early 1990s] alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs."

Following the debate , ACORN National President Maude Hurd issued the following statement:

"We appreciate Senator McCain's effort to stir up the Republican base by attacking a community organization working to increase public participation in our democratic process. However, these attacks reflect an increasingly panicked candidate. Unfortunately, the Senator McCain we saw tonight is very different than the Senator McCain who stood shoulder to shoulder with ACORN at a February 20, 2006 immigration reform event.

It is clear for us to see that John McCain was for ACORN before he was against ACORN; he was for reform before he was against reform; and he was a maverick before he became erratic. What is really going on here is that Senator McCain and his allies are part of a coordinated effort to engage in what appears to be an unprecedented effort to suppress voter turnout. Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, and the McCain campaign has resorted to the worst type of deceptions in regards to ACORN."

Here are the facts about the Republican-generated ACORN controversy:

• ACORN has helped 1.3 million citizens from all parties and all walks of life apply for voter registration.
• In most states, ACORN is required by law to turn in every voter registration card - even in cases where the cards are not valid.
• It is ACORN that has reported almost all of the issues regarding voter registration cards to elections officials, and flagged the suspicious cards.
• Invalid voter registration cards do NOT constitute voter fraud.
• Even RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has recently acknowledged he is not aware of a single improper vote cast as a result of bad cards submitted in the course of an organized voter registration effort.
• ACORN hired 13,000 field workers to register people to vote. In any endeavor of this size, some people will engage in inappropriate conduct. ACORN has a zero tolerance policy and terminated any field workers caught engaging in questionable activity. At the end of the day, as ACORN is paying these people to register voters, it is ACORN that is defrauded.

But the truth matters little to McCain-Palin who just keep spinning bigger tales as their poll number shrink.