Pragmatism, Not Honor

by Chris Bodenner
Ben Smith, reporting from the campaign itself, confirms:

John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected.

Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had -- reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory sermons.... "I said 'Look, if we do win we’ll win with about 273 electoral votes and we’ll lose the popular vote by 3 million,'" recalled McInturff of the internal discussions about cutting attack ads with Wright. "If [McCain] had used that issue that way, you’d already be delegitimized as a president. You couldn’t function as government."