re: #4 jayjaybear

Yep. That was quoted by Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

The allegations against Cameron are made by Lord Ashcroft, who understood that he had bought himself a Cabinet post in Cameron’s last government, only to be disappointed. Cameron is as much tarred by association with the book’s author as by anything therein, and probably more legitimately so.