I'm sure there has been a thread or two about this already but I've always wondered what if somebody found out who was running the smear campaign against John McCain and if that would have changed the course of the primaries and election. In the OTL, an unknown party had viciously defamed Senator McCain and his family leading up to the South Carolina primary that resulted in a flattening defeat against Governor Bush. Part of the reason for this defeat was McCain used federal matching funds which placed stricter limits on his campaign than Bush's and he spent a lot of it on negative ads in retaliation. There were definitely other chances after that primary when McCain could have bounced back but South Carolina just seemed like the deciding moment in the race.
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