Trust me.

That is the new rallying cry in national politics as now the Republicans are screaming over Internet postings focused on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee.

Months earlier the Obama campaign raised the same outcry relating to information that was being spread and pictures that were being shared that attempted to link the Democratic nominee for president with Muslims.

Truth sites emerged online as the partisan political camps battled word for word to correct the record.

For the wary voter or those who are scratching their heads trying to figure out who has enough time during the day to scour the Internet for the latest National Enquirer-type rumor, welcome to the world of modern-day politics.

Gone are the days when the slogan was, “Just spell my name right,” as the latest musings often are jokes, totally baseless claims or both.

And for those who scorn traditional information outlets such as newspapers as being outmoded, there was and is something in knowing a brand (newspaper name), and in the attribution of sources associated with it.

The latest political hand-wringing may be the result of years of piling garbage on the electorate, sometimes by the candidates and their campaigns, but more often by groups that appear as lottery numbers pulled from the barrel. And the addition of the line “(So-and-so) approved this message” has gone a long way toward removing false claims and allegations from politics.

Even political parties engage in the tussle, but state publicly that they are merely sharing facts. This occurred when a spokesman for the Tennessee Republican Party went out of his way to use the middle name of Barack Obama with a straight face. A simple comparison showed that the same spokesman never used the middle name of John McCain in any release; one would think that what is good for the goose would be good for the gander.

There is the exploding bimbo advertisement that appeared in the U.S. Senate race between Bob Corker and Harold Ford Jr. in 2006. The candidates disavowed the ad, yet there it was for voters to see. And apparently this advertisement, whether the facts or innuendoes were accurate, fell within the legal limits of the law; that, not the ad’s appropriateness, was the measure. In this case Mr. Corker, who eventually won the Senate race, called for the advertisement to be pulled, but the damage was done.

The candidate on the receiving end of a negative advertisement or a series of false statements in print, online or elsewhere is trapped. Calling attention to the negative message simply draws more attention.

The blog and other electronic missives are extensions of campaign tactics that have grown with time. The scurrilous mailer that appears in a voter’s mailbox without any disclaimer as to who published the material is an old-style campaign technique that lacks the digital bells and whistles but is designed to accomplish the same purpose: Raise doubts in selected voters’ minds, whether based on facts or not. Hamilton County voters have only to ask Sheriff Jim Hammond or Bernie Miller, a one-time local candidate, who were on the receiving end of such messages.

The new Internet-based attacks on politicians are the latest in a long line of finely honed techniques that have been used for decades to avoid talking issues and to play to the negatives.

Howard Baker, a former Tennessee senator, told the story of a politician getting up to make a speech and deploring the fact that people were telling all sorts of rumors and falsehoods. The problem, the politician said, was that they were proving some of them.

For one, I am not sure I care about Gov. Palin’s supposed interest in “lizard snakes and Satan,” but for those who got lathered up with the Internet blog (later disavowed as totally fabricated), get off the Internet rumor mill, find time-tested true sources and get a life.

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