By Samuel Rubenfeld

Though he decried negative campaigning throughout the primary season, John McCain and the Republican party have engaged in the same scurrilous attacking committed by Karl Rove in the last two election cycles. But this time it isn’t working.

The most-used attack by McCain has been the robo-call: an automated telephone call to voters in battleground states paid for by the campaign itself of the Republican National Committee during which the voice delivers a blistering personal attack on his opponent, Barack Obama.

McCain was himself the victim of a robo-call campaign by George W. Bush in South Carolina during his presidential run in 2000. Ironically, McCain even hired the company, FLS Connect, that made those robo-calls against him eight years ago.

“You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” the voice on the line says. “And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country.”

This robo-call caused a woman in West Virginia quit her job at a call center after refusing to make it.

Many celebrities of the Republican party have lined up to do the dirty work. “You need to know that Barack Obama opposes mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, drug dealers, and murderers,” said Rudy Giuliani, a former presidential candidate who was once mayor of New York City, in his robo-call to voters in Missouri, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and Maine.

Obama holds at least a two-point lead in an average of polls taken in all of those states, according to RealClearPolitics.com. In Maine and Wisconsin, where the first reports of the Giuliani robo-call came from, Obama is leading by double-digits.

Even McCain’s running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who said to reporters “if she had a magic wand” she’d stop the robo-calls, was caught getting in on the act, though her robo-call is somewhat less negative. “One of our local campaign volunteers just called you, and I wanted to follow up and ask for your support. You know our opponents may talk a lot, but they haven’t done much listening,” she says.

Republicans fighting for their re-election in the Senate have called for the robo-calls to stop. “These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

If someone from his own party is complaining about it, that may make it a “maverick” move, but that doesn’t make it a successful one.