That's nice rhetoric, but when you disregard the truth in order to keep up in the arms race of lies that you claim the other side started, you become as reprehensible as them.
Telling lies and X is not equally as bad as telling lies and not X. EX: Where X is killing people. 'Smoking cigarettes makes you popular smoking cigarettes makes you unpopular.'
Unfortunately, we rarely have an absolute scale upon which to judge X. Everyone always claims the moral high ground, justifying their attempts to be deceptive with the same defense you provide there.
That's a particularly bad example, since the idea that cigarettes will make you unpopular will be a transparent falsehood to the target audience, and might cause them to doubt you when you say that cigarettes will kill them.
There was some recent anti smoking advertising that used that line, basically smoking = bad smell/yellow teeth = unpopular. Where a few years ago similar advertising used the smoking = cool = you become popular line of argument.
Granted this was sub textual, but the implications where clear enough.
