The McCain Thread

[bunk]

I find Joe the Plumber hilarious in general. Joe the Plumber will be one of those thing that people will point and laugh about years from now.

Apparently, he already has people developing a book deal for him.

 

[lazur]

t: i'd be even better if he stepped up to the podium in a stained wife-beater, boxers and a bath robe with a broom in his hand.

For some reason, your words have created the imagery of 'Hugh Hefner ... The Plumber' in my head...

 

[jaguarr]

Apparently, he already has people developing a book deal for him.

Hey, good for him. Cash in on your 15 Minutes while you can, dude.

jag

 

[Kelly]

I wouldnt call McCains campaigns an epic fail at all; it its exactly what any realist person expected with the exception of the Palin pick. The only person who had a real serious chance at beating Obama was Mitt Romney because 1) its be hard to tie him to Bush and 2)he is superb with money.

Yes, nobody realized just how inept McCain would be, but did anybody ever expect him to be anything other than Bob Dole 2.0? I didnt. The race is not over yet, but so far I cant say I am surprised.

I totally disagree. It was/is an epic fail.

His best offensive move was to put Obama in with the most disliked Democrat run Congress in the history of our nation. Their approval rating is less than Bush's........all he needed to do from day one was put out ads with Pelosi and Reid's pictures and making them the Three Amigos........he should not have suspended his campaign and gone to Washington. He should not have voted for the bail out plan, and remained the Maverick that he says he is......he then should have began ads putting Obama with Pelosi, Reid, Dodd and Frank......those should be on right now.

So I disagree, there is plenty that should/could have been done/used.....and it was not. From these newest ads he could possibly have a bump that we see on Monday since they are new ads and the polls are 3 day averages....if you do not see a bump from these latest ads, he is done as far as this campaign.

 

[Raiden]

Hey, good for him. Cash in on your 15 Minutes while you can, dude.

jag

The funny thing is, that plumber's name isn't even Joe. And when I think of Joe the Plumber, I immediately think of Larry the Cable Guy.

 

[Kelly]

The funny thing is, that plumber's name isn't even Joe. And when I think of Joe the Plumber, I immediately think of Larry the Cable Guy.

It is his middle name, which he could very easily go by.....



not funny really.....

 

[Raiden]

It is his middle name, which he could very easily go by.....



not funny really.....

Blah!

 

[Kelly]

Blah!

...

 

[The Senator]

The George Wallace We Forgot About
Russ Rymer, The New York Times

JOHN McCAIN deplored them, Barack Obama distanced himself from them, but the comments that Representative John Lewis of Georgia delivered on Oct. 11 may turn out to be some of the most trenchant — and generous — of the campaign. Mr. Lewis charged Mr. McCain and Sarah Palin with “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” in their fervently red-meat rallies, not unlike “a governor of the State of Alabama named George Wallace” whose race-bating rhetoric, Mr. Lewis noted, contributed to the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham church in which four young girls were killed.

The context of Mr. Lewis’s critique is not as has been presented: a saint of the civil rights movement likening a decorated war hero to an infamous racist. Rather, it was a collegial (if rough) caution from one brother to another, about a third, politicians all.

Mr. Lewis’s authority to chastise Mr. McCain comes not from his Bloody Sunday stand on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965, but rather from his subsequent record on the hustings. His mettle was tested not only in Selma but also in three tough campaigns, characterized by tactics of personal destruction.

The first was his race in 1966 to retain the chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. For three years, Mr. Lewis had used his office to promote SNCC’s early emphasis on black and white activists working hand in hand. But by 1966, that inclusive and nonviolent climate was under siege. Peaceful marchers found themselves shadowed by a volunteer bodyguard of shotgun-wielding black militants, and a group known as the Atlanta Separatists was demanding that all whites be expelled from the civil rights leadership.

Things came to a head at SNCC’s convention in May that year, when late-night, back-room maneuvering elevated Stokely Carmichael to the chairmanship, ousting Mr. Lewis. Whites were purged from the organization, and its longtime white supporters were vilified. Carmichael’s successor, H. Rap Brown, changed the group’s name to Student National Coordinating Committee and directly advocated violence. Mr. Lewis’s long labor for racial comity lay in tatters.

In 1982, Mr. Lewis, along with other newly elected black Atlanta city councilmen, faced sound trucks rolling through their neighborhoods accusing them of race treason for not supporting a major road project favored by Mayor Andrew Young. Mr. Lewis stood his ground. He confided to me, then a reporter for The Atlanta Constitution, how upset he was at some of the bullying aimed his way.

In his first bid for Congress, in 1986, the battle that counted was the Democratic primary, where he faced off against Julian Bond. Mr. Lewis was running behind, crippled, some said, by his lack of eloquence. Partisan portrayals (not necessarily perpetrated by Mr. Bond) rewriting his role in civil rights history angered him, and hardened his steel. He fought his way into office by outworking his opponent and — eloquently enough — outdebating him. He brought to Congress not only a visceral understanding of what it’s like to be clubbed into unconsciousness, but also a deep familiarity with the damage inflicted by take-no-prisoners political campaigning.

So to call Mr. Lewis simply a Freedom Rider is to give incomplete acknowledgment to his political struggles.

Likewise, to describe George Wallace as a simple racist is to give his biography short shrift. As a circuit court judge in the 1950s, Wallace was respectful toward blacks, and as a legislator from 1947 to 1953, he was a moderate. In 1948, when Strom Thurmond led the Southern delegations out of the Democratic convention to protest the party’s pioneer civil rights plank, Wallace stayed in his seat. Though no fan of the plank, he was yet more Democrat than demagogue, and was instrumental in rallying the other Southern alternate delegates to save the convention’s quorum, and pass its platform.

He might have carried a tolerant message into the Alabama governor’s mansion in 1958, but he lost the race after spurning the support of the Ku Klux Klan (which then backed his primary opponent, John Patterson) and being endorsed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Sadly for Wallace’s state, his region, his nation and himself, he did not respond as John Lewis did after his defeat by Carmichael. Mr. Lewis, whenever confronted with calls to divisiveness, chose to redouble his commitment to reason and tolerance. After his loss to Mr. Patterson, Wallace is said to have turned to an aide and declared, “I was out-******ed ... and I’ll never be out-******ed again.”

After Wallace finally won the governorship in 1962, his administration was never as race-hostile as his campaign appeals implied; black leaders found his office door open, and often his mind, too. But he would eternally pay the price for the methods he used to gain that office.

I once saw that price on vivid display, at a Wallace for president rally in downtown Boston. In 1975, that city was contorted by its own race war over school busing, and the enormous two-tier assembly hall was packed. It was an angry crowd — a black television cameraman was punched as he walked up the aisle. In the middle of Wallace’s remarks, there was a loud explosion, and Wallace, who had been paralyzed by a bullet three years earlier, fell forward from his wheelchair into safety behind the podium.

The noise was caused by a crashing klieg light, knocked over in a fracas as a heckler in the balcony was attacked by the crowd. As Wallace clambered back into his chair, his supporters beat the protester bloody and tried to dump him over the balcony rail. “Just an undecided voter, folks. Just an undecided voter,” Wallace pleaded into his microphone, but there was no quelling the fire. “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” people in the hall thundered, until the man was rescued — barely — by Secret Service agents.

In the final debate of this presidential campaign, faced with John McCain’s demand that he repudiate Mr. Lewis’s analogy, Barack Obama said he didn’t think his opponent was another George Wallace, and that sounds reasonable if you assume Mr. Lewis was referring to Wallace the vile racist, not the more tragic Wallace, the one-time straight campaigner who bartered conviction for expedience when he thought a raw appeal to division could gain him crucial votes.

It would behoove everyone in the current race for America’s highest offices to pay attention to what Mr. Lewis was really saying, and judge it for its provenance in his long experience. Better than perhaps any living American, he knows that courage on the front line is one thing, and on the campaign stage quite another, knows how tiny and harmless the seeds of fanaticism can seem, how one cry of “kill him” can crescendo into a chorus that can’t be stifled. Mr. Lewis might be deemed generous in wishing on no other member of his profession the harrowed look I witnessed in George Wallace’s eyes as he struggled up off the floor in Boston and beheld what a hell he’d wrought.

Oh, but that John Lewis... he's just a crazy black man who doesn't know what he's talking about!

 

[sinewave]

For some reason, your words have created the imagery of 'Hugh Hefner ... The Plumber' in my head...

oh, i'm sure hefner's no stranger to laying pipe. sorry, i couldn't resist.

 

[redfirebird2008]

LOL, McCain is in Waterloo, Iowa today. That's right, Waterloo. This is just dripping in irony.

 

[jaguarr]

LOL, McCain is in Waterloo, Iowa today. That's right, Waterloo. This is just dripping in irony.

LMAO! Okay, that's pretty damn funny.

jag

 

[Gilpesh]

LOL, McCain is in Waterloo, Iowa today. That's right, Waterloo. This is just dripping in irony.

LMAO! Okay, that's pretty damn funny.

jag

Especially when McCain is so touchy about his height...

 

[redfirebird2008]

Especially when McCain is so touchy about his height...

Yes, his Napoleonic complex certainly adds to the irony.

 

[WorthyStevens]

Police: Campaign Volunteer Lied, Injured Self
Ashley Todd, 20, is now facing charges for filing a false report to police

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628.html

:facepalm

 

[Raiden]

http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628.html

:facepalm

I think Patrick Stewart will be working overtime for this story.

 

[redfirebird2008]

WTF is wrong with the McCain campaign? They are muzzling a guy who stood up against a nutjob anti-Muslim person at one of the McCain rallies. He wanted to talk to CNN about the incident but McCain's campaign won't let him. He works for the campaign by the way.

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[sinewave]

http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628.html

:facepalm

it sounded fishy that someone would carve the "b" backwards. it seemed like something someone would do if they did it in a mirror and were stupid, which is apparently the case.

 

[jaguarr]

Trouble in paradise?

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/10/24/McCain_campaign_blame.html

GOP in blame game over McCain campaign

By JONATHAN MARTIN & MIKE ALLEN & JOHN F. HARRIS

politico.com

Friday, October 24, 2008

With despair rising even among many of John McCain&#8217;s own advisers, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering &#8212; much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.

A McCain interview published Thursday in The Washington Times sparked the latest and most nasty round of finger-pointing, with senior GOP hands close to President Bush and top congressional aides denouncing the candidate for what they said was an unfocused message and poorly executed campaign.

McCain told the Times that the administration &#8220;let things get completely out of hand&#8221; through eight years of bad decisions about Iraq, global warming, and big spending.

The candidate&#8217;s strategists in recent days have become increasingly vocal in interviews and conference calls about what they call unfair news media coverage and Barack Obama&#8217;s wide financial advantage &#8212; both complaints laying down a post-election storyline for why their own efforts proved ineffectual.

These public comments offer a whiff of an increasingly acrid behind-the-scenes GOP meltdown &#8212; a blame game played out through not-for-attribution comments to reporters that operatives know will find their way into circulation.

Top Republican officials have let it be known they are distressed about McCain&#8217;s organization. Coordination between the McCain campaign and Republican National Committee, always uneven, is now nearly dysfunctional, with little high-level contact and intelligence-sharing between the two.

&#8220;There is no communication,&#8221; lamented one top Republican. &#8220;It drives you crazy.&#8221;

At his Northern Virginia headquarters, some McCain aides are already speaking of the campaign in the past tense. Morale, even among some of the heartiest and most loyal staffers, has plummeted. And many past and current McCain advisers are warring with each other over who led the candidate astray.

One well-connected Republican in the private sector was shocked to get calls and resumes in the past few days from what he said were senior McCain aides &#8212; a breach of custom for even the worst-off campaigns.

&#8220;It&#8217;s not an extraordinarily happy place to be right now,&#8221; said one senior McCain aide. &#8220;I&#8217;m not gonna lie. It&#8217;s just unfortunate.&#8221;

&#8220;If you really want to see what &#8216;going negative&#8217; is in politics, just watch the back-stabbing and blame game that we&#8217;re starting to see,&#8221; said Mark McKinnon, the ad man who left the campaign after McCain wrapped up the GOP primary. &#8220;And there&#8217;s one common theme: Everyone who wasn&#8217;t part of the campaign could have done better.&#8221;

&#8220;The cake is baked,&#8221; agreed a former McCain strategist. &#8220;We&#8217;re entering the finger-pointing and positioning-for-history part of the campaign. It&#8217;s every man for himself now.&#8221;

A circular firing squad is among the most familiar political rituals of a campaign when things aren&#8217;t going well. But it is rare for campaign aides to be so openly participating in it well before Election Day.

One current senior campaign official gave voice to this &#8220;Law of the Jungle&#8221; ethic, defending the campaign against second-guessers who say it was a mistake to throw away his &#8220;experience&#8221; message in an attempt to match Obama&#8217;s &#8220;change&#8221; mantra.

&#8220;Everybody agreed with the strategy,&#8221; said this official. &#8220;We were unlikely to be successful without being aggressive and taking risks.&#8221;

Running as a steady hand and basing a campaign on Obama&#8217;s sparse resume was a political loser, it was decided.

&#8220;The pollsters and the entire senior leadership of campaign believe that experience vs. change was not a winning message and formulation, the same way it was no winning formula with Hillary Clinton.&#8221;

Beyond the obvious reputation-burnishing &#8212; much of it by professional operatives whose financial livelihoods depend on ensuring that they are not blamed for a bad campaign &#8212; there is a more substantive dimension. Barring a big McCain comeback, and a turnabout in numerous congressional races where the party is in trouble, the GOP is on the brink of a soul-searching debate about what to do to reclaim power. Much of that debate will hinge on appraisals of what McCain could have done differently.

That is why his criticisms of Bush hit such an exposed nerve Thursday. Was McCain hobbled by party label at a time when the incumbent president is so unpopular? Or did his uneven response to the financial rescue &#8212; and endorsement of such nonconservative ideas as a massive government purchase of homeowner mortgages &#8212; seal his fate?

Dan Schnur, a McCain communications adviser during his 2000 run and now a political analyst at the University of Southern California, said McCain should step in to halt the defeatism and self-serving leaks &#8212; an epidemic of incontinence &#8212; on his own team.

&#8220;It&#8217;s a natural and human reaction when you&#8217;re struggling to make up ground, but that doesn&#8217;t make it right,&#8221; Schnur said. &#8220;As long as the campaign is still potentially winnable, these are an unnecessary distraction. This looks like it&#8217;s reached a point where the candidate has to step in himself and crack some heads to remind everyone why they came to work for him in the first place.&#8221;

Offered a chance to respond to the suggestion that the McCain campaign is awash in defeatism, a McCain official delivered a decidedly measured appraisal: &#8220;We have a real chance in Pennsylvania. We are in trouble in Colorado, Nevada and Virginia. We have lost Iowa and New Mexico. We are OK in Missouri, Ohio and Florida. Our voter intensity is good, and we can match their buy dollar for dollar starting today till the election. It&#8217;s a long shot, but it&#8217;s worth fighting for.&#8221;

Earlier this week, campaign manager Rick Davis complained to reporters in a conference call that reporters refuse to call out Obama for alleged shady fundraising tactics, but in the process revealed no small amount of envy over the Democratic financial advantage. &#8220;Now, I&#8217;d love to have that $4 million right now to put into Pennsylvania,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;d be a good thing for our campaign. I think it&#8217;s a game-changer if I can slap all of that right on the Philadelphia media market. It&#8217;s an expensive place. And yet, Barack Obama gets away with raising illegitimate money and spending it.&#8221;

A New York Times Magazine piece on Sunday chronicling McCain&#8217;s campaign featured numerous not-for-attribution McCain staffers participating in what amounted to a campaign autopsy. One aide told writer Robert Draper, &#8220;For better or worse, our campaign has been fought from tactic to tactic,&#8221; and one criticized McCain&#8217;s debate performance.

Longtime McCain alter ego Mark Salter gave an interview to Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg criticizing everything from the news media to the vagaries of fate: &#8220;Iraq was supposed to be the issue of the campaign. We assumed it was our biggest challenge. Funny how things work.&#8221;

Many conservative commentators likewise have been writing of McCain&#8217;s campaign in a valedictory tone. Among this group there is an emerging debate &#8212; one with the potential to last for a long time about the role of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

One school &#8212; including syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal &#8212; called her a drag on the ticket and implicitly rebuked McCain&#8217;s judgment in picking her. Another school believes she is the future of the party, a view backed by Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard: &#8220;Whether they know it or not, Republicans have a huge stake in Palin. If, after the election, they let her slip into political obscurity, they&#8217;ll be making a huge mistake.&#8221;

In The Week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote of McCain&#8217;s travails in a way that seemed to take defeat for granted and warned the GOP faces a long road back. &#8220;That&#8217;s not a failure of campaign tactics. It&#8217;s not even a failure of strategy. It&#8217;s a failure of the Republican Party and conservative movement to adapt to the times.&#8221;

While Frum was focused on the long view of history, many Republicans in Washington are much more in the moment &#8212; and much harsher in their denunciation of McCain and his team.

A senior Republican strategist, speaking with authority about the view of the party&#8217;s establishment, issued a wide-ranging critique of the McCain high command: &#8220;Lashing out at past Republican Congresses, &#8230; echoing your opponent&#8217;s attacks on you instead of attacking your opponent, and spending 150,000 hard dollars on designer clothes when congressional Republicans are struggling for money, and when your senior campaign staff are blaming each other for the loss in The New York Times [Magazine] 10 days before the election, you&#8217;re not doing much to energize your supporters.

&#8220;The fact is, when you&#8217;re the party standard-bearer, you have an obligation to fight to the finish,&#8221; this strategist continued. &#8220;I think they can still win. But if they don&#8217;t think that, they need to look at how Bob Dole finished out his campaign in 1996 and not try to take down as many Republicans with them as they can. Instead of campaigning in Electoral College states, Dole was campaigning in places he knew he didn&#8217;t have a chance to beat Clinton, but where he could energize key House and Senate races.&#8221;

A House Republican leadership aide in an e-mail was no more complimentary: &#8220;The staff has been remarkably undisciplined, too eager to point fingers, unable to craft any coherent long-term strategy. The handling of Palin (not her performances, but her rollout and availability) has been nothing short of political malpractice. I understand the candidate might have other opinions and might be dictating some aspects of the campaign to staff &#8212; but the lack of discipline and ability to draft and stick to a coherent message is unreal. You have half of the campaign saying Ayers is a major issue, and then the candidate out there saying he doesn&#8217;t care about a washed-up terrorist. You have McCain one day echoing Milton Friedman and the next day echoing FDR.&#8221;

Ouch.

jag

 

[CaptainClown]

WTF is wrong with the McCain campaign? They are muzzling a guy who stood up against a nutjob anti-Muslim person at one of the McCain rallies. He wanted to talk to CNN about the incident but McCain's campaign won't let him. He works for the campaign by the way.

I saw that story on CNN, I think the only reason they are doing that is so they don't alienate the anti-muslim voters that are supporting the McCain campaign. While it makes sense to us why he should have the McCain campaign worker talk on CNN, I feel it might turn those few passionate nuts he has against him. Also would relieve undecided voters who are unsure if he is muslim, and if muslim is bad.

 

[jaguarr]

WTF is wrong with the McCain campaign? They are muzzling a guy who stood up against a nutjob anti-Muslim person at one of the McCain rallies. He wanted to talk to CNN about the incident but McCain's campaign won't let him. He works for the campaign by the way.

You know, that's the first McCain campaign rally footage I have seen where some of his supporters were actually talking sense and representing a tolerant mindset (not the anti-Islam jackass, but the people who put him in his place). I think the McCain folks are missing out on a big opportunity, here; they could put this footage out in the news and let that Campaign Rep, a Muslim who supports McCain, talk to the press and do some interviews about why he put a stop to it and why it was unacceptable and why he supports McCain. It could have a strong impact in McCain's favor with those independent voters. Weird that they'd avoid the topic altogether.

jag

 

[jaguarr]

I saw that story on CNN, I think the only reason they are doing that is so they don't alienate the anti-muslim voters that are supporting the McCain campaign. While it makes sense to us why he should have the McCain campaign worker talk on CNN, I feel it might turn those few passionate nuts he has against him. Also would relieve undecided voters who are unsure if he is muslim, and if muslim is bad.

True, but they are getting monkey-stomped in the polls and their base can't win this election for them. You'd think they'd be willing to try a new approach.

jag

 

[CaptainClown]

True, but they are getting monkey-stomped in the polls and their base can't win this election for them. You'd think they'd be willing to try a new approach.

jag

Oh I definitly agree, I think that would bring back the undecided voters who were unsure and switched to Obama simply because of how McCain was performing his tactics. However it feels they feel confident that keeping fear in the minds of some people is the way to go, and I can't wait till they are proven wrong and are out of jobs.

 

[sinewave]

Trouble in paradise?



Ouch.

jag

t: man, i'm really enjoying this. it's good to see that some within the party are finally realizing that they reap what they sew. you play dirty and try to divide and conquer and sooner or later it comes back to bite you in the ass. the best part is that their party is torn between people who want to continue down that path and others who want to change. let them eat themselves and make the democrats' job even easier.

 

[jaguarr]

t: man, i'm really enjoying this. it's good to see that some within the party are finally realizing that they reap what they sew. you play dirty and try to divide and conquer and sooner or later it comes back to bite you in the ass. the best part is that their party is torn between people who want to continue down that path and others who want to change. let them eat themselves and make the democrats' job even easier.

What I do hope this will do is force the Republican party to rethink this catering to ultra-conservatives and religious nuts that they've been doing for the past decade or more, instead of sticking closer to the roots of their party and trying to remain more centrist. This election has clearly proven that strategy to be fruitless and damaging so maybe it will force them to take a long, hard look at what their party is going to represent and stand for in the future. Between McCain and Bush, they've pretty much painted themselves as zealots who will do anything it takes and go as negative as possible, engaging in sleazy politics, to win office and then do nothing but cater to their religious and ultra-conservative base and their corporate lobbyist buddies. Not a really good image to convey, nor a good long-term political platform for that matter. I don't like the idea of the Dem's being essentially unchallenged by another major party, either. There needs to be one to balance the other out in sort of a yin-yang fashion. As it's looking right now, the GOP is headed for a big meltdown before they'll be able to start rebuilding and that process could take them a decade or more.

jag