McCain Gets Tough

get Off My Lawn(s)!

 

Here's the problem for Mccain. It seems as if all he has got at this point is warmed over Hillary attacks. Yea, blasting Jeremiah Wright on the tube for a few days might cause a temporary blip in polling but its old news. It's lost its shock appeal and at most will give a few people pause until the next economic headline breaks.

Now, what McCain should understand is that Obama is, in fact, different than Gore and Kerry when it comes to attacks. A few months ago he used the Untouchables line, "if they bring a knife, you bring a gun."

www.keatingeconomics.com

Welcome to the gun. The difference is this. The ayers thing has already been debunked and frankly, outside of a "coffee" and the fact that they sat on a board, there is just little there. McCain served in the senate during the last banking crisis in this country. Even if they can counter that McCain wasn't really involved in wrong doing, he most certainly wasn't in there leading the charge to find a solution to the crisis. He was busy trying to save his own bacon while one of his friends went down the tubes.

McCain also served on some boards that will not look good. He also has his developer buddy who got way above market value for his scrub brush land in AZ from the US Military with McCain's help (at a time when most of us saw our property values shrinking) and he has a veep candidate who is in the middle of her own scandal and has lots of her own skeletons and pastors that people might find shocking.

The bottom line is this. McCain decided to go this route starting yesterday with Palin's speech. Obama has shown that he is ready to slug back with already prepared material that probably would have never seen the light of day without this nudge in an ugly direction.

McCain is getting confused and befuddled while trying to master checkers while Obama is playing a sophisticated game of chess. I know the old man is running out of options and the tide was naturally against him, but if he chooses this path, he will go down in flames and he risks his considerable reputation. I guess you can argue that he is rolling the dice with a possible shot at being president. To me, it seems like he is shredding his good name and could be left as a broken old man with nothing (notwithstanding a half dozen houses, a baker's dozen of cars, some jets and lots of cash).

 

I don't understand why the McCain camp isn't slammin' Obama over the CRA/Fannie/Freddie fiasco. I've never seen such an inept campaign.

 

Oh please.

Look, Obama is likely going to win.

Yet McCain has ZERO chance if he follows your advice.

Look, why is Barack Obama such a darling of liberals?

--His career arc is that of a radical community organizer to extreme liberal. McCain should paint him as such, because that's what he is.

--He is a man of meager accomplishments, and all talk. He's the perfect liberal candidate because all he's done is utter vacuous rhetoric that appeals to the weak minded left. McCain should paint him as such, because that's what he is.

--He is a man who LOVES international consensus, and if he ran for President of Europe he would be elected in a landslide. He's the perfect liberal candidate because he has the unthinking admiration of the folks USA liberals desperately want to be liked by -- Euro lefties. McCain should paint him as such, because that's what he is.

So it's gonna be a fun 4 weeks, as McCain and Palin pound on these points, and sow the seeds of doubt in the American electorate. It's not only the right strategy, it's the RIGHT thing to do. Americans should be voting with their eyes wide open about BO.

 

Seems that Mike Murphy agrees with me:

VIEIRA: Mike, put back on that strategy hat. If you could talk to Senator McCain this morning, how would you advise him?

Mr. MURPHY: Well, I'd tell him he faces a big choice. Twenty-nine days out, the economy's ruling the race. That has pushed it in Obama's direction. And now, as Chuck Todd said, the battle is on McCain's front lawn in his states. That's an untenable situation. So, McCain can either keep doing what the campaign has been doing, which is trying to raise Obama's negatives by attacking Obama on character, or they can get into the economy business big and they can get McCain back into the kind of old McCain, the more mavericky leader who was a bipartisan problem-solver in Washington, kind of open the tone of the campaign, which has been sort of negative, and try to inspire people.

VIEIRA: But...

Mr. MURPHY: And I think that's the better bet for him.

VIEIRA: Yeah, but Mike they've already...

Mr. MURPHY: I don't think the other, the Barack Obama strategy's is working.

VIEIRA: ...they've already made it clear that's the strategy they plan to follow.

Mr. MURPHY: Yeah, I know, but then you asked me what I think they ought to do.

VIEIRA: Yeah.

Mr. MURPHY: I think more of the same is not going to work in this environment. I think McCain needs to worry less about Obama--people have plenty of concerns about Obama's liberalism, a runaway Congress, Democrat president, Democrat Congress in Washington. I think now what McCain's got to do is break through all that and say, `Look, I'm the bipartisan guy. I can work together to bring balance in Washington and I can do something about the economy.' Whoever, I believe on Election Day, whoever the country thinks is tough enough to enact a real plan to help the economy in a bipartisan, get-it-done way, is going to win the election, and I think McCain ought to get into that business. I think it will work a lot better for him than grinding on Obama, which may work but I think is a lot riskier in this environment.

 

So, he can have Cindy and Sarah do his dirty work but when he's got Obama on a stage with 63 million people watching, he can't summon up the courage to challenge Obama himself? No Ayers, no Rezko just the Adler Planetarium?

If that's getting tough, we need to redefine terms.

 

Give me a ********ing break. His own running mate simply told the moderator that she wasn't going to address her questions and just talk about what she wanted to tell the American people. And you are telling me that there was not one opportunity . . . not one . . . for McCain to address his attacks directly to Obama?

Listen, I'm not even on your side, but the opportunities were all over that debate. When they were talking about irresponsible speech and McCain was hitting Obama on Pakistan, you are telling me that he couldn't easily pivot to say, "in addition to reckless and naive statements about Pakistan, you have shown reckless and naive judgment in who you associate yourself with."

I have been a big McCain fan in the past -- not this version. Still, I know he is a skilled politician. He handles difficult questions from the media with ease. In the first debate, he successfully directed the entire economic discussion to earmarks and taxes and away from his weakness. And your arugment is that poor John never had a chance to talk about what he wanted to?

This thread is about McCain being tough. He's not. He's a hot head. But, given the opportunity -- coupled with the absolute need -- to take on his opponent head to head on the topic he appears to rely on to save his campaign, he talked about planetarium projectors.

As to Obama's service to our country, I think you are being unfair (shocker there I tell ya). No one will stack up to 5.5 years in a prison camp with major injuries. No one questions that heroism. But, why would you discount a guy who chose to go work in an extremely poor neighborhood affected by a steel plant closing when he didn't need to? Why would you discount a guy that went to work for a small civil rights firm in Chicago after graduating as THE most marketable 1st year associate in the country from law school?

I'm not making a direct comparison here but then again, service is only a part of the puzzle.

 

Hey, I'm happy to engage in real, honest political discussion. That is why I took a look back over here at Bill's guestbook because there is the possibility of real give and take with people who disagree.

You, however, are absolutely full of bullshit and hate.

Given Obama's background and record, who in their right mind would choose the path he did if he had "presidential" ambitions? Please provide me to links for all of those politicians who climbed the ladder by associating themselves with the poorest most disaffected citizens who have the ear of nobody.

I have been respectful of McCain. Okay, not always, but I really try. I like him. Had he been the Republican nominee in 2000, I would have likely voted for him in the general election.

Therefore, I don't bring up all the things that I COULD in response to nonsense like yours. I have never discounted the 5.5 years he spent in Hanoi, but if you did take that out of the mix, you have a portrait of a man that is not all that.

He was basically a spoiled brat who got into the Naval Academy on his family name. He was less than a stellar pilot or at the very least, you would have to admit that he was less than responsible with our airplanes.

After he came home, I think you can look at his family/career history and draw your own conclusions as I really don't want to go through and trash the man here. If you would like, I will. You love to make hay with Obama's "associations".

That's cool. Now look at McCain's associations with some of your heroes. He and the Reagans were basically not on speaking terms and even now, Nancy endorsed him "because he is the parties nominee."

He trashed his relationship with Goldwater. There are many, many people associated with Arizona politics who have lost respect for him over the years. I won't even get into his relationship with fellow senators.

Despite your blathering, I was not making direct comparisons because you cannot. You look at each man and their history in its totality. They both have things in their past to be applauded. On the campaign trail, they both have their warts.

If you want to have a reasonable discussion, I'm game. If not, then I'm done responding to anything you post.

 

Wow! I think those are the sounds a truly pragmatic open minded debater (trying to berate his opponent into just shutting up and agree) I think, if you truly want the give and take of ideas you would have avoided that.

Anyone who has observed how difficult it is to stop corruption in and surrounding government programs aimed at elevating the hardships those people face, would have to wonder how much power such programs could grant those who have

Cries of racism, disenfranchisement and cruelty await those who oppose those "benevolent" community organizations. Excellent shielding. It's greatly helpful that the suburban do-gooders have no idea, willfully or otherwise, how corrupt those community organizations are. They just see some one who tried to help...

As evidence, I submit ACORN...

Easily said, hard to believe. I'd have to say of all the Dems nominated over the course of my lifetime, I wouldn't have voted for any of them.

While that may be the case, I've also had more the a few election cycles that I was so unimpressed with the Republican I considered the Libertarian candidate. This cycle is a great example of that.

Foreign policy matters may sway me back to McCain. Tough to say at this point...

All this is true, and disappointing. I guess he thought he was building a bridge to the Dems that he could use to waltz into the White House across. After all, if he were the Great Uniter... unfortunately for him he realized the bridge he built was to nowhere a little too late.

I seriously think McCain is way ahead of the of Obama in terms of resumé but Obama has the decided edge in oratory skills needed for a modern campaign. The oddity is both candidates are posturing and promising to the right of their legislative voting records with respect to personal economics. Even odder is the way Obama mixes talk of personal responsibility in with new government handouts without being called out on it.

 

Whatever. I am one of the few who have tried to engage ITN from time to time and too often any attempts are met with swill. I don't want him or anyone else to shut up and agree. I want him and everyone else to be honest in their arguments and to quit with the constant demonizing people for having different viewpoints.

ACORN is the whipping boy du jour. That's cool. Frankly, I know next to nothing about them other than what I am reading in these highly charged past few weeks. I suspect that most people who are now blaming them for our economic collapse and for the death of our democracy probably hadn't heard of them a month ago either.

This still has little to do with my point. ITN said that Obama was only building his political resume when he went to work as a community organizer. Even if I were to except your blanket statement that groups that work in poor communities are hopelessly corrupt, I would again ask, who in the hell starts their road to the Whitehouse through ACORN? Seriously?

You can claim that it isn't good experience for Obama (although I would disagree) but I just don't get the argument that at 22, he took an $18,000 a year job working for and with some of the most disaffected members of my community because he thought that would be a leg up on his run for Pennsylvania Ave. one day. If he was looking for that golden path to politics, he might have enlisted for a quick tour in the JAG corps. He would have clerked for a SC justice. He would have taken a job with a top law firm. He would have done all of the traditional things to set himself up.

I won't argue that he did do that later in life but trying to say that he took a job as a community organizer to advance his political career defies logic.

Well, you don't know me in the least, so I won't take offense. Since you found that hard to believe, this will be a doozy. I cast my first national ballot in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. I grew up in Kansas and was a big supporter of Bob Dole in 1988 and was bitter towards Bush as he pulled a McCain saying he wanted a respectful campaign and then betraying his supposed hatred of negative campaigning after he lost Iowa and was having trouble in New Hampshire.

I did not like the influence the "social conservatives" were having on the republican party. In 1992, I was most intrigued by Paul Tsongas and was pulling for him although by the time my primary came around it was already Clinton. I was not thrilled with my choices in 1992 and frankly, I voted for Perot. He had the fiscal conservative thing going without the social and religious stuff.

By 2000 I voted for Gore. For one thing, I was now completely put off by the non-fiscal conservatives taking over the party, and I was happy to vote for the opposite party from congress (and oh, how that would have been a good thing). I fully supported bush post 9/11. I fully turned against him prior to the Iraq war. He played into the hands of Al Quaeda by wasting billions of our resources and distracting our military.

By that point, I was also thoroughly disgusted at the jaw dropping spending of the republicans. Medicare, medicaid and social security presented our biggest long term challenges and our great republican president and congress see this as an opportunity to create another massive entitlement with the prescription drug benefit?

Enough of my rant. I am most concerned at the erosion of our civil rights at this point and I have the most faith in Obama to restore constitutional balance to the system.

Fair enough. I have no problems with anyone who rationally makes an argument against my candidate. Experience is legit. Voting records are legit. On resumes, I'm not all that sure. Beyond McCain/Feingold, what exactly has McCain achieved in his quarter of a century in congress? He talks about out of control spending and corruption and yet he is one of the senior members of the party that had control of congress for 12 straight years.

When comparing the two, I do think their campaigns and their reaction to events are telling. Obama has been running for two years with an organization that hums. No changes in personnel, no money problems, strategies that show a true understanding of the system and how to win.

I look at McCain and forget about his personal actions. His campaign has been erratic. Here we are just over two weeks from the general election and he is frantically running to his base and campaigning exclusively in traditionally strong republican areas. These are not signs of a good executive.

Anyway, I appreciate the thoughts, but in terms of ITN, save your breath. I've given it many chances over the past four or five years and it is pointless.

 

Sorry. You have to quote me or link to where I made any personal attacks against Joe the Plumber. I am fairly certain that, in another thread, I criticized him for misrepresenting basic facts in posing his question. The question itself? Absolutely legitimate and I think it was answered quite well by Obama. Have you ever watched the full 6:00 minute exchange?

 

You said that I personally attacked Joe the Plumber. Still waiting for the link. You won't find it amongst your cartoons.

 

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

The first one was quite clearly directed at you, not Joe. The rest of the post was about bush and the 2000 election and the justification for tax cuts.

the second criticism is accurate, at least with the info I have read. He said he was trying to buy the business and yet his boss said the business was not for sale and Joe had never approached him about it. He said that the business would make 250-280,000 a year. My understanding is that that is completely off. The business makes half that a year.

On the last point, his lack of a license is completely relevant. His question made it sound as if he was prepared to buy the company but was concerned about Obama's tax. He is no where near ready to buy the company. As to your claim that he doesn't need a license, I don't think you are correct:

His boss, Al Newell of Newell Plumbing and Heating Co. of Toledo, is a licensed plumbing contractor in Toledo, records show. But anyone working under Newell should have a journeyman’s plumbing license or an apprenticeship license, officials said.

So, my "attacks" against old Joe are not attacks at all. I also said I didn't personally attack him. All of the stuff you incorrectly mention is attacking the basis of his question and that has to be fair game.

Remember when Obama referenced the Army Captain who said they were using captured equipment and ammo in Afghanistan? Sen. Warner and other republicans jumped on it. "Produce this Captain, we want to talk to him." He did and the guy's story checked out and no one bothered him again.

 

It's not Obama's fault that McCain pushed Joe the Entrepreneur into the spotlight, now, is it?