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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for September 2008

McCain speaks for Palin

In case you slept in . . . John McCain doesn’t think citizens should be asking Palin questions, AND that we should ignore her statements that contradict McCain (or agree with Obama).

Let me get this straight . . . McCain surrogates bring up Biden when asked about the Couric interview this AM, and tell us to ignore questions from citizens?!

WASHINGTON (CNN)- Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin’s stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama’s support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists

“She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we’re not going to do anything except in America’s national security interest,” McCain told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of Palin. “In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that’s-that’s a person’s position… This is a free country, but I don’t think most Americans think that that’s a definitve policy statement made by Governor Palin.”

Saturday night, while on a stop for cheesesteaks in South Philadelphia, Palin was questioned by a Temple graduate student about whether the U.S. should cross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said

McCain Says: Palin’s Conversations Not Indicative of Her Positions

Last week was probably the worst week of the campaign for John McCain, and this week seems to be starting off equally rocky. In recent days, McCain has stated that the fundamentals of the economy are strong while the stock market was crashing. He “suspended” his campaign and canceled his debate appearance while purchasing web ads saying he “won” the debate before he announced that he would participate in the debate after all. He canceled an appearance on Letterman, stating he was “on his way to the airport” to race back to DC to help avert economic catastrophe, while he actually went to another nearby CBS building to be interviewed by Katie Couric (he actually did not leave NYC until the following day after giving a morning talk).

Ironically, McCain started this week on ABC’s This Week, and his performance was as erratic as his last week.

The McCain plan to change the campaign conversation

(Cross-posted at Clintonistas for Obama)

McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt says that the McCain campaign is going to attempt to change the conversation from the economy to other topics.  The two themes that they are going to attempt to inject into the national conversation are these:

One is that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief and that, in a time of two wars, “his policies will make the world more dangerous and America less secure.” Second . . . McCain will argue that, in a time of economic crisis, Obama will raise taxes and spending and “will make our economy worse.”

Shotgun Weddings and the Politics of Desperation

We know that John McCain is perfectly willing to use the economic crisis to advance his political interests, but is he willing to use a 17-year old girl?

In a campaign lurching from cynical tactic to frenzied ploy as fast as John McCain’s, it’s difficult to guess what tomorrow’s political news holds. The senator has now fully committed himself to the kinds of reckless, desperate tactics that have given pause to even steadfast conservatives. How a presidential candidate conducts his campaign is a good indicator of how he will govern his country when in office, and in the conduct of his campaign in the past month we’ve been given a perfect illustration of why John McCain is the worst possible thing for America at the moment.

When a campaign tries to tilt the pinball machine as often as possible, there’s almost no point in trying to guess what strategy will come next. So far these maneuvers almost seem to have been chosen more for unpredictability than political prudence. Not many of us would have guessed that McCain would try to cancel the first debate, and all indications are that it was a risky gambit that did not pay off. The frantic accusations that the New York Times is “not even a journalistic organization” might play well with the GOP base, but I suspect don’t even pass the laugh test among the critical undecided voters McCain is trying to court. He and Palin are rapidly becoming a laughingstock and for once, the media is doing its job, calling out their lies and refusing to defer to the usual false balance that is the central linchpin of the Rovian media strategy. The referees have finally realized that they are being worked, and they don’t like it.

The London Times is reporting on what I think has a very good potential to be the next bizarre twist in this story: A high-profile storybook wedding between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston.

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one – the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancĂ© before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

[…]

Johnston was greeted with a handshake and friendly slap on the back by McCain in St Paul, Minnesota, and treated as a member of the family during the Republican national convention when he appeared on stage after Palin’s speech.

The ice-hockey player wrote on his MySpace page he was a “f****** redneck” and stated, “I don’t want kids.” But a McCain insider predicted he would marry Bristol whenever his future mother-in-law wanted. “It’s a shotgun wedding. She kills things,” the source joked.

AZ Debate Watchers: Fundamental Disaster for McCain

PHOENIX, ARIZONA — Even here in McCain’s home state, Obama was the clear winner of the debate. I attended a debate watching party at a restaurant in McCain’s home town. Democrats for America  (DFA) had a private banquet room, while about one hundred restaurant goers watched the debate just outside our door. Throughout the debate, the reactions outside our door were the same as inside our banquet room.

Silent Republican Civil War: and of course Some Palin

Some rambling thoughts after the first Presidential debate, and before Thursday, and much of it inspired by DC Democrat’s excellent diary.

Ever since McCain made his first big decision of his campaign, selecting Governor Palin as his VP, I’ve begun to mentally construct what happened in the Republican party during those long months of the Democratic Primary battles

While some of the conflict between Obama and Hillary appalled many of us, it probably enthralled the rest of the country, and McCain and his strategists looked at this long and hard.

At first they tried to exploit it, fanning internal problems with Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos, sending legions of obvious trolls to invade our blogs. But at heart they must have been sickened. Dems were capturing all the public attention: they had two phenomenal change candidates, one a woman, one a black American, who enthused different constituencies to register, turn out and participate in a vote. If these active elements could unify They must have wracked their brains to work out: what can we do?

And so for three months, the rumor has it that McCain wanted Lieberman but the conservative base wouldn’t wear it. It was only in REACTION to Obama’s VP pick that McCain decided to play a gender card and pick Palin

The Humiliation of Sarah Palin

Ed Schultz reports that insiders within the McCain camp consider Palin to be “clueless”:

The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”

They’re embarrassed by her, and if I wasn’t afraid for my country, I might succumb to a temptation to feel sorry for her. She is well on her way to becoming nothing more than a national joke, and some of the jokes are more than a little funny:

John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank.

The scariest ad you’ll see this week

…and it’s been put out by the Obama campaign.  Who says democrats can’t use fear to their advantage?  This really sends a shiver down my spine.  This is directed exclusively at inactive or undecided democrats, and I honestly think it stands a good chance of startling a few people off the fence:

(bonus: maybe it will fool some older conservatives into thinking that McCain already won and they don’t have to vote)