You Know It’s a Clusterfuck if emptywheel Agrees with PowerLine
PowerLine is offended that John McCain allowed Joe Lieberman to make robocalls for him.
Mr. Knott reports the time of the message as 4:23 p.m. and quotes the message as follows (emphasis added):
Hi. This Senator Joe Lieberman. I’m calling for John McCain.
As you may remember I was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. But this year I’m supporting Republican John McCain for President because he is the person best qualified to lead our country forward. He’s a straight talker who will always do what’s right for our country regardless of partisan politics and he’s the only candidate prepared to be commander-in-chief from day one.
There isn’t a competitive Democratic primary in Michigan this year and all registered voters are able to participate in a Republican primary. So I’m calling today to urge you to vote in the Republican primary on January 15 for Senator John McCain. He’ll break through the partisanship and make our government in Washington work for all the people again.
I have written the McCain campaign to inquire about the accuracy of this report. I cannot vouch for it as of yet. It is consistent with this CBS report of Senator Lieberman campaigning today for Senator McCain in Michigan:
[I]n Ypsilanti, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., joined McCain on the stump and urged independents to vote for his friend.
"This is a tough and close fight here in Michigan here today. But Republicans, and I want to say specifically independents and yes, Democrats……I urge them to come out today and stand for a man who is a great American patriot."
If Mr. Knott’s report is accurate, is there anyone in the Republican Party beside John McCain who thinks this is kosher?
UPDATE: Patrick Hynes responds on behalf of the McCain campaign:
Thanks for reaching out to me. Sen. Lieberman indeed recorded a GOTV phone call, but it mentioned nothing about Democrats voting in the Republican primary and the call was not targeted to Democrats. Sen. Lieberman’s message was of a series of calls from numerous McCain campaign surrogates, which also included Sen. Sam Brownback.
As regular readers no doubt know, I, too, am offended that Joe Lieberman spammed me with robocalls for McCain for the last 4 days.
But what I’m really looking forward to is for Joe Lieberman and John McCain to stop spamming me (or rather, some Republican named Margaret) with robocalls and junk mail. McCain is even doing an event in Washtenaw County, a sure-fire sign he thinks Democrats might put him over the edge again. Though why he believes Lieberman is going to help make that case, I don’t know.
I got a sum total of 5 robocalls from McCain, and all but one featured Lieberman in some significant fashion. Now, McCain’s campaign may claim they’re using Lieberman for all their robocalls. But I got no call from Brownback (whom, frankly, I respect more than JoeMentum, though I loathe him), or anyone else. Nope. In my little 80% Dem performance precinct, I got nothing but calls from JoeMentum.
So if this offends you, PowerLine, I encourage you to rebel against this horrendous hybrid Neocon Independent mixed with Maverick Republican campaign. Really, I absolutely agree with your outrage that the former Democratic Senator from CT is pimping Mr. StraightTalk 100 years in Iraq.
It sounds like Michigan is Joe’s new pimping corner. He has his one boy stable.
Lucky for you, McCain can pimp himself in your neighborhood all by himself.
Seriously, I wonder why no one at McCain central thought to ask whether Joementum was a plus or minus for Democrats…?
Ah, this explains why it is so freezing cold here where the hellish heat usually rules the day….
Ya, it supposed to damn cold here in northern Arizona tomorrow. I guess McCain is back in the state.
Looks like Traitor Joe introduced McCain when he gave his concession speech tonight. Are you watching this Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? Nice, ain’t he. A real Democrat.
Reid has repeatedly defended Lieberman, in essence saying that “Lieberman votes with us on everything but the war”.
It’s important to remember, imo, that Reid himself supports some republican efforts, such as gutting FISA and Telcom immunity. As far as I’m concerned, Reid is a larger problem than Lieberman could ever be, given Reid’s position.
This just cracks me up to no end.
Good to see that the local Republicans in Michigan maintain the same standard of competence as the national political leaders of the party exhibit
LOL. The Bill Nowling quote in there has visited this earlier incarnation of this blog, TNH, after we appeared together on MI’s version of Timmeh. IIRC he was a Mitt supporter, so he pushed the wrong button even though he was a fan of the guy who really won…
Do I smell a recount effort by McCain…?
Well, ‘uncommitted’ on the Dem side is 39% with 89% reporting, EW!
Heck, uncommitted is still winning Washtenaw’s primary. Woohoo!
Pox on the Great Orange Satan, eh? Not many crossovers…
Hey, if the political reporting gig doesn’t work out for Noron “Born to be Wild” O’Donnell, with that leather get up she can always audition for the remake of Easy Rider….
CT has time to reorganize. There was a TNH denouement moment when a DemFromCT thread devised a way to win in 2006, until very soon afterward the Republicans tossed their support to JoeLieberman. Gore is doing other things more important to him than politics now, but I always thought the 2004 ticket Gore developed was a difficult and puzzling threshold to have traversed. Some 2008 Democratic ticket permutations hold more promise. Meanwhile GPalast is concerned about the disenfranchsement adumbrated by the chaotic Crawford argument at Scotus last week, although GP journalistically is taking some license with the presentation, still a legitimate concern now; might hand Republicans a drubbing of less intensity in the autumn vote.
If Joe-mentum had robocalled my house, I wouldn’t have known; I don’t answer calls I don’t recognize.
I suspect that if we’d taken the call, my spouse would have said, Who the hell is Joe Lieber-who’s-its? And I suspect a fair percentage of Michiganders probably said the same thing. We don’t do east coast here much, unless it’s the sunrise side of the state on Lake Huron.
BTW, found a cute little tool, EW, almost as much fun as a pack of Post-it Notes.
Whoa! That is way cool…..
what is in Washtenaw County, Michigan that cause them to have problems with commitment?
I dont answer calls that I dont recognize either. I think we had a handful of robocalls though. One was from McCain with McCains voice on the answering machine. I think we received three calls a couple of days ago I am sure were push polls (not sure who for) they started out along the lines of “Are you happy with the Bush administration” before it realized it was an answering machine and hung up. Received one that said “Political call” but didnt leave a message. Definitely nothing like the DeVos call spamming we got for the governor’s race.
I just took a look through the exit polls and noticed that the DKos crossover didn’t really come into effect that much. The wife and I gagged and voted for Romney. We were going to go uncommitted, but being pissed off at the Dem Party for pulling the delegates in addition to the crap that Hillary/Obama were displaying the past couple of days.
I was also surprised that a significant amount of people who said they would have voted for Obama/Edwards voted for Hillary instead of uncommitted. Wonder if it was a bunch of women who feel that HIllary got the shaft preceeding NH. Seemed kinda weird.
Would you be willing to be interviewed to share that perspective?
Rayne, not sure what you mean. I’m horrible in interviews
Supposedly there were about 10% Democrats and Indys that crossed-over. But I suspect some voters who crossed over may have stated that they were Republican when, in fact, they weren’t. That would have screwed up the results more, they may have believed. It’s interesting that over 30% of the Republican exit polled vigorously opposed the occupation of Iraq, nearly that % were Union members. 11% of the respondants were “Liberal”.
But lets say that many cross-overs (even at the most conservative 10% level) were convinced to support Romney rather than the more “acceptable” McCain…say 5%.
That would have been a +5% for Romney and 5% less for McCain. That’s well above the margin of victory. So one only needs half of those cross-overs to actually vote as a bloc to obtain the result of Romney trouncing McCain.
I love it that Ron Paul beat Guiliani.
Here’s an ACLU petition for Reid on telecom immunity.
OT,
Putting a human face to the steroids dilemma
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01…..ville.html
zAmboni (20) — online media outlet is looking for folks to share their experiences and opinions about the ballot, voting, primary experience. Interview could be conducted in chat on line.
BlueStateRedHead (22) — Washtenaw County is home to University of Michigan. It creates an entirely different political ecosphere, as compared to a county like Gratiot which is rural and not particularly diverse, and not known for its level of education.
I finally got rid of my land lines. Besides lower phone costs, another benefit is no political messages. I highly recommend cell-only phone service.
I am trying to do the same thing but I have DSL. How can I get around internet access?
Get a wireless data card from sprint or verizon
Oh my. Any time now EW’s going to have a post on this.
Station Chief Made Appeal To Destroy CIA Tapes
Lawyer Says Top Official Had Implicit Approval
Buckle up, kiddies, we’re going to Thailand (going to be a heckuva lot warmer there than it is in Michigan…).
There were tons of pictures yesterday of Liebertoad smiling/simpering behind McCain in Michigan. Does McCain really think Liebertoad is going to help him with DEMOCRATS? Has no one told him he is loathed by most Democratic voters?
Harry Reid needs to be replaced as Senate Majority Leader next year with someone like Chris Dodd.
Loving the fact that Rudy was beaten by Ron Paul and barely eked out a victory over uncommitted. That bet-the-ranch-on-Florida strategy is looking about as effective as Bush’s strategy for peace in the Middle East.
A little voter suppression courtesy of Traitor Joe. The day Al Gore picked that sacntimonious putz as a running mate was the day I knew his campaign was finished.
-G
The fuckers did it again… e-mails erased egad
http://www.rawstory.com/news/m…..62008.html
And that’s complete and utter bullsh*t, “consistent with industry best-practices”.
There would have been AT LEAST one tape that was never overwritten.
Obstruction.
These guys will now argue they can’t give up the overwritten tapes since the new content isn’t subject to the inquiry.
Impeach. Now.
They won’t do it. It’s simply too inconvenient.
I know this is all ancient history now, and spilt milk, but it never ceases to amaze and disgust me. The founders did not anticipate was that one branch (Congress) simply wouldn’t care if another branch usurped its authority and power. Their design depended on jealous defense of divided powers. Congress as currently constituted simply doesn’t care.
Can’t we finally kick Lieberman to the curb for this. I mean kick him out of our party.
Please. Now.