Did McCain Reverse Course on His New Economic Plan to Wait for Obama’s New Plan?

/in , /by

There’s been a fair amount of coverage of the way the McCain campaign promised–then reneged on their promise–to deliver new proposals to fix the economy.

Despite signals that Senator John McCain would have new prescriptions for the economic crisis after a weekend of meetings, his campaign said Sunday that Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, would not have any more proposals this week unless developments call for some.

The signs of internal confusion came as the campaign was under pressure from state party leaders to sharpen his message on the economy and at least blunt the advantage that Democrats traditionally have on the issue in hard times.

[snip]

On Saturday, his advisers were considering a range of economic ideas, one indicated. On Sunday, on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a confidant of Mr. McCain, confirmed a report on Politico.com that Mr. McCain was weighing proposals to cut taxes on investors’ capital gains and dividends. “It will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy,” Mr. Graham said, “by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes.”

But McCain advisers later said they did not know why Mr. Graham said that. One noted that Mr. McCain’s economic plan already would cut capital gains and dividend tax rates, by extending President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. At the phone bank, Mr. McCain declined to answer a question from a reporter about what he was considering.

“We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way,” said a campaign spokesman, Tucker Bounds. Mr. McCain’s policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said, “I have no comment on anything, to anybody.”

(See also TP’s smackdown of Politico’s crappy "reporting" on this head fake.)

Meanwhile, hidden behind the quiet facade of a campaign that doesn’t have this turmoil, look what Obama’s doing this morning:

Toledo, OH

Today in Toledo, OH, Senator Obama will deliver a major policy address to lay out his economic rescue plan for the middle class. Our economy is facing its greatest uncertainty in over 70 years, we have lost 760,000 jobs this year and the unemployment rate is expected to reach 8 percent. Families, who saw their incomes decline by $2,000 in the economic “expansion” from 2000 to 2007 now risk seeing deeper income losses. Retirement savings accounts have lost $2 trillion. Millions of homeowners who played by the rules have seen their housing values plummet and are having a hard time making their mortgage payments. And credit markets are nearly frozen, preventing businesses large and small from accessing the credit they need to meet payroll and create jobs.

So Obama, not McCain, will come out with some new ways to fix the economy today.

Though I can’t blame McCain for chickening out of recommending solutions for the economy. Aside from the fact that, every time he does so, it ends up backfiring (because it only clarifies how much in the tank McCain is for corporations and rich people), presenting a conservative plan to fix the economy on the same day The Shrill One wins the Nobel Prize in economics just couldn’t be very good juju.

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  1. alabama says:

    The Republicans must be torn to ribbons by the Brown initiative. Conflict within the inner councils of the High and Mighty?

  2. drational says:

    I think McCain is going to pull out a different gimmick.
    Last week Kristol’s weekly piece was timed to coincide with Palin’s attacks on Ayers and Wright.

    This week Kristol is writing about a campaign reboot in which he becomes the “happy” candidate (”a serious but cheerful candidate for times that need a serious but upbeat leader.”)

    My guess is he will try a hard pivot away from his campaign’s racism….

    • rxbusa says:

      Only problem with following Kristol’s advice is the debate Wed night. McCain wears his emotions all over himself and he is incapable of disguising his anger and his disdain for Obama. For him to come out as a happy warrior now is just not within his capabilities.

      If he wanted to at least salvage his reputation he could say something about how difficult the coming year is going to be, that it is important for us to find common ground and pull together. But I don’t think he can do that either.

      I just love that “We’ve got them just where we want them” line. It sounds like McCain just hired John Cleese to be his new campaign manager!

    • brendanx says:

      Yes, he’s going the way of “The Happy Warrior” in this election, with the difference that he’ll be vilified, not vindicated, in the long term.

  3. WilliamOckham says:

    Who’s John McCain? Didn’t he used to be a senator from, like, New Mexico or Arizona? What’t that you say? He’s a minor party presidential candidate. Uh,ok…

  4. wavpeac says:

    I hesitate to write this, but it really does seem as if the American public has finally found the economic truth. I think that Clinton began to dent the republican lie, and I think Obama and Hillary have done a good job this election season of making the economic truth clear.

    WEALTH DOES NOT TRICKLE DOWN. And the republicans have spent the last 8 years trying to get richer…off of poor people. And now they are shocked, shocked I tell you!! That we are not being fooled by abortion, gay marriage, or affairs. And that in the end, you can’t get blood from a turnip.

    I really hope it’s the end of an economic era that transferred an awful lot of wealth to the wealthiest. I hope it becomes a shining lesson for republicans and all americans that it’s time for a new economic strategy.

    The whole world would be better off if we invested and took risks with alternative energy sources. This will determine the next economic revolution. The era of oil is dying.

    Rest in peace. Let’s move on.

  5. klynn says:

    Angry and “sweetness” do not package together well.

    Angry, serious and cheerful together? Have you ever seen someone who is a serious, cheerful angry person? I have. It is simply messy. And a person in “that” state of being leaves a path of destruction. And one cannot pull off being patriotic in that state of being because of the inner conflicts.

    Besides, any attempt at “serious but cheerful” leadership is not possible for McCain. With his behavior the last week alone and his inability to shut Palin the hell up wrt “hate” mongering, just makes any attempt in this direction to be perceived not as “serious but cheerful” but as hollow rhetoric.

    The only thing McC is capable to be serious and cheerful about IS his hate for Obama.

    • klynn says:

      “..times that need a serious but upbeat leader…” says Bill Kristol?

      What he was really stating was the need for hope and leadership…Hmmm…

      Didn’t someone leading in the polls run his campaign on a foundation of “serious change and hope”?

      The audacity of hope…It makes people want to copy the concept…

      Dear Bill Kristol, copying someone’s actions, thoughts and ideas have often been viewed as giving a left-handed compliment, the truest form of flattery.

      Kristol just suggested McCain endorse Obama in reality.

  7. Leen says:

    How is it that Ohio Newspaper Polls report that McCain is ahead
    http://www.kdbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9165856

    Numbers show close race between McCain, Obama in Ohio

    Associated Press – October 12, 2008 11:33 AM ET

    An Ohio newspaper poll suggests the presidential race is tightening in the state, with Barack Obama moving to close the gap with John McCain.

    The Ohio Newspaper Poll has McCain leading among likely voters by 48%, with 46% backing Obama. With a margin of sampling error at plus or minus 3.3%, that’s a statistical dead heat.

    Three weeks ago, the same poll had McCain ahead 48 to 42%.

    The telephone survey of 876 likely Ohio voters was done Oct. 4-8 for the Ohio News Organization, a cooperative of the state’s eight largest daily newspapers.

    Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    IN NATIONAL POLLS OBAMA IS AHEAD OF MCCAIN BY 3-8 POINTS IN OHIO. WHY THIS MAJOR DISCREPANCY? On Sunday’s Face The Nation Bob Schiefer must have been pulling his poll number from the Ohio Newspapers, because he reported McCain ahead of Obama in Ohio.

    http://www.realclearpolitics.c…..a-400.html

    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/

  9. Neil says:

    On Face the Nation, Lindsey looked like he’d been ridden hard and put away wet. He had bed head. Now I learn that he was lying about the plan to lower cap gain tax rates below 15%. Sheesh.

    The panel on This Week tip-toed around the issue of Palin/McCain inciting rage and anger with their terrorist-Arab-socialist ad hominem rhetoric. At one point Cokie presented an equivalency between the two campaigns’ rally-goers and Krugman promptly, under the din of voices, said “I reject that equivalence.”

    George Will was pushing the misunderstanding that the only problem with the economy was confidence, Krugmen pointed out that many banks and shadow banking institutions, as a result of the state of mortgage backed securities and derivatives, had liabilities in excess of their assets, so no George, confidence is not the only problem.

    Here’s my idea, swap Sarah Palin for George Will on This Week and let her answer questions for a year. If ABC is still paying her salary when the year is up, then I’ll accept her candidacy as not a farce.

    My problems with Palin are not limited to differences of policy, our differences include paradigm or worldview as she likes to say. If she is doing god’s work, then I am not.

    I was disgusted that Palin anticipated being booed in Philadelphia and so put her daughter in a Flyers jersey in a gambit to ward off the booing. Sarah’s response when they were booed despite Piper’s sartorial statement, “How dare they boo Piper.” It never occurred to Sarah to leave the kid in the crowd? The words ‘human shield’ come to mind.

  11. radiofreewill says:

    The McCain Campaign has so regularly pulled these Policy Crazy-Ivan’s – right after Obama takes a Position on an Issue – that I really think their Policy Formulation consists of taking Obama’s carefully crafted and well-vetted Policy Statements – and feeding them into a Reverse-Spin Policy Generator.

    ’Negating’ your opponent’s Policies is not itself a process of Sound Policy Generation.

    McCain is more running a propaganda shop than a credible campaign.

  12. Mary says:

    I wish the Obama camp on economic policy was less Reich/Furman(Rubin)esque, and more Roubini/Krugman. Since Krugman had the “audacity of nope” to be critical of some of Obama’s plans (like his healthcare plan that was inferior to Clinton’s and Edwards) the Obama crew has been cool towards Krugman.

  14. brendanx says:

    The Lewis response was what McCain was trying to achieve, resuscitation of the race issue by a respected voice that can propel it back into the forefront of the debate. Pretty lame, but they don’t have many cards left to play.

  15. Dismayed says:

    The real problem for McCain here is that it turns out he’s really just an empty suit. He’s been simply repeating whatever his advisor told him for all these years. His maveric status came from the only place he may have had some actual policy positions which originated from him. They let him get by with that because he was not bothered by thinking upon any topic involving money and was content to just hand it over.

    Now those same advisors, just flat can’t let go and John is up a creek without a paddle. He has no one with anything new to say to put words in his mouth.

    Look for more of the same. Repackaged – but it ain’t gonna fly. Voters have turned the corner on their bullshit.