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Palin 2012

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Sarah Palin continues her bid to be the Nativist Party candidate for President in 2012.

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign. 

[snip]

Palin, 44, has led the character attacks on Obama in the belief that McCain may be throwing away the election and her chance of becoming vice-president. Her supporters think that if the Republican ticket loses on November 4, she should run for president in 2012.

A leading Republican consultant said: “A lot of conservatives are grumbling about what a poor job McCain is doing. They are rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Yes, a miracle could happen, but at this rate it is all over’.

“Sarah Palin is no fool. She sees the same thing and wants to salvage what she can. She is positioning herself for the future. Her best days could be in front of her. She wants to look as though she was the fighter, the person with the spunk who was out there taking it to the Democrats.”

[snip]

A McCain official confirmed that there was dissension in the campaign. “There is always going to be a debate about the costs and benefits of any strategy,” he said. 

Who knew that the strongest attack on McCain’s manhood and honor was going to come from his running mate? 

If I didn’t believe McCain deserves the headache he has with Palin, I’d almost feel sorry for him.

McCain Sez: the Guy with the Erratic Behavior Is a Menace

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You’ve heard, no doubt, that McCain’s campaign staffers have written a report exonerating Sarah Palin of abuse of power in the firing of Walt Monegan.

But did you know they rationalized their concern by describing Mike Wooten’s–Sarah’s former bro-in-law–"long history of unstable and erratic behavior"?

Although the report describes Wooten as a separate issue, the McCain campaign goes into great detail about the "rogue" trooper and his "long history of unstable and erratic behavior."

So in case you’re wondering, the McCain camp agrees that the guy with the long history of unstable and erratic behavior is a menace to society.

John McCain’s Secrets

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Under the premise that Obama has not been fully forthcoming, John McCain is raising on Bill Ayers every chance he gets (except to Obama’s face).

GIBSON: Do you think the relationship with Ayers is a critical issue in this campaign or factor in this campaign?

MCCAIN: I think it’s a factor about Sen. Obama’s candor and truthfulness with the American people. That’s what I think it’s about. As I say, I don’t care about Mr. Ayers who on Sept. 11, 2001 said he wished he’d have bombed more. I don’t care about that. I care about him being truthful about his relationship with him. And Americans will care.

But here are some of the things that John McCain hasn’t been forthcoming about himself.

There’s his own relationship with terrorists–McCain didn’t disclose his ties to the Contra-funding US Council for World Freedom.

As a freshman congressman in the early 1980s, John McCain did not disclose his connections to a controversial group that was implicated in a secretive plot to supply arms to Nicaraguan militia groups during the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain did not list his service on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom on mandatory congressional disclosure forms asking about positions he held outside government.

McCain’s aides said he wasn’t required to report the affiliation.

[snip]

McCain joined the board of the U.S. Council soon after Singlaub founded it in McCain’s adopted hometown of Phoenix in November 1981 as the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League. The league billed itself as a supporter of "pro-Democratic resistance movements fighting communist totalitarianism," but it had also been branded by critics as a haven for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.

[snip]

A review of the personal financial disclosure forms McCain filed after his election to the U.S. House in 1982 show that he did not list the group in the section of his 1982, 1983 and 1984 reports in which he was required to disclose all positions he held outside of government.

The instructions on the form require filers to report "the identity of all positions held on or before the date of the filing during the current calendar year as an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee, or consultant of any corporation, firm, partnership, or other business enterprise, any nonprofit organization, any labor organization, or any educational or other institution." [my emphasis]

And despite his noted big money gambling habit, McCain has never reported any gambling winnings on his Senate disclosure reports. 

Today, CREW filed a complaint against Senator John McCain (R-AZ) with the Senate Ethics Committee.  Read more →

Make Them Own Any Post-Election Violence

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I just had a check-up this morning with a doctor who doesn’t know me well. She and I were talking about what I do, and I said I was really looking forward to the election being over. She said she was too–that people seemed really wound up this year. She speculated that maybe it was because more people were involved. I pointed out that in our area, that’s not really true, lots of people were involved in 2004 as well. And that, given that McCain hadn’t really excited the crowds until he picked Palin, there was actually less involvement across both parties until September.

But then I said, no, things are not going to be less wound up after the election.  If, as is probably going to happen, Obama is elected–at this point she sort of disagreed, which leads me to believe she has no clue what the polls are showing, perhaps even no clue that McCain has pulled out of MI–then you’re going to have to deal with the aftermath of a month of rallies in which McCain and (especially) Palin have incited anger by calling Obama a terrorist. Digby is (go figure) absolutely right when she points to where this is headed.

This is the kind of thing that really makes me fear for Obama. They are already screaming "terrorist" at Palin’s rallies and shouting "kill him." The whole "Obama is a muslim" thing is bizarre, but with his name and childhood spent partly in a Muslim country — and the fact that he’s black, which makes everyone flash on Louis Farrakhan — the collective right wing lizard brain twitches uncontrollably. They will use this, I have no doubt. There is an entire wingnut industry devoted to stirring up tensions in the middle east and another on devoted to character assassination of Democrats. Obama brings them together in serendipitous loathing and paranoia. It’s going to be ugly.

When I said things were headed to some serious ugliness, on account of the fact that the McCain campaign was deliberately stoking violent anger as an attempt to delegitimize the guy most likely to be President, the doctor got a bit squirmy. She didn’t want to hear this. I’m guessing she’s a moderate in love with the untainted McCain myth of 2000, and she simply doesn’t want to think about her guy fostering this dangerous energy.

Read more →

Brand New McCain

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picture-45.pngThis John Heilemann column asking why McCain’s brand has tanked among journalists has gotten a lot of attention in the blogosphere. I’m fascinated more by what it says about the press than what it says about McCain.

Here’s Heilemann’s premise.

In the past several weeks, the shift of press-corps sentiment against McCain has been stark and undeniable, even among heavies such as Matthews long accused by the left of being residents of the Arizonan’s amen corner. Jonathan Alter, Joe Klein, Richard Cohen, David Ignatius, Jacob Weisberg: all former McCain admirers now turned brutal critics. Equally if not more damaging, the shift has been just as pronounced, if less operatic, among straight-news reporters. Suddenly, McCain is no longer being portrayed as a straight-talking, truth-telling maverick but as a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist with acute anger-management issues.

Note Heilemann’s assumption: this change happened in the last "several weeks." And because the press sentiment shifted, John McCain is now portrayed "as a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist with acute anger-management issues." Though he doesn’t say it explicitly, Heilemann weakly concludes that John McCain’s fall-out with his press buddies has at least exacerbated–if not caused–his recent failures.

From his initial assumptions, Heilemann tells the following narrative. He traces McCain’s popularity to his 2000 run.

McCain’s darlinghood was largely a vestige of his 2000 race in the Republican primaries, when his challenge to George W. Bush and the GOP Establishment, his reformist stances, and, not least, his freewheeling open-access press policy on the Straight Talk Express earned him countless fans among inky-fingered wretches. 

And notes all the McCain BS that the press ignored.

Over the past eight years [McCain’s brand] had proved durable, most of all with the press, which consistently saw McCain’s deviations from what were supposed to be his core beliefs as aberrations. The speech at Falwell’s university? The reversals on the Bush tax cuts and torture? The support for the teaching of “intelligent design”? All had been dismissed by the press corps as necessary hedges, as a matter of McCain doing what he had to do to win the GOP nomination.

Heilemann repeats McCain’s bogus claim that everything changed when Obama refused McCain’s town hall proposal. 

But many longtime McCain watchers say that the candidate’s own gathering sense of frustration made him ripe for such a change. Read more →

McCain’s Lawyer Shell Game

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In today’s conference call, John McCain was represented by John Dowd, of Akin Gump.

You might remember Dowd. He was the guy who made sure Monica Goodling got immunity before she confessed to the way she had politicized DOJ.

But more interestingly John Dowd helped Cindy McCain avoid all legal consequences for stealing drugs from her own medical charity (in the process, Dowd attacked the whistleblower who came forward to expose Cindy’s law-breaking).

How curious, don’t you think, that John Dowd after all these years has returned to defend McCain? (Greg Sargent notes that last year, John Dowd was mourning the John McCain he used to know.)

It’s particularly curious given that McCain had already retained a lawyer back in December to fight charges that he abused power: Skadden Arps partner Bob Bennett. Back then, Bennett was arguing that the stories showing McCain had intervened for Vicki Iseman’s clients improperly were part of a smear job.

A spirited defense of McCain was already being mounted on television Thursday by Robert Bennett, who has, according to the Drudge Report, been on this case for McCain since December 2007, when the high-profile lawyer (and Democrat brother to Republican Bill) was brought on to pressure the Times to kill the story:

Just weeks away from a possible surprise victory in the primaries, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz has been waging a ferocious behind the scenes battle with the NEW YORK TIMES, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, and has hired DC power lawyer Bob Bennett to mount a bold defense against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist!

McCain has personally pleaded with NY TIMES editor Bill Keller not to publish the high-impact report involving key telecom legislation before the Senate Commerce Committee, newsroom insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Bennett still insisted overnight that the story was nothing more than a "smear campaign,"

Bennett was using precisely the same language Dowd is using today–calling the exposure of McCain’s favors for Iseman a "smear campaign."

Now that’s where we come full circle. 

It was Bob Bennett, of course, who recommended the Senate Ethics Committee investigation drop McCain (and John Glenn). But in the final report, he stated that McCain had exercised "bad judgment" for meeting with Senate regulstors about Keating’s interests. 

Read more →

And If His Contrition about Keating Is Fake, then So Is His Sincerity about Reform

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Aravosis listens to tedious McCain conference calls so you don’t have to.

Then McCain’s lawyer dropped the real bomb.

The Keating Five Investigation was "a political smear job on John [McCain]." WTF? He called Howell Heflin, who led the hearings, a "stooge" of the Democratic machine out to get poor, innocent John McCain.

This opens up the entire question of McCain’s supposed contrition. If McCain thinks he did nothing wrong, and that it was wrong for the Senate to scold him for his actions during the Keating Five Scandal, then he isn’t contrite at all, he isn’t sorry at all. He’s learned nothing. You can’t turn a new leaf when you don’t think you did anything wrong. [my emphasis]

I’d go further. As the NRO helpfully reminds us this morning (inconveniently for them, they didn’t get the memo about this latest McCain flip-flop until it was too late), McCain’s entire claim to be since about his mavericky reformer personality stems from his contrition about his mistakes with Keating.

 …his involvement in the scandal is what drove McCain to become such a relentless pain-in-the-tuchus about campaign finance reform, and arguably blind to First Amendment objections. Put aside the fact that McCain sees that his association with Keating was a mistake,…

I guess that whole maverick reform business was just a temporary, politically convenient stunt, then, if the underlying contrition was just an act. 

Debate Prep

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Let’s review the events of the last week or so for the McCain team. On Thursday, McCain precipitously withdrew from MI–the MI GOP seemed to have no warning, and his offices were already packing up and closing on Saturday. McCain then spent the weekend sequestered with his advisors in Sedona (though he did take a break on Saturday for a Happy Meal). He’s got an event in NM today (a state where Obama leads polling by greater margins than he does in MI), but the weekend retreat was notable for the way it served not just as time to retool the campaign (and, desperately, to try to count to 270) but also to prep for the debate on Tuesday. Indeed, the campaign seems to be tying their new campaign roll-out to Tuesday’s debate.

Asked at a Colorado town hall, "When are you going to take the gloves off?" the candidate grinned and replied, "How about Tuesday night?"

[snip]

A senior aide said the campaign will wait until after Tuesday’s debate to decide how and when to release new commercials, adding that McCain and his surrogates will continue to cast Obama as a big spender, a high taxer and someone who talks about working across the aisle but doesn’t deliver.

Now, that’s not entirely true–that the campaign would wait until Tuesday to roll out its new recycled smears. Sarah Palin’s been accusing Obama of palling around with terrorists since Saturday.

But it does set up a remarkable dynamic for tomorrow’s debate. After losing two debates in a row, the McCain team seems to believe it can use the next debate as an opportunity relaunch its entire campaign.

Obviously, this is the debate format McCain prefers.

Second presidential debate: all topics in town meeting format, moderated by Tom Brokaw
Tuesday, October 7, Belmont University, Nashville, TN

-Two-minute answers, followed by one-minute discussion for each question.

Or should I say preferred. McCain won New Hampshire by doing about a million town halls; and he used them a lot early in the summer. But around mid-summer (when Steve Schmidt took over the campaign, I think), McCain started vetting the attendees of these town halls. And as the WSJ points out, he has really cut back the number of town halls he is doing. In other words, McCain used to like the unscripted format of town halls, but has grown sour on them.

Read more →

Michi-Gone (But Not Forgotten)

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There’s still something funky about the way McCain pulled out of MI. As I noted yesterday, Obama was focused enough on MI to schedule a Detroit rally (Sunday, with both Obamas and both Bidens), two Michelle events (yesterday), and Grand Rapids and Lansing rallies yesterday. And, as Nate points out, MI wasn’t even the best state to pull out of based on return on investment. 

That is, Michigan actually appeared to be a slightly better place to spend their marginal resources than states like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin; a dollar there goes about 2.4 times as far as one spent in an average state.

Then there’s how quickly they made the decision (I know, I know, this is McCain, but still). The MI GOP had emergency meetings last night to devise a new strategy (and, apparently, Kissinger did a McCain campaign stop today).

Michigan Republicans kicked into overdrive last night.  We had a series of conference calls and meetings with activists and donors, coming up with our own plan on how to implement a "Michigan strategy" for McCain and the rest of our ticket.  

Which is going to be particularly tough for them, given that they were nearly broke in May and were surely counting on Cindy’s McCain’s money to support campaign events this year.

And as some have noted, Sarah Palin just found out this morning.

"Well, that’s not a surprise because, you know, the polls are showing we’re not doing as well there evidently as we would like to," Palin said. "But I read that this morning also. I fired off a quick email and said `Oh, come on, you know, do we have to? Do we have to call it there?’"

And perhaps weirdest of all, there’s the overall damage this decision will do to McCain’s campaign (Jack Lessenberry is MI’s favorite political curmudgeon).

For John McCain, pulling most of his campaign operations out of Michigan makes a certain kind of sense. On paper, anyway. But then, the Vietnam War made a certain amount of sense on paper.

Just not in reality. My guess is that the McCain camp’s decision will turn out to have been an appalling blunder for reasons that stretch far beyond Michigan. First of all, let’s look at what happened.

[snip]

My guess is that the stigma of having publicly conceded a major state a month before the election will far outweigh the advantage of having an extra staffer or two in Florida or being able to show a few ads in Maine or Ohio. Read more →

Michi-Gone

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Two days ago, I emailed Rayne with notice of yet another capaign appearance from the Obama campaign–two rallies with Michelle. These events were in addition to two Obama appearances already scheduled for today, and a huge rally in Detroit last Sunday with both Obamas and Bidens.

Given the gradual increase in Obama’s lead in MI, I wondered what was up. Why had the Obama campaign virtually moved into MI? Were Obama’s internals worse than the public polls? Rayne noted that some of the later events–Michelle’s two and Obama’s rally today in Grand Rapids–weren’t exactly in Democratic strongholds (for example, Grand Rapids is where all the GOP billionaires hang out in the state). I wondered, though, what the tactical thinking was, particularly since–until a few days ago–Obama’s numbers in MI were stronger than they were in PA.

And then I read this, from the Politico:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states.

Now, the Politico didn’t get a quote from the McCain campaign (frankly, admitting they were pulling out of a state that McCain won in the 2000 primary would be really telling), so maybe this isn’t finalized. 

But I wonder whether Obama didn’t see this week as his tactical closure of the Kerry states (trading IA for NH), just as he turns for a big move on offense. Already, we’re seeing Obama up the campaign stops in MO and NC, both states that–if they’re even competitive–could mark a blow-out. In any case, it seems like Obama and McCain are both responding to a dramatic shift in the shape of the campaign in the last few days, with Obama turning heavily to playing offense.

Darn. We really could have used the money that comes from ongoing, close attention. 

Update: Ambinder has this:

A McCain adviser confirmed the news but noted that the Republican National Committee’s independent expenditure arm is still running ads there, and that McCain will keep most of his staff in-state.

This may mean that McCain has decided–in the interest of going really negative, as widely reported–to do nothing but racist ads here. 

MI is one of the swing states where racism will be most effective. Read more →