Category Archives: Politics: McCain

Faced with reporters calling him on his dishonesty in his latest campaign commercial, McCain doubles down and stonewalls. See Kos, Who's Lying? John McCain or Andrea Mitchell?.

In my opinion this is a very serious error: the political press will stick to its 'objective' he said/she said approach no matter how ridiculous the issue except for facts they personally witness. You can bamboozle the press with fake numbers if you can find one economist to vouch for them. You can say your goal is a balanced budget and world peace while you propose huge deficits and wars (worked for Bush!). But you can't tell the press not to trust their lying eyes.

I'm surprised that McCain has learned to take the press so much for granted that he thinks they will sit still even for this. I think it may reach up to bite him — at least until he makes nice again.

This is a very Rovian commercial:

It's Rovain quality is to attack Obama for the very characteristic that is McCain's greatest weakness.

McCain had a bad week.

• Carpetbagger, McCain’s attacks get more reckless, less responsible and (a few days later) Doubling down on the surge
• Kos, McCain's Excitement Deficit
• Carpetbagger, McCain surrogate: Muslims are ‘going to kill us’
• Carpetbagger, John McCain’s loose lips
• Eye on Miami, McCain/Gramm = Bush – Gramm… by gimleteye
• TPM, Keep'em In the Attic (McCain tryhing to hide Gramm, not ignore him)
• Crooks & Liars, McCain campaign triangulates, takes on Obama and Bush on Iraq
• Carpetbagger, McCain declares ‘we have succeeded’ in Iraq
• Think Progress, McCain Aide Scheunemann Linked To Bush Library ‘Cash For Access’ Scandal
• Frank Rich, It’s the Economic Stupidity, Stupid
• Carpetbagger, Maliki’s game-changer; GOP says, ‘We’re f**ked’. Related, TMP, on McCain's reaction to the news from Iraq: Pretty Weak. And a follow-up after Maliki tried to backpeddle on his endorsement of Obama's withdrawal plan: Nice Try.
• THIS IS INCREDIBLE: Crooks & Liars Olbermann highlights McCain’s crude Gorilla joke. It’s McCain Being Authentic
• Kos, 17 Sides Of Every Issue
• Aptly named Crooks & Liars, The Chris Matthews Show: Why The White House REALLY Wants McCain To Win (hint: the trail is fresh)
• Huffpo, New York Times Rejects McCain Rebuttal To Obama Op-Ed — because it didn't say anything…
• Kos, McCain v Reality: Reality, 2. McCain, 0.
• This is really pathetic: see Carpetbagger, Idiocy Watch: McCain blames Obama for high gas prices in new ad; St. Petersburg (FL) Times Online, PolitiFact on McCain drilling ad: “FALSE”
• How many serious geographic/geo-political errors does a candidate get to make before the press decides that it actually means something? Crooks & Liars, Foreign Policy Expert McCain: “Iraq-Pakistan Border” Extremely Dangerous. Try to find that border. Just try.
• Majikthise, McCain's senior foreign policy advisor tied to global petro-influence peddling
• Greenwald, McCain campaign adopts Bush's respect for free expression
• WashPo, Young Republicans, Blue About the Prospects Ahead
• Probably the quote of the week:
  

  Mr. McCain’s comments were mild compared with the bleak mood and frustration on the part of his advisers, who have taken to referring to Mr. Obama sarcastically as “The One” and railing against the large amount of coverage Mr. Obama is receiving compared with Mr. McCain.

  Source: NYT, McCain, at Bush Home, Faults Obama on War Plan. And see also NYT, Obama Overseas! In Presidential Mode! Back Home, It’s McCain in a Golf Cart.
  

  
  

  Flop sweat?

• Even Dowd is being (by her standards) nice to Obama, Is “The One” Cocky or Commander in Chiefy?
• McCain tries the Dolchstoßlegende line, McCain abandons decency, sense of propriety
• And Joe Klein — Joe Klein — calls it The McCain Meltdown
• Kos has a super-snarky McCain quiz at Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday
• Mark Nickolas' Blog, McCain Made Progress In Only 1 of 11 States In June Where He Spent $16 Million In Ads
• Carpetbagger, No attack too vile — McCain goes after Obama’s Holocaust remarks

• Carpetbagger, McCain’s confusion on Iraq goes from embarrassing to scandalous; see also Crooks & Liars, McCain Falsely Credits The Surge For Catalyzing Anbar Awakening
• Even Howie Kurtz — Howie Kurtz??? — is piling on, see Is McCain's Age Showing? Tongues Wag Over Flubs
• Via the Carpetbagger, McCain seems to have found a new issue with which to hang himself: Time to start rationing veterans’ healthcare?
• TampaBay.com, FL Poll: Obama 46%; McCain 45%. Even Florida? Weren't we supposed to be one of the states where only Clinton had a chance?
• Another day, another gaffe: HuffPo, Anbar Shiek Cited By McCain Was Assassinated Last Year
• ThinkProgress, After Touting Drilling’s ‘Safety,’ McCain Cancels Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig Event Because Of The ‘Weather’
• OK, this one is really too funny: TPM, Annals of Questionable Messaging
• Daily Kos, McCain deserves more media coverage: complete with top ten stories we should here more about.
• Jason Furman, McCain's tax plans don't add up
• Bad luck: McCain was going to do a photo-op on an oil rig to demonstrate his call for more drilling offshore — it's so safe, you know — but then had to call it off due to 'weather'…or maybe this: Spill Contaminates Water Supply Before McCain Oil Rig Visit
• MSNBC, McCain questions speech, forgets Canada: McCain attacks Obama for speaking in Germany (“I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States,” apparently forgetting his own political speech in Canada a short time ago.)

The McCain electoral strategy is coming into focus: they figure their only hope is to get American to think that a dark-skinned Democrat must be a terrorist. Why else highlight letters that spell out something like “Al-Qaeda Commentary” over a picture of Sen. Obama? (The full video is the McCain site under “Obama on Iraq”.

Subliminal ads are nothing new for the GOP (see for example Subliminal Seduction, GOP Style). And the guy making McCain's commercials? He's the guy who did the famous “RATS” commercial for Bush. (For details see here and here.)

I think McCain's 'tell' — the sign he is prevaricating — is when he blinks a lot. Just watch any video on YouTube and judge for yourself. (Hmm. Turns out I'm not the only one to notice this. See, for example, Matthew Yglesias.)

This hypothesis should be easy to test: Kos, there are just so many falsehoods to pick from.

OK, onwards with this weeks ridiculously long list of quality McCain bashing:

• Carpetbagger, McCain, his personal life, and statements ‘that conflict with the public record’
• Think Progress, After Voting Against Equal Pay Legislation, McCain Claims He’s ‘Committed To Equal Pay For Equal Work’
• Another issue that could hurt McCain with women: apparently, polling shows John McCain's votes against insurance coverage for birth control have tremendous resonance with women, including independents and Republicans. Thus, this ad from Planned Parenthood:

• Carpetbagger, McCain unsure of ‘the progress,’ ‘the nature,’ and ‘the significance’ of the Iranian threat
• Kos, McCain camp flashing the greenbacks
• TaxProf Blog, Why Hasn't McCain Reported His Gambling Gains and Losses on His Tax Returns?
• Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, The New Republic, McContradiction
• Kos, The McMyth; similarly, Crooks & Liars, McCain, his personal life, and statements ‘that conflict with the public record’
• Delong, McCain: Phil Gramm and Fred Malek
• Crooks & Liars, McCain Campaign (NOT Secret Service) Had “Bush=McCain” Protestor Removed
• NY Times, Editorial, There He Goes Again (“Mr. McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot.”)
• Dale Carpenter of the Volokh Conspiracy says McCain's latest stance on adoption by gay parents is Thoughtless. Worse than that, it has created, McCain's Perez Hilton Problem (per HuffPo)
• Crooks & Liars, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) goes blank trying to find differences between McCain and Bush’s economic policies.
• HuffPo, McCain Aide Calls For Fully Funded No Child Left Behind, Which McCain Voted Against
• Crooks & Liars, Introducing Wrong-Way McCain
• Kos, John McCain's Immigration Flip-Flop
• Carpetbagger, So much for the ‘respectful campaign’ (“McCain’s campaign has said Obama should not be “taken at his word,” and his “word cannot be trusted.” McCain was asked directly whether he questioned Obama’s patriotism, and McCain wouldn’t give a straight answer. Today, it seems as if the McCain campaign has kicked things up a notch, arguing that Obama and Democrats want to see the U.S. fail in Iraq in order to benefit politically.”) Cf. Talking Points Memo, McCain Camp: Obama Wants U.S. to Lose in Iraq
• Carpetbagger, Note to McCain: Czechoslovakia doesn’t exist anymore
• McCain Starts Stomping in Home State — because polls show he can't count on carrying Arizona!
• MyDD, John McCain's DREAM Act Flip: first he was for it, then he was against it, now he's for it again — it depends on the audience? See also Democrats.org, McCain versus McCain on the DREAM Act and Carpetbagger, Will the ‘Dream Act’ be a nightmare for McCain?
• Firedoglake, Bush & McCain On The Economy, Gas Prices: Psychic Friends
• Another sure-fire vote getter with women: Crooks & Liars, Did you hear John McCain’s Woman/Rape/Gorilla Joke? & ThinkProgress,Flashback: McCain joked about how much women love to be raped. OK, it was in 1986 — but didn't you know better than that in 1986? And, in Beaten Senseless, Atrios notes just how horrible it all is:
  

  The thing about the McCain rape joke is that it isn't just horrible because it's a a joke about a woman liking rape, it's about a woman who is explicitly beaten senseless until she becomes unconscious and raped and she enjoyed the experience.

• Does John McCain's sick sense of humor matter?
• While we're doing ancient history, how about Crooks & Liars, Flashback: McCain Admits He’s Dumber Than Bush? The serious point here isn't that McCain was a feckless privileged youth, but rather than all these years later he still likes to glory in his anti-intellectualism. Wouldn't it be nice to have another President who thought brains (and facts!) were a good thing?
• Talking Points Memo, McCain Now Playing Catch-Up On Afghanistan
• Carpetbagger, McCain still sees success in ’surge’
• Mark Kleiman, “McCain says: “Slash Social Security benefits”
• He may think Social Security is “a disgrace”. He may be married to a multi-millionaire, but John McCain, 72, is receiving Social Security benefits
• Mark Kleiman again, Al Hunt hammers McCain
• Huffpo, Reporters Spar With McCain Press Aides Nicolle Wallace, Brooke Buchanan (VIDEO). Now, this is a pretty trivial event, except for two things: first, the journalists who got mad about the McCain campaign's attempt to totally control them were from a FOX affiliate—if even FOX is getting bolshie with a Republican, well, you're doing something odd. Second, these guys were local, experienced, journalists. What odds will you give that the national guys are tamer poodles?
• Crooks & Liars has an example of the MSM doing its job: ABC reports Absentee Senator: McCain Attended ZERO Afghanistan Hearings Over Past 2 Years
• And finally, for laughs, Lee Stranahan, Awakening Your Inner Elephant:

• The week that should have ended McCain's presidential hopes
  

  During this past week: McCain called the most import entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made – TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

• Crooks and Liars, John McCain: “I hate the bloggers”
• Crooks and Liars, Candidates playing for high stakes (in more ways than one) (McCain's gambling contrasted to Obama's
• Mother Jones, What's John McCain's Technology Policy? Surprise—he doesn't have one. See also, TalkLeft, McCain's Plan to Further Weaken a Struggling Economy
• Carpetbagger, When a candidate unveils an economic plan — without any numbers
  

  And here we are, just four months from Election Day, and McCain is presenting a bizarre economic plan, which doesn’t make any sense on its face, and which also lacks any and all support from the campaign itself. Knowing we might look at the numbers to see if they add up, the McCain campaign decided not to include any numbers.

  There’s a $410 billion budget deficit, which McCain will eliminate in his first term. How? He just will. He wants to cut taxes by about a trillion dollars. How can we afford it? We just can. McCain realizes the value of the dollar is down, and he’s committed to reversing this. How? He just will.

  I’ve seen more details from candidates running for student government.”)

  See also DeLong, John McCain Leaves Budget Reality Far Behind… & DeLong's esprit d'escalier at John McCain: The Budget Policy of an Underpants Gnome!. And for cleanup, the Carpetbagger Report again, On 'saving' Social Security, Obama and McCain do more than just ‘diverge’, which explains who McCain's non-math can't possibly add up unless you do terrible things.

• TalkLeft, Librarian Booted From McCain Event in Denver. They threw out a 61-year old librarian from a public meeting for carrying a sign saying the most evil thing you can imagine: “McCain = Bush”. Yes, it's the Bush Bubble all over again. See the movie. Plus she gets her 6:08 minutes of fame on MS-NBC:

• Carpetbagger, McCain falsely accuses Obama of having ‘changed his mind’ on Iraq
• McCain on Rights of the Disabled (he's against increasing them)
• Might be time to revist the Carpetbagger's McCain Flip-flop list … over 60 and counting…
• McCain staff hiding from hard questions
• Kos, If You Think McCain's Campaign Is a Mess … just imagine what his White House would look like.
• Crooks & Liars, McCain Gets Testy With Vet Over GI Bill

• MotherJones Blog, John McCain Thinks Social Security Is A “Disgrace” (also more at Carpetbagger Report, John McCain labels the Social Security system a ‘total disgrace’)
• Crooks & Liars, John McCain Makes Another Crude Joke About Killing Iranians
• Washington Times, McCain adviser talks of 'mental recession'…see, those high prices and lost jobs, those are all in your head. And then, the followup: HuffPo, McCain Campaign Initially Stood By Gramm Remarks
• Jake Tapper, ABC, Defensive McCain Campaign Emails Out Youtube Clip of McCain Bashing Own Economic Adviser
• Oh-oh, It's another McCain moment — can't he keep any stories straight?
• RuralVotes.com, Flashback: McCain Also Clueless, Out-of-Touch About Condoms & STDs