October 13th 2008
McCain Hits “Reset;” Is It Enough?
J
ohn McCain launches this critical week of campaigning – a week that brings us the final debate – with a new campaign speech in hand, a speech he says hits the reset button for his campaign.
Does it? Will it be enough?
I can’t answer. I haven’t heard the speech, but I have seen excerpts of it in a Politico article that decides the speech isn’t the reset that was hit, but the panic button. Here’s what we can glean from the speech from that source:
“The national media has written us off. Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”
This tactic has worked well before. Americans are not big fans of arrogance. But McCain is going to have to explain to the American people how the Dems are conspiring to raise taxes when Obama promises to cut taxes for 95% of us. There is an easy explanation – how else will he pay for $700 billion in new spending programs? – but McCain hasn’t made it yet.
Hopefully the Obama-Pelosi-Reid connection will be further exploited in the speech. The people should think long and hard before handing the entire federal government over to the Dems. Congress’ approval ratings are so low there’s plenty to exploit here.
“Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We’re six points down. …
“What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.”
Ugh. I don’t want any more talk for McCain about how tough he is if he can’t match it with tough actions and visionary plans for dealing with America’s woes. The fighter angle’s a non-starter because we’ve heard too much already about McCain’s fighting spirit, but haven’t seen that spirit since he crawled back from sure primary defeat – and that was a long time ago. Since then, we’ve seen him check out on the economy by quietly accepting the $700 billion bail-out package, and check out on health care, as he tries half-heartedly to defend a program neither he nor we understand.
The fighter was cool when Iraq was the main issue; it’s not so cool now. And as for the real fighting, he has to convince us he’s not fixated on Iraq. He should demand, as Obama does, that Iraq start footing more of the bill. And he should level Obama on Afghanistan, saying the obvious: The only reason why the Taliban is on the rise there is because we whipped jihadist butt in Iraq, and they’ve gone back to their caves. He should play up the recent resurgence to convince us that the war on terror is real and isn’t going anywhere, and that Obama is not the one to continue the fight.
McCain needs to show he’s a fighter, not say he’s a fighter. We’re waiting and we’re hopeful he’ll deliver somewhere in this speech, as CNN hints it will:
“The theme is the new direction that Sen. McCain will take the country through his specific plans for creating jobs, helping those nearing retirement, keeping people in their homes and curbing spending,” the aide said.
McCain’s speech comes the same day that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is laying out his economic rescue plan for the middle class.
The Republican presidential candidate will “speak directly to people’s fears and worries about the state of our economy and the other challenges we face,” the aide said.
Speaking to the fears and worries is fine, but if Obama rolls out one of his patented multi-point plans, which he always makes clear on the surface at least, and McCain is just speaking of fears and worries, without laying out a powerful alternate vision of his own and showing the fallacies of Obama’s, then it will be time to hit the panic button.
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October 13th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
McCain hopes to harness an ugly, slavering beast comprised of far-right paranoia, hatred, fear, prejudice, and ignorance, and ride it to victory, but now he is starting realize that many Americans dislike his substitution of slander for an actual discussion of the issues.His zig-zagging on slandering Obama is just one more example of his increasingly erratic behavior and poor judgment, and yet more proof that he has completely lost his moral center–the result of selling his soul to the Karl Rove faction of the Republican party. He is retracting some of his slanders, not because he has repented of them, but because he sees that they have backfired by alienating the undecided voters that he needs if he is to have any hope of winning.McCain’s claim to be a ‘maverick’ are absurd-he has voted with Bush 90% of the time, has over 80 lobbyists on his staff, and has elected to veer to the far right in his campaign, to the point of taking advice from Karl Rove. A better description would indeed be erratic, as he claims Obama would raise taxes more than he would one moment, and then the next moment comes up his very own $300,000,000 pork-barrel give-away program to people who borrowed money they couldn’t possibly pay back. Every McCain speech gives us a different John McCain-an alarming prospect in a President.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
What slanders, Ben? Give me more than words. Obama does associate with a terrorist. What is untrue about that? How many lobbyists does Obama have on his staff? How much did Obama take from the investment bankers? What about Johnson? How can Obama cut taxes for 95% of Americans when only 70% of Americans pay taxes? How about the people at the Obama rally today wearing their “Palin is a C***” T-shirts, and the earlier “Bros not Hos” t-shirts?