Posted on 12/12/2008 8:05:43 PM PST by ConservativeJen
John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected.
Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had -- reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory sermons, and believed they were fair game and a silver bullet against Obama. An outside group did air one such ad in the closing days of the race.
"I said 'Look, if f we do win we’ll win with about 273 electoral votes and we’ll lose the popular vote by 3 million,'" recalled McInturff of the internal discussions about cutting attack ads with Wright. "If [McCain] had used that issue that way, you’d already be delegitimized as a president. You couldn’t function as government."
McInturff also said that McCain's burden in the final days was to close the gap with young voters and Latino voters.
"John [barred Wright attacks] for instinctively all the right reasons," McInturff said. But "anybody who believed that his issue would have affected the groups we were losing by those margins had never talked to anybody in any of those subgroups about how they felt about those issues."
McInturff also praised campaign manger Rick Davis for resisting the "enormous pressure" from the Republican Party to attack on the Wright issue.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe concurred that, by the fall, Wright was not the toxic issue some thought.
"Voters had digested Reverend Wright, and it gave some of them indigestion -- I don’t want to minimize it," Plouffe said. "People had seen the tapes, they had talked about it a lot," he said, dismissing the notion that it could have changed the game in the final days.
Plouffe did concede an early failure to understand the power of Wright's sermons.
"We failed as a campaign to do the proper research there," he said. "We hadn’t done as thorough research, looked through every tape of every sermon," he said, saying the "ferocity" of the tapes' appearance on the scene "took us by surprise."
"It was a moment of great peril," Plouffe said of the day the story broke in the spring.
Chief strategist David Axelrod chimed in with a story about receiving the text of Obama's speech on his Blackberry early in the morning he would deliver it.
"I spooled through the speech and I got to the end of it and I emailed him back and said, 'This is why you should be president.'"
And then they decided not to do it.
Who ‘was’ John McCain?
buh bye McCain!
conservativism wins every time.
but mccain was not a conservative.
'Look, if we do win we’ll win with about 273 electoral votes and we’ll lose the popular vote by 3 million,'
Sorry, what we didn't need was 4 more years of Soros and his minions whining about the Electoral College. Either way, we were screwed with McCain at the top of the ticket.
Don’t care if it works, tell the truth, all of it, and some day it will work.
Hey McCain, attacking a nasty, rabid, evil racist like Wright is NOT racist. It's anti-racist.
McCain is just bloody nuts. He deserved to lose.
The slim chance McCain had went down the toilet when Paulson and Bernie visited congress with the ‘sky is falling’ presentation. It was an October surprise like no other.
Had McCain campaign been able to translate Ayers into a Mcveigh like figure, it would have helped.
Not worth arguing....Mc was a weak candidate.
Soros?
Who is he?
And why should I care if he whines if we win the electoral votes and lose the popular vote? He will be the one developing heart attack, and getting sleepless nights, not me. He's been whining about that since 2000 about Florida, and I still sleep very well at night.
Forget it.
Once McCain went back to autopilot and instinctively attacked EVERY conservative that was trying fire up the base to help him...it was over.
Sara gave him one last chance, but he gave it back by voting for the $700B bailout.
McCain is truly a feckless man.
I talked to several swing voters who were upset by Obama’s connection to Wright (and planned to vote for McCain partially because of this issue), but were even more upset by McCain’s choice of Palin and switched back to Obama after that. Rightly or wrongly they saw her as also religiously extreme—to a lesser extent than Wright, but obviously closer to the ticket. I’m not sure advertisements featuring Wright would have picked up many votes for McCain, though it might have encouraged a few Obama supporters to stay home.
I think the real point wasn’t just Wright, but the totality of strange connections Obama had: Rezko, Wright, Ayers/Dohrn , Pfleger, and ACORN. Odd company for a Messiah to keep though the McCain camp never pointed it out. Add now to that mix Blagojevich to Obama’s peculiar menagerie of chums.
He was the guy who lost the the illegal alien who was married to the lady who hates America.
Actually, McCain needed to do two very important things immediately. The first was to denounce/renounce McCain Feingold as a mistaken, fascistic piece of bizarre legislation ~ . The second was to renounce fascist legislative techniques (and we could go all day on what that means, but, in general, it means hitting people on the head with abusive laws to prevent them from doing stuff they aren't going to do anyway).
Once he'd got that straight, McCain needed to pick up on the social issues.
Many think he's ignorant of them ~ or that he's like Colin Powell, simply an abusive personality type.
He could have actually gotten some of those social issues voters in California who told the gays to go stuff it.
McNasty was not LIKEABLE and too old.
You nailed it. Whatever slim chance he had was blown on the 2nd question of the 1st debate: “Do you support the bailout?” Instead of giving a cogent answer, he went on some diatribe about Wall Street.
At that point, he showed he was totally clueless in an economic crisis. He sucked, he lost. End of story.
McCain Feingold - was that the name of the $850 million club that Obama used to beat him heavily around the head and shoulders?
That proves, BTW, that you are easily led by your Leftwingtard masters.
She's no more religious than anyone else, and it was her parents who were into Holy Roller stuff, as are tens of millions of people.
Good grief, I even know some of 'em, and I'll bet you don't.
Currently she attends services at a couple of non-denominational "community churches" (according to the latest info on the net).
Given the foregoing, I don't believe you ever met anyone who thought Palin was actually "too religious" ~ you've just made that up please Colin Powell.
Next time you see him give him a message from me ~ it's obscene ~ I know you can do it, so make it juicy, OK!
McCain is bad history. I am sick and tired of hearing about him and how bad his campaign was. Yes it was terrible, awful, and I say good riddance McCain. We need to stop looking back and look forward to those who will bring us back, Palin, Sanford and others.
BTW, that Feingold puke? He and that other Senator from Wisconsin are in the Obamaista camp ~ full, true believers.
Obviously neither of them advised Obama to take government money eh!
Time for McCain to resign so Arizona can have a Republican Senator.
Gee, I thought the purpose of the exercise was to win the election. I wish McCain had told us yokels beforehand how he felt about only wanting to win ‘his way’.
I never said I believed she was religiously extreme, but many people did. I do think she was more religious than McCain, Obama, and Clinton (none of whom seems particularly religious at all) and probably Bush, but this certainly isn’t a problem for me.
However I go to a law school in the Northeast—do you really doubt that I’ve met people who consider Palin “too religious”?
I also grew up in an evangelical/Calvinist family and go to a similar church, and many of my friends growing up were fundamentalists and even charismatics, so I’ve certainly known plenty of very religious people. I certainly have no bias against them, though I do have a problem with the degree to which religious language has been brought into Republican rhetoric—often replacing traditional free-market arguments—in recent years.
and McCain never used the “Whitey” tape... can’t say how disappointed I am about that one...
I am sick and tired of this PC stuff. I could almost lash out with profanity.
I am a White Male. If I had shady friends and a racist minister, I would be judged for it in the public eye if I tried to run for office. Why not apply the same standards to all people ?
McCain was a weak little pussy. That is what it amounts too.
Or even Teddy Roosevelt's stuff.
BTW, people who go out of their way to even mention someone's religosity, as in "He's too religious" are really strange people. It happens so rarely I only recall it happening once. Ol'gal at work said something about "people who try to force their religion off on others" as a way to support her pro-abortion arguments. You probably ran into one of those people.
More recently I encountered another pro-abortion type who actually screamed about Palin being like a praying mantis. I tried to coax her over into a full hissy fit where maybe she'd die of apoplexy, but she was too slick and ran off. That was at the doctor's office so I suppose she suspected she was sick.
What do you know about Palin’s religious beliefs ? Be honest ?
I never heard her talk about religion much during the campaign.
Sorry, what we didn't need was 4 more years of Soros and his minions whining about the Electoral College.You're right, what we're in for now is going to be so much better. < /sarcasm >
She goes to a church that can be considered evangelical, which is more than you can say for the other people I mentioned.
You’re right, they’re generally socially liberal. They’re really complaining about her social conservatism, but they associate it with her religious beliefs (I can’t imagine they would care as much if she were strongly religious but still socially moderate—if that’s really possible) and complain about both.
All I did was relate my experience with a few people from a group most Freepers seem to rarely encounter--educated socially liberal moderates--to suggest some ads might have been less successful than many here believe. In response, you not only ascribe their beliefs about Palin to me, suggest I believe my "Leftwingtard masters" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean), and suggest I lack religion or even knowledge about religious people, you suggest I lied about even knowing the people I described (who include a relative and very good friends of mine).
Not only are your accusations wrong, you had virtually no basis for making them from my post.
if going to church makes you too religious to be President.
this country mywell just pack it in. fold up the tent.
Who said going to church makes her too religious?
As I said, my friends assumed that she’s religiously extreme because she’s socially very conservative (and presents a very socially conservative image) and many people tend to associate the two. In reality they’re real problem is with her social conservatism, though, not the fact that she goes to an evangelical church.
Given the foregoing, I don't believe you ever met anyone who thought Palin was actually "too religious" ~ you've just made that up please Colin Powell.I met people who were concerned about her religion, too. I never did bother to get the details (I try to keep conversations with certain people as short as possible). It had something to do with some video of her and an African preacher doing some ritual to protect her from witchcraft or something. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but I didn't expect it to, considering the source.
I knew some people that were like you described, and they were either social moderates, or hispanics. Neither group voted strongly for McCain.
Many of the people I knew didn’t vote. They didn’t view McCain as a true conservative, and didn’t think there was much difference between the two candidates. I doubt the Wright tapes would have changed their mind. They already didn’t like Obama. The problem was that they didn’t like McCain either, and Jeremiah wright wasn’t going to change that.
I really hate it when my strategies are better than those of the highly paid experts.
Wright should have been used after Obama wrapped up the nomination. Not, as McInturff seems to be indicating, to close the gap at the end of the campaign.
Had they effectively used Wright after both tickets were set, there wouldn’t have been a gap to close by November, the October economic implosion notwithstanding.
Not using Wright was exactly the same as McCain’s not letting anyone associated with him use Obama’s middle name. The Obama team took full advantage of McCain’s concern about even appearing racist/xenophobic.
So, it is because she is pro life ?
That’s probably the biggest issue. Isn’t she against allowing it even in cases of rape? That’s definitely to the right of even most Republicans. McCain certainly didn’t invoke the same reactions even though he’s pro-life.
yeah...
I agree. abortion was a big issue.
Whites are morbidly afraid of being called a racist. They don’t want to be viewed as oppressors. White racial pride is forbidden while minority supremacy is embraced. But hey, it’s a tough world and we have to be tough to fight for truth.
This moron still thinks McCain’s need in the last days was to get Latino and young voters?
Wake up and smell the stupidity.
ping for later
I appreciate your insight into your liberal relatives and friends.
What I will never understand is why Sarah Palin is considered a religious extremist by the left, but a guy who goes to a hate-America church is not a religious extremist?
Guess I answered my own question - liberals hate America and that’s not extremism.
Did you ask your lib friends why it’s ok to go to Jeremiah Wright’s church and vote for a guy who doesn’t even go to church now but goes to the gym instead?
As I mentioned, they were no fans of Wright and were ready to vote against Obama largely for that reason. But they were also upset by Palin’s social conservatism (and I can understand why someone socially moderate or liberal would be very upset by her position on abortion, which is well to the right of even many Republicans) and she was obviously far more important to the Republican ticket than Wright was to the Democratic ticket.
Did any of you see McCain on letterman last night? Before he came out, letterman cracked a really mean joke about sarah...John came out, of course didn’t say a word to david about it and only mentioned Sarah by saying, “Yeah, we’ve discussed my VP selection repeatedly, let’s not go there now.” Then he laughed and maybe I’m reading more into it than was there, but, I took it to mean, “Yeah, I’ve pretty well come around to your way of thinking.”
...and isn't it ironic that obama has now said he is using his full name when he is sworn in? What say you now McCain?
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