Posted on 09/29/2008 10:01:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
John McCain isn't dead in the water. But he sure is dying. He lost the debate and the polls are dismal. Gallup has him down 50-42. Rasmussen has Obama ahead 50-44. And both polls are only partially after the debate. Obama won the debate. When the polls come in fully after the debate, the picture won't get any prettier for those of us who favor McCain.
His gambit of suspending his campaign and going to Washington has failed because he did not think it through adequately or correlate it with what was happening in Congress. The Republicans teed up a perfect shot for him. He took the bat but went back to the dugout without even swinging. McCain should have gone into the debate challenging Obama on his $700 billion taxpayer bailout of financial institutions. He should have pushed the Republican alternative. He could have said, plain and simple, that Obama wants to make Americans pay for $700 billion in bad mortgages and McCain wants to make businesses pay for their own bailout through loans and insurance premiums. It would have been a straight shot. But McCain copped out and mumbled something about the deal being the "end of the beginning" and said he hoped to vote for the bailout. It was a failure that may have cost him his best shot at the presidency.
But not his only shot. McCain can still win.
He needs to deploy the tax issue. His campaign has to stop the scattershot web ads and focus instead on a sustained attack on Obama's plans for tax increases. Stop the pinpricks and go for the jugular. It is only through the tax issue that McCain can win this campaign.
Voters understand that our economy is vulnerable and teetering on the brink of a black hole. McCain needs to capitalize on this new sense of vulnerability and hammer away at the Obama tax proposals. He needs to say that our system is starving for capital. Raising capital gains taxes, much less doubling it as Obama proposed during the primaries (but now is trying to backtrack), is like taxing water in the desert. McCain has to talk about Obama's spending proposals and mock the idea that he can spend a trillion and still give "95% of Americans" a tax increase.
McCain should take a page out of the playbook of the endgame of the Bush 1992 campaign. With Bill Clinton holding a solid lead, Bush was reluctant to attack him for his record of tax increases, especially given his violation of his 1988 "read my lips" pledge not to raise taxes. So the campaign sent Vice President Dan Quayle out to attack Clinton, day after day, for raising taxes. And the results were clear in the polls. Bush gained each day and, four days before Election Day, Bush took a lead over Clinton in the tracking polls. Clinton was saved by the announcement by Iran Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh that he was planning to indict Cap Weinberger, Bush's Defense Secretary. Clinton surged ahead and won the election. But the tax issue had almost reversed his lead in the polls.
If McCain pounds away at taxes, taxes, taxes he can still win this election. By tying the Obama tax plans to the possibility of massive depression, he can pull this out.
Remember: Whenever we raised taxes amidst a downturn, we triggered a massive falloff. It was the tax increases of the early 30s that worsened the Great Depression and it was Bush's 1990 tax increase that created the 1991 recession that cost him his job. America understands that we can't raise taxes now. American grasps that Obama will not just raise taxes on a handful of rich people but will raise them on everybody. And we understand that Obama has no real answer to this charge. McCain just needs to begin to make this central attack his campaign theme from now on.
go suck toes, Dickie....you're a tool.
He is saying stop reaching across the aisle, My Friend, and clobber 0bama over taxes.
He also said grab the Republicans plan and Drill Obubba with it!
Dick talks a good talk, but I’ve noticed over the years that he’s usually wrong in his predictions, more often than not! I seem to remember him predicting that W didn’t have much of a chance in 2004 (probably saw him on Hannity) due to Kerry’s popularity and look what happened.
Hey, maybe his talent is predicting the OPPOSITE of what is actually going on. If so, then this is spot on! /sarc
I think Morris is right, the Youtube stuff is fine, but after awhile, you have to get serious, enough with the under the radar campaign.
Obama is hanging there waiting to be busted like a pinata on Cap Gains taxes, McCain is dicking around to much.
I do like putting Gov Palin on talk radio, that is a good start, but it is not enough, but Obama’s hand on everyone’s wallets and in their gun cabinets and things will improve.
If I recall correctly, Clinton was saved by Ross Perot. Of course, Iran-Contra didn't help.
Drill Obubba. Drill Here and Drill Now!
Raising capital gains taxes, much less doubling it as Obama proposed during the primaries (but now is trying to backtrack), is like taxing water in the desert.
Regain the offensive, starting with Gov Palin on Thurs, and hammer both Obama and Biden as tax and spend liberals. Make them defend it.
Because they can’t.
Morris is right on the money. McCain blew the trip to Washington. We all know it. He also may have won the second half of the debate but for the independents he did not win them over. McCain had opportunity after opportunity. He could’ve brought up the bill he sponsored to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He could’ve did so much and on the economic question which I’m sure everyone agrees is the important question right at this moment he failed. Not in my eyes but in the eyes of the body nonpolitic. We need someone to talk to McCain and tell him to get with it. Letting the Democrats be out there attacking and attacking getting away with murder is stupid. He should’ve learned from Bush. You can not play the game that way and win long term. The pity vote isn’t big enough.
McCain is putting what he believes is good for the country ahead of political expediency. As a guy who worked for both Bill Clinton and Trent Lott it’s probably a foreign concept to Dick.
Governor Palin is *ahem* rather more effective than Dan Quayle (God Bless him, btw). McCain needs to set Governr Palin free to do to Obama what Jesse Jackson said he wanted to do...Unleash the Pit Bull!
Dick is right on this. I don’t think the polls are going to get much worse though. That is one disagreement. I imagine the GOP may end up showing an up tick in party id for opposing this bailout. McCain needs to get with it. Getting in and then getting out was a waste. Why in the hell did go to Washington? To volunteer as a pinata? I’m telling you he has regressed back into his Senator mode and he needs to start thinking strategically. What is best for this country is not what Bush is saying and he needs to cut his ties with Bush no matter how much he likes him now. Bush and Paulson put together a stupid plan.
Gov Palin should be out shoring up the Conservatives and Values Voters, she can do that no matter what the debate looks like and it can only help.
Liberals and Media will always despise her so why not send her to “us” and buck us up a bit?
Make your friends stronger as it were.
Dick Morris: he has politics covered from head to toe!
(Thank you I’ll be here all week.)
McCain lost this when he:
1) Put Palin on a few MSM shows rather than numerous talk radio and local TV shows (face it: she brings the base while he brings the moderates, they are running her like she needs to appeal to the moderates...total wasted effort)
2) Focused on earmarks exclusively and failed to hammer the $700B in proposed spending by Congress on a Wall Street bailout.
That is part of it, McCain does not graps base politics though, it eludes him IMO.
Cutesy stuff with Katie Couric means nothing to “us”, a couple of columns at NRO and Townhall or FRepublic would do far far more then a lukewarm interview on C..BS...
Palin should be the Ambassador to Conservatives, not a joint appearance on the Nightly News followed by a cloister in AZ..
Heck yeah, Gov Palin rocks on offense. Let her do her thing. Make Biden explain his own favorable comments about McCain, and defend his own critiques of Obama. Make Biden defend his own tax and spend legacy, his own plagiarism. You’re right, the left hates her no matter what - but the thing is, they hate her primarily because she’s so good on offense; they hate her because they fear her. Unleash the Pit Bull!
Then Obama replies that his tax “cuts” are for the 95% of Americans who ‘didn’t create this mess’ or whatever.
Basically McCain has to call out Obama as being full of crap. Not that I disagree with that assessment, but I’m not sure this is as clear cut as Morris makes it out to be. Obama’s been relatively undefined up to this point. McCain needs to make him prove that he’s not some kind of radical and naive trojan horse for extreme left wing crap.
McCain likes to rail against Wall Street and talk about taking on the ‘Washington crowd’, but he needs to tie it all together. The Dems and their support of Fannie and Freddie is the obvious target. Obviously, ‘Main Street’ America is fed up with this crap. Even when faced with everyone and their dog in DC proclaiming that their investments are about to hit the crapper because of this “crisis”, Americans called their bluff. Americans are ticked off at the lack of accountability in DC and NYC. McCain’s campaign has been all about accountability and reform. I think Bush’s greatest PR problem has been that he is perceived as being perfectly happy with good ol’ timey crony government and business. McCain should take this on full bore. He’s been the one who has taken on any and everyone who he feels has not served the public interest.
The problem is, McCain is in favor of the bailout. The bailout is seen as yet another example of Main Street getting screwed over by Wall Street and DC.
Maybe the path is simple. People know John McCain. They really don’t know Barack Obama. Who can you trust at this moment in history? The old, grizzled patriot who spent 5 years in a Vietnamese hellhole or the young, smooth talking cipher without a history and with a lot of questions?
McCain needs to play up and not shy away from his disagreements with the Washington establishment, and that begins with Bush.
Obama as a big government, tax and spender is not a bad course to take, but I don’t think it’s the miracle cure. With McCain’s ties to the party with an unpopular president in power, he has to sell himself as the real deal, the steady hand you want at the helm in the moment of crisis, rather than the unknown who could turn out to be a rabid ideologue who will impose his radical views on America if given the chance with a complicit Congress.
And for God sakes, take on Pelosi, Frank, Reid, and Schumer, by name. Run against the incompetent, foolhardy Congressional Democrats who got us into this mess. Screw the phony marshmellow bipartisanship.
Bush as a 30% approval rating and Congress has a 10% approval rating. Run against both.
Exactly, throw us a bone out here!
I think McCain does not understand synergistic movement, supposedly McCain has 90% of Republican support, I tend to question that as the spread 50-42% would include Republicans.
Let Gov Palin write a column here or on Townhall on Obama’s attempt to have those NRA commercials pulled, the reaction would be tremendous and it would take very little time for her to write it.
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