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.
McCain’s campaign car is in the ditch, the wheels are spinning, but he isn’t going anywhere. He’s just gunning the motor. He isn’t going to admit he drove into the ditch.
Today McCain reminded me of Bob Dole—not the Senator, but the Presidential Candidate. Not a good thing, for you young folks.
My new name McCain is McCobain (after Kurt Cobain). He comitted political suicide and shot himself in the political head. He’s done.
Suspending the campaign was loading the shotgun. Supported a $700 billion bail was the blow to the head. He can not and should not recover from this. He lost my vote today (I though about voting for Bob Barr but someone here convinced me it was not a good idea. I think I’ll write in Mike Pence or Thaddeus McCotter.)
Poor Sarah Palin. What a mistake she made by alligning herself with this fool. I just pray she doens’t go back Alaska with her career in ruins after a landslide defeat.
You need a tune up car guy.
Go after, Obamanation, please.
Hit him hard on ALL his lies and gaffes.
Read and weep , its a SET UP by Obama and nancy !
G the defeatist circle jerk has their own thread. Just use the search box. Just so you know.
Hey, you don’t have to convince me. Thinking McCain is ineffective doesn’t mean I like that reptile Pelosi.
I’ve been reading these discussions about McCain tonight and I am getting really depressed and frustrated. I’m depressed most b/c I LOVE Sarah Palin and the future she brings to conservatives (notice I do not say Republicans) and I feel like his chances of winning this thing are going down the tubes.
Dick Morris, Karl Rove, and Newt are all right on with what McCain has to do. He blew it on Friday, but still can recover if he would just get behind the House GOP and help to craft and support a better bill that the American people want. No more of this vague crap like I saw in his statement earlier today. Go for the knock out, just attack Obama on his checkered past associations, his outrageous tax increases that no one wants, and continue to distance himself from Bush. This has been set up so perfectly. Please don’t blow it John, I have not always been you’re biggest fan, but I cannot stand the thought of Obama for 4+ years. Plus, I want Sarah in there by your side, ready to lead us in 4-8 years. Please don’t screw this up!!!
Let’s listen carefully to what Dick says . . . and do the opposite. Because Dick is always, always wrong.
I knew that vote was a scam. The entire SF bay nutters voted against the bill !
I have no proof of this, but I bet her stupid, STUPID comments simply prodded the little voice in the Republicans' heads to say "I TOLD you so!" and they decided to vote against.
It astonishes me that the Libs in the press manage to damn Bush for bailing out "the fat cats on Wall Street" AND damn the Republicans for NOT bailing out the same without missing a breath--AND they don't even point out that Barney Frank is at the heart of this whole thing, yet he is being spun as the savior of the middle class. When his only concern is the poor who vote (and, of course, his gay constituents in my home state).
What a mess this thing is, but I am so glad the Republicans are, at the very least, putting the breaks on this unbelivable powergrab by the very people who caused this disaster.
I think McCain should start hammering with the word
TRUST
and I think he should stop talking so much about “earmarks” because the word itself sounds so “inside Washington”. . .
better to use regular people words like needless spending or waste or something.
Morris is right.
I can smell it and I can see the fear on the faces of folks I respect in the media.
McCain better get on it and go negative and quit talking about how great he is.
John...remember South Carolina 2000?
Did you not learn anything when it was done to you?
Don’t be so effing senatorial...they all suck anyhow.
know why you “guys” have a problem with Dick’s article. Although I don’t always agree with him, I think he’s spot on here. Obama bin Biden WILL raise taxes. McCain and Palin need to drum this ENDLESSLY AND the campaign also needs to re-up the attack Obam-uh’s “friends” (Ayers, Rezko, Wright, etc).
I’m not sure what happened, but my post SHOULD have started with:
“I don’t”
John McCain needs to start by not calling all these effen tools on the left his friends. They ain’t interested in seeing him in the White House. Not a single one has said a decent thing about him. They’re either mocking the fact he can’t salute a flag or use a computer, or reminding us he’s got skin cancer.
I like the way you think, or attack, as it were. I would also add his extreme views on abortion into the mix and make him defend those. He can’t. McCain needs to have an energy plan and get off this Climate Change nonsense. Drill on the coasts and in Alaska, more refineries, CNG for transportation, Coal to Diesel and Nuclear Recyclers. Make the Rats and Obama flip-flop to our side or force them to take an unpopular position. He needs to remind voters of the legislation he sponsored that might have prevented this crisis.
He needs to cling to allies in the House. They need to come up with a different plan and throw it into the rat’s faces. He should bailout on the bailout ASAP. He needs to remind Americans what the economy was like before they gave the House and Senate to the Rats. He needs to fight, and fight now, and unleash Sarah Palin. What the hell is he waiting for?
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