McCain Keeps Advantage Over Hillary for 2008

Arizona senator John McCain could win the 2008 presidential election in the United States, according to a poll by Zogby International. 52 per cent of respondents would vote for the Republican in a head-to-head contest against Democratic New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In 2000, McCain won seven GOP presidential primaries in the U.S., but retired from the race after eventual nominee George W. Bush became the frontrunner.

Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000, defeating Republican Rick Lazio by 12 per cent. She ruled out a presidential bid in 2004. 37 per cent of respondents would vote for the Democrat, while 11 per cent would back other candidates or remain undecided.

Bush is ineligible for a third term in office. The next presidential election is scheduled for November 2008.

Who would you vote for in a presidential election pitting Republican John McCain versus Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Robert Novak
February 4, 2002

The Ralph Reed affair

WASHINGTON -- About three weeks ago, rookie White House aide Adam Levine went to senior Bush adviser Karl Rove with a strange story. John Weaver, longtime adviser to Sen. John McCain, had encountered him in a Washington bar, said Levine, and told him Rove surreptitiously placed conservative political activist Ralph Reed on the Enron payroll in 1997 to mask his support for George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

According to Levine, Weaver thought of Levine as a McCain-friendly, Democratic producer for MSNBC's "Hardball" program, which he had just left. Two weeks after this encounter the same story that Levine had passed on to Rove was emblazoned in The New York Times, written by their top political reporter. The assumption at the White House: Weaver was the source. "That is absolutely, categorically untrue," Weaver told me. He also definitively denied the conversation reported to Rove by Levine.

snip

Reed and Rove combined to help deliver the crucial South Carolina primary for Bush, and diehard McCain backers such as Weaver are still bitter over their rough tactics.

snip

As for the implication that Reed was drawing $10,000 to $20,000 a month in a hidden, no-show job, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Nov. 16, 1997, reported Enron had hired Reed for a specific purpose. Using Pat Robertson's former right-hand man "as a consultant on grass-roots organizing" in behalf of then Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge's electricity deregulation initiative "stirred talks about the ties to conservative politicians," the Inquirer said.

If the impression given by the Times Jan. 24 is false, that raises the question of who would convey it to political reporter Richard L. Berke. He identified "close associates of Mr. Rove" and "a friend of Mr. Bush" as supplying the information, but how "close" and "friendly" seems dubious. As a reputable journalist, Berke would never describe Weaver that way. The feud between Weaver and Rove, dating from competition as campaign consultants in Texas, is alive and well.

snip

A clear McCain connection to The New York Times article is Berke quoting by name Trevor Potter, identified as a Republican and former Federal Election Commission chairman. Oddly, Berke does not mention that Potter was a lawyer for McCain's presidential campaign. In the Times account, Potter suggests that Enron putting Reed on its payroll "illustrates the close relations between the Bush political world and Enron."

snip

http://tinyurl.com/82hv9

******

Additional cost of Romney gala questioned
Political advisers hold funds raised

By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff | May 4, 2005

snip

The party was held during the Republican National Convention in New York, aboard the USS Intrepid, a World War II aircraft carrier museum on the Hudson River. Four Massachusetts corporations, all with interests on Beacon Hill, underwrote the event.

Murphy's firm, DC Navigators, and a firm in which his close ally, GOP operative John Weaver, is managing director, told the corporations the budget for the party was initially $258,000. Murphy's company and Weaver's firms said after the event, however, that 2,500 guests attended, far more than the 1,500 expected, increasing costs to $395,000.

snip

Murphy and Weaver have been longtime political associates. The two served as chief strategists for the 2000 presidential campaign of US Senator John McCain. Murphy recommended that the Massachusetts Republican Party hire Weaver's firm, New York-based Hession & Associates, to plan the party for Romney.

snip

The sponsors of the event included Fidelity Investments, Massachusetts Mutual Financial Group, and Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., which each donated $100,000 in August, and Raytheon Co., which gave $15,000 that same month.

snip

There is no evidence that Romney was involved in or aware of the details surrounding financing of the event.

http://tinyurl.com/8lx8u

******

Based on the book Bush’s Brain by Texas journalists James C. Moore and Wayne Slater, the film is the latest political salvo in a year crammed full of partisan documentaries.

snip

While its subject is compelling, Bush’s Brain relies on the now-routine formula for political documentaries – hordes of talking heads (Bush’s Brain authors, former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq Joe C. Wilson, McCain campaign staffer John Weaver, Cleland, among many others)

http://tinyurl.com/af66u

******

March 8, 2000
McCAIN'S CHOICE
Should John McCain stay in the Republican party, or go the Reform route? Plenty of his advisers want to go. The motives are various: They're bitter about the way the Bush campaign and the GOP establishment treated them; they think McCain might just be able to win the presidency; they're excited by the idea of it. In the "leave" camp are campaign manager Rick Davis, political director John Weaver, and media strategist Mike Murphy. Campaign chairman Warren Rudman, who has never been deeply committed to the GOP and is quite angry about Pat Robertson's phone calls in Michigan labeling him a "vicious bigot," is probably counseling McCain to go, too. The Republican politicians and former politicians who supported McCain — such as Lindsey Graham, Chuck Hagel, Fred Thompson, and Vin Weber — want him to stay, of course. Adviser Marshall Wittmann is neutral. The big question is where the candidate himself stands. He says he won't run on a third-party line

http://tinyurl.com/dlvld

******

December 12, 2005
Beltway Conservatives Take Second Look at McCain
By Patrick Hynes

A lot has changed since 2000, when Sen. John McCain stuck his thumb in every Republican eye he could find and then lapped up the drippings of approval from a national press corps, prouder than a new puppy on graduation day of obedience school. Not only is John McCain the clear frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, but many beltway conservatives are beginning to accept the inevitability of a McCain-run party.

snip

Meanwhile, McCain’s trusted advisor John Weaver, who was Karl Rove’s arch-nemesis for over a decade before losing their 2000 battle royal, is on the “ins” in Washington again. Weaver had switched parties and had even been retained by former Democrat congressional leader Dick Gephardt. Today, Weaver is a Republican again and meets regularly with Rove and other movement conservatives.

http://tinyurl.com/9wmme

******

Bush's Brain

snip

In 1986, Clements was steadily losing what had been a 35-point lead in the polls. Rove called a press conference in October to declare that he had found a bug in his office, and charged the White campaign with planting it. John Weaver, vice-chair of the Clements campaign, tells the camera he was initially “euphoric,” but then “It began to look fishy to us.” An FBI report said that judging by its battery use, the bug had been in the wall just 15 minutes when it was “discovered,” and today Weaver says he doesn’t think White had anything to do with it.

snip

John Weaver, formerly a coworker of Rove’s in the 1986 Texas governor’s race, was now director of McCain’s campaign—it was “the proudest thing I’ve ever been involved in,” he tells the camera—and found himself opposite the junkyard dog. Fighting Rove “was akin to a thousand tomahawks coming at you” he says; you can only “fend off two or three.”

http://tinyurl.com/b4wf5

******

February 28, 2000 (Vol. Five; No. 34)

McCain Aide Boasted of Media "Base"; Day Trading Will Kill You

1) CBS marveled at how Bush "is the first Republican candidate who’s being held to account for the intolerance and bigotry" of the Christian Right. ABC actually focused on McCain’s dissembling over calls linking Bush to anti-Catholicism.

2) The McCain campaign used their "base," the news media, to tar Bush in Michigan by linking him to Bob Jones and Pat Robertson, a top McCain aide boasted to the Wall Street Journal. CBS claimed Bush’s rhetoric was so "tough it made one McCain supporter cry."

3) The New Republic endorsed McCain because he’s "seeking to remake his party into something other than the political arm of the privileged few," so two parties pushing "the public good."

snip

Jacqueline Adams (CBS Evening News), Adams moved on to explaining how New York Congressman Peter King switched allegiance from Bush to McCain and let King claim that Bush had looked the "other way at a bigoted institution." Wrapping up the story, Adams did at least let Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore denounce the attacks on Bush over Bob Jones as "a smear tactic."

An inconvenient fact Adams and Butts ignored so they could impugn the entire Christian Right:

snip

Over on ABC’s World News Tonight reporter John Yang noted Bush’s regrets about not making clear earlier his disagreements with the college, but then picked up on John McCain’s dissembling about phone calls keying off BJU aimed at turning Catholics against Bush. Yang explained: "First he personally approved calls to Catholic voters in Michigan."

snip

As for whether the phone call was meant to lead recipients to believe Bush is anti-Catholic, judge for yourself. Sunday morning on Meet the Press, in a discussion/yelling match amongst Karl Rove, Warren Rudman, Peter King and David Dreier, moderator Tim Russert played a tape of the entire call:

"This is a Catholic Voter Alert. Governor George Bush has campaigned against Senator John McCain by seeking the support of Southern fundamentalists who have expressed anti-Catholic views. Several weeks ago Governor George Bush spoke at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Bob Jones has made strong anti-Catholic statements, including calling the Pope the anti-Christ and the Catholic Church a satanic cult. John McCain, a pro-life Senator, has strongly criticized this anti-Catholic bigotry, while Governor Bush has stayed silent while gaining the support of Bob Jones University. Because of this, one Catholic pro-life Congressman has switched his support from Bush to McCain, and many Michigan Catholics now support John McCain for President."

http://tinyurl.com/aqqs9

snip

In a February 25 editorial, the Journal admired how the McCain team "turned a potentially fatal defeat in South Carolina into a pyrrhic victory for George W. Bush." The editorial explained:

snip

The Journal proceeded to outline how after Bush’s win McCain’s team decided to try to cause a backlash in Michigan against how Bush won in South Carolina:

"Top aide John Weaver started the Sopranos theme music by telling reporters that, ‘Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are to be congratulated. We don’t know if you can run as a Dixiecrat in Michigan, but we’ll find out.’....The media bought this like a seaside Florida property. After his Iowa comeback, Al Gore got credit for tenacity and toughness. After his New Hampshire upset, Mr. McCain was the fresh-thinking insurgent. But after his rebound in Carolina, Mr. Bush got credit for selling his soul to Pat Robertson."

snip

Picking up on a quote from CBS News reporter Bill Whitaker reported in the February 22 CyberAlert, the Journal observed:

"CBS paid Mr. Weaver the ultimate spin tribute of wholesale theft, ‘reporting’ on Monday that ‘the conservative with compassion had turned hard right down South,’ but that ‘whistling Dixie may not work in Michigan.’"

snip

Speaking of the media as McCain’s "base," more evidence arrived in my mailbox on Saturday: The March 6 edition of The New Republic, the ever more liberal weekly political magazine popular with the national media. The cover features a drawing of Gore and McCain to highlight endorsements of both.

McCain gained the magazine’s first ever endorsement of a Republican in a primary. He earned it for pushing his party left, the magazine made clear in the opening paragraph of its endorsement:

"This magazine has never before endorsed a candidate in a Republican primary. We are breaking precedent because, for the first time in recent memory, a serious Republican presidential candidate is seeking to remake his party into something other than the political arm of the privileged few.

snip

The magazine later approvingly noted how McCain "represents the beginnings of an alternative to the plutocratic conservatism that has defined the Republican Party for more than two decades."

The last sentence of the endorsement from the magazine owned by Gore friend Martin Peretz: "For, if his crusade succeeds, America will have two parties advocating some reasonable approximation of the public good rather than one."

http://tinyurl.com/aqqs9

******

Picking up on media demands that Bush and McCain denounce the flying of the Confederate flag over South Carolina’s state Capitol, Barone, a Senior Editor at U.S. News & World Report, also challenged the media to press Democratic candidates and Governors over elements of the Confederate flag featured in other state flags.

On February 22 Barone was interviewed on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume by the host of the same name. MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth checked this transcript against a tape for accuracy.

Barone noted: "It is interesting that the national press has gone after George W. Bush, a candidate ninety percent of them surely would not support for President, would oppose, on the grounds of his association with people, they haven't gone after some of the other candidates on their opposition. We've seen in the last few days Bill Bradley, Al Gore and Senate candidate and probably future presidential candidate, if she wins, Hillary Rodham Clinton, go and strain to beg leave to speak before Al Sharpton of New York. Al Sharpton has a record certified in a court legal suit in Dutchess County, New York, of having committed libel and slander in a situation which was a racially inflammatory case. He is guilty of making inflammatory remarks that led in time to the murder of shopkeeper -- a non-black shopkeeper in Harlem. He's made all sorts of false statements and rabble-rousing of different kinds. And stirring up trouble-"

Hume observed: "Well, there he was being recognized -- the first person recognized in the Democratic debate in Harlem last night as one of the organizers."

http://tinyurl.com/aqqs9

******

McCain puts his faith in Murphy's law

Super Tuesday is nearly here, and the chaos theory of the Republican outsider's aide is his best hope
The US elections: special report

Martin Kettle in Los Angeles
Saturday March 4, 2000
The Guardian

snip

In addition to Mr McCain and his wife Cindy, the three key people in the senator's inner circle are campaign director Rick Davis, political director John Weaver, and the engagingly zany, wise-cracking Mr Murphy. "He's smart. He's a great tactician and strategist," Mr McCain says.

Mr Murphy was the last of the three to board Mr McCain's campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express. Until August 1999, he had remained loyal to the former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, for whom he had run a spirited campaign in 1996. But since Mr Murphy joined Mr McCain, there has been little doubt that he has given the bid most of its flair, encouraging Mr McCain to play to his strengths.

The Alexander campaign provided Mr Murphy with priceless experience on running an "insurgency" campaign for the Republican nomination against an establishment favourite. Mr Murphy is also a well-read strategist and has run Republican election battles for party liberals such as Christie Whitman, conservatives such as Oliver North, and even, though he keeps quiet about it these days, George W Bush's brother Jeb.

http://tinyurl.com/e2sh6

******

Quote of the Day:

“The most under-covered transformation in the month of August happened in the state of Arizona. During his end-of-summer trip home, [Sen. John] McCain put to rest any rumors/hope some had that he would buck both parties and start his own presidential movement for 2008. How? In an interview with the Arizona Daily Star, McCain came out in favor of the teaching of ‘intelligent design’ and supported one of the most strict anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives in the country… We’ll admit, until we read the transcript of that interview, we believed McCain was going to do one of two things in 2008: either not run for president or run for president as an independent. But don’t fret, John Weaver, Mark Salter and Mark McKinnon (the McCain political brain trust) – we are now believers. We are now believers that McCain is: 1) definitely running for president and 2) running as a Republican” – Hotline editor Chuck Todd.

http://tinyurl.com/7gs3d

******

The Wall Street Journal 's Jackie Calmes taps John Weaver's phone (apparently) to get this: "At least five presidential rivals — Rep. Gephardt, Sens. Lieberman, Kerry and Edwards, and former Vermont Gov. Dean — have contacted John Weaver about a 2004 campaign role. Republican-turned-Democrat Weaver was strategist for McCain's 2000 nomination bid that threatened Bush but ran out of money."

"The prize: Independent voters who flocked to McCain's 'Straight Talk' campaign — and still support him. Lieberman used the phrase in this week's campaign announcement. Friday, former Senator Gary Hart joins McCain for a 'Straight Talk' forum in Arizona; the two are longtime friends."

http://tinyurl.com/8tpt8

******

September 2003

Clark could also draw on some untapped talent to organize his campaign--he has been in contact with John Weaver, the mastermind behind John McCain's breakaway campaign who was exiled from the Republican Party by Karl Rove and now works for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

http://tinyurl.com/8mg5g

McCain has also decided, after consulting with John Weaver (a guy Clark tried to lure into his staff), that trying to run as an Independant in 2004 would be a loser and that his only real shot is to run as a GOPer in 2008.

******

As for the Republicans, McCain is getting encouragement from party leaders who opposed his 2000 campaign against Bush. One of his political advisers, John Weaver, cornered GOP activists at last month's Republican National Committee meeting.

"I don't think he's thinking of a presidential race," Weaver said. "If he is, he's not sharing it with me and (Senate chief of staff Mark) Salter."

http://tinyurl.com/86wlx

******

"I can't conceive of John jumping from the Republican Party, but I certainly can conceive of John being pushed into it," says John Weaver, his suddenly unemployed political director and eager pusher.

snip

William Kristol, editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard, couldn't wait to throw the first stone. "Right now," he writes in a dispatch filed on the Internet, "absent an exogenous shock, I'd put the odds on Gore's beating Bush at least two to one, and the odds of a stultifying, negative and depressing campaign much higher. Which [sigh] leads us to McCain."

Looking about for a messiah, any old messiah, Mr. Kristol's eye lands on two well-worn matinee idols of yesteryear. "We have a couple of depressing months of Gore-Bush jousting," he writes. "Then Ross Perot shows up on Larry King and says the country deserves better than Bush-Gore, that Buchanan is of course unacceptable as the Reform nominee, and launches a draft-McCain movement." And so on and so on.

Arianna Huffington, the punditress who tried to marry her way to the White House when her ex-husband Michael blew $30 million of the family fortune on a Senate race in California, and who is determined now to prevent anyone from getting elected to office with the contributions of his friends, is telling the senator that party disloyalty is the only way he can be loyal to sorehead losers like herself: " . . . it was McCain who turned the campaign into a cause. If he meant anything he said these past six months, he can't go home again."

snip

http://tinyurl.com/e43th

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.