Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) has been hitting President Obama over and over in the past few days for turning what’s meant to be a push on his Jobs Bill into what McCain calls a taxpayer-funded “campaign” bus tour through the important election states of North Carolina and Virginia.
But in the last 24 hours, the 2008 GOP nominee has dropped one of his talking points against Obama’s bus: that it was made in Canada. That could be because McCain’s famous Straight-Talk Express bus was made by the Canucks too.
McCain on Monday responded to Obama’s bashing of the recently released Republican jobs plan in the Senate by slamming the President for spending taxpayer dollars on what he dubbed campaign speeches. He also ridiculed the President’s new shiny black motorcoach – nicknamed “Ground Force One” – as the ugliest bus he’s ever seen — and Canadian to boot.
“I’ve never seen an uglier bus than the Canadian one he’s traveling around on — a Canadian bus touting American jobs. So — and one of the reasons why Americans and I and my colleagues are a bit skeptical, because we’ve seen this movie before,” McCain said Monday.
“Re: Upcoming Obama bus tour- That ugly, Canadian-built, taxpayer-funded bus is an insult to the Straight Talk Express!” he tweeted.
By Tuesday morning, McCain had dropped the Canadian criticism, pounding the President only for using taxpayer money for a tour that is clearly part of his reelection campaign.
“Never have any of us seen the type of activity the President has been engaged in it – that’s the wrong thing to do,” McCain said. “The campaign should be paying for this North Carolina trip he’s doing.”
A 2008 story in the Allentown, Pa.’s Morning Call described McCain’s Straight Talk Express as a top-of-the-line 2007 Prevost, a Quebec-based company:
“The royal blue bus that ferries the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is 45 feet long, 13.3 feet high and comfortably seats two dozen people. It has 10 wheels and four cargo compartments on either side. The 2007 Prevost is a top-of-the-line model that runs on diesel fuel. So far, McCain’s run up around 31,000 miles on the $1.5 million vehicle. It boasts five miles of internal wiring for everything from the on-board stereo system (last week, there was something tastefully Latin on the speakers) to the bank of video cameras in a rear compartment that can turn every chat with reporters into, possibly, a ready-made campaign commercial.”
A Chicago-Tribune story from August said Republican critics of Obama’s recent bus tours were having a bit of memory loss — conveniently forgetting that President George W. Bush used a Prevost bus for a Spring 2004 “Yes, America Can Tour” through the Midwest.
As TPM first reported earlier this year, the U.S. Secret Service said it was outfitting a bus for the President with extra security protections, and also would provide one to the GOP 2012 nominee. The Secret Service said it selected Prevost because it is the only company that make a large enough motorcoach for the security needs. An American company, Hemphill Bros., outfitted the bus with extra layers of security.
