Late Update: TPM Reader LD isn’t sure …
You Say Desperation
But I just watched ABC Nightly News with incredulity. They said the McCain campaign said it had a “great week.” The anchor turned to Stephanopoulos and said “Is that true?” George said, “Yes it is. The McCain campaign drove the debate.” Oh and they played the “The One” ad with no irony or commentary to the effect that it was the fourth straight negative ad.
To hear the accepted account, John McCain was with the surge from the beginning, not just after violence started to decline in mid-2007. Actually for most of the first half of the year, he was hedging his bets, saying he doubted it would work because there weren’t as many troops as he said there should be. In other words, he was having it both ways.
McCain camp aggrieved over being called on racialized campaign message. From the Post …
the sense of grievance over this issue within McCain’s high command is deep and palpable. Those emotions led to the decision to have Davis call out Obama on Thursday with his extraordinarily provocative statement: “Barack Obama has played the race card and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
Before all this happened, McCain advisers believed that the Obama campaign successfully pinned a racist label on Bill Clinton during the during primaries — for comments that drew protests from some leading African American politicians — and were determined not to let the same happen to McCain. Also, they take personally any suggestion from the Obama campaign that they are part of a campaign that would play the race card and are indignant about it.
Ironically, the McCain camp’s celebrity ad comparing Obama to the vapid pair of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears drew some criticism as a subtle attempt to play the race card in the same way Republicans did against Harold Ford in the 2006 Senate race with the ad that concluded with an attractive young blonde woman saying, “Harold, call me.” McCain advisers are as incensed over those suggestions as Obama advisers are over Davis’s charge.
I’m amused to hear the McCain camp’s deep sense of “grievance” over any suggestion that McCain is running a xenophobic and often race-tinged campaign against Barack Obama. It’s amazing how you can be pushing a message that your opponent is in league with foreign terrorists and comparing him to twenty-something white women best known for their ‘behind the music‘ episodes and so many people can get the wrong idea.
From the ChiTrib …
Ed Rollins, a longtime Republican strategist, said McCain sometimes appears frustrated and angry when he talks about Obama, especially when complaining that the press does not treat him fairly. “John needs to be the deliberate, experienced veteran and not the grumpy old man,” Rollins said. “If he’s the grumpy old man, angry that the media is not in love with him anymore because they’re in love with Barack Obama, that’s not going to play well with the public.”
I guess it falls to someone like Ed Rollins to cut to the quick of this. As a number of articles have reported over the last few days, there’s a palpable sense of contempt for Obama within McCain campaign — one that positively drips out of this new run of commercials. Not that we expect presidential campaigns to like each other; the intensity and stakes make that almost impossible. But in his affect and words, the message from McCain is more like, “Why do I even have to run against this guy?” That anger and frustration that someone like Obama might be overshadowing him is his achilles heel in this campaign.
“McCain for President: Because You Know He Should Be”
Stop what you’re doing and read this article. Very acute take on the latest turn of the campaign.
Barack Obama says John McCain’s campaign aren’t racists — they’re just being cynical. That and other political news in today’s Election Central Saturday Roundup.
For any reporters interested in digging. Remember that Times story back in February about whether Sen. McCain did special favors for Lowell Paxson and his lobbyist Vicki Iseman? Someone needs to ask some questions about whether McCain threatened to block the reappointment of one of the then-commissioners if Paxson didn’t get his way.
John McCain’s ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton infuriates one of his own maxed-out donors: Paris Hilton’s mother. That and other political news in today’s Election Central Sunday Roundup.