Monday, October 06, 2008

Turning the page? I don't think so...

This week McCain's adviser, Greg Strimple, publicly announced that the McCain campaign would try to distract the voters from the financial crisis by attacking Obama. In his own words:

"'We are very well-funded, and we are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,'' said senior adviser Greg Strimple. 'We're looking to turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's liberal, aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for the Americans.'"

Sticking to this script, Sarah Palin has been trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers, a former member of the radical Weather Underground group, which carried out a series of bombings during the early 1970s. From the same article linked above Palin has been saying:

"Obama 'is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,' Palin, 44, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told donors at a fundraiser last night in Costa Mesa, California. 'This, ladies and gentleman, is not the kind of change that I think we should be believing in.'"

Palin and her backers are ignoring the fact that the man in question is now a respected professor, the bombings took place 40 years ago when Obama was only 8 years old, and Palin herself was hardly out of diapers at the time.

In the meantime, Obama has finally come out with ads pointing out that McCain was one of the "Keating Five" from the 1980s, a much more recent and pertinent connection to the current crisis facing our nation. Although McCain was ultimately cleared of illegal actions in the scandal, he was reprimanded for "poor judgment."

If McCain wants to try to "turn the page" away from our economic crisis and attack Obama to keep the American public's mind off the mess he helped get us in, it isn't a wise strategy. How many other skeletons does a 72-year-old man have in his closet compared to a 47-year-old man? I'd wager a lot more. Two can play this game.

In the meantime, Wall Street is continuing to tank, with stocks down nearly 500 points to below 10,000this morning after the markets in Europe went into free-fall overnight. This isn't the kind of financial problem you can just wave $700 billion at and it will make it go away. This is a serious, long-term financial debacle and it will take more than Congress passing a bailout package to fix it.

McCain will try to turn the page, but I think the American public won't let him do it, as long as their 401ks are going down the tubes and their mortgage payments are in arrears and there is so little confidence in the entire banking system. They'll just keep going back to the first chapter and seeing that the hero of this story is not going to be John "Keating Five" McCain. There is a reason Obama's poll numbers keep going up no matter how many attacks McCain and his henchwoman make on Obama.

As President Dubya famously said, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...you can't get fooled again."

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Republicans have to face their own inadequacies, it makes the cry like babies.

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

Palin's remarks are preposterous and likely to turn off Independents (I hope).

Have you see the latest Rolling Stone cover story? It's a fabulous deconstruction of McCain's career and mythology.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

Oh shoot. I cut off part of the link. Let's try this again.

article

Anonymous said...

i do hope voters will vote well this november. the republican party should not be rewarded for how it's run the country for the last 8 years.

libhom said...

Avoiding talking about the economy is the surest way for any candidate to seem out of touch to the voters.

LET'S TALK said...

By starting this smear attack, they are only going to allow others to make a point of what's in their closets.

Billie Greenwood said...

How telling Strimple's remark: "We are very well-funded..."

It's in the interests of the wealthy to continue a Republican-controlled administration. I sure hope enough Joe Six-packs figure that out as things get nastier the final 30 days.

Randal Graves said...

Oh hell with Rolling Stone. Like Mick Jagger knows anything about being a Maverick®. For five and a half years I couldn't listen to the Rolling Stones or drink beer with Joe Sixpack!

Anonymous said...

The Chimpromised MSM will continue to do what it can to shore up McKeating, but it really isn't about McKeating anymore, who even THEY seem to now despise. It's all about the ratings.

Do note, though, that they are far more deferential towards Caribou Barbie, which tells me that they are trying to protect her viability for some future task they may have for her.

Mauigirl said...

DCup, I know, they're babies. And so out of touch with what matters to the American people.

Ruth, I've been meaning to read this article, thanks for posting the link so it will make it easy for me!

Kouji, I think there is such a financial mess right now that the Republicans' old tricks just may not work this year.

Libhom, you are so right. I hope McCain's attack strategy so backfires on him.

LT, exactly - and McCain has plenty. I have already seen some articles digging up some more stuff on him,linking him to some Central American rightwing organization during Iran-Contra. He has plenty of history that would work against him. Obama doesn't even need to do the dirty work, the media will do it.

Border Explorer, so true. In the past, middle-class blue collar America has voted against their own interests. Let's hope they won't this time.

Randal, LOL, you're right, that's his answer on anything!

JR, if they have an idea for future tasks for Caribou Barbie, it chills my blood. This woman has got to go back to Alaska and never been heard from again. Unfortunately they probably won't let that happen. But I really don't know if they can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (another pig reference???). Of course they did it with Bush. But even Bush graduated from Yale, somehow. This woman really seems dim.

Anonymous said...

Oh aren't they cute? Today they have dropped the Ayres narrative since even Foxy noise polls suggest 60% of their viewers don't care about the Ayres non-connection.

So today, its onto all their Rethug introducers at the rallies refer to Obama as Barack Hussein. The McShameites of course claim they don't condone this. yeah sure. What a bunch of sicko wingnuts these folks are.