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GOP Worries About McCain's Strategy By LIZ SIDOTI, AP INDIANAPOLIS (Oct. 12) -
Three weeks before the election, Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about John McCain's ability to mount a comeback, questioning his tactics and even his campaign's main thrust in a White House race increasingly focused on economic turmoil. "He has to make the case that he's different than Bush and better than Obama on the economy," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of more than a dozen prominent Republicans who in interviews during the past week expressed concern over the course of McCain's bid. "If he doesn't win that case, it's all over, and it's going to be a very bad year for Republicans."
Several Republicans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid angering McCain, said the campaign should have sought to plant doubts about Obama's associations with 1960s-era radical William Ayers and others months ago, rather than waiting until the campaign's final weeks. Doing so now, they said, makes the 72-year-old McCain come off as angry, grouchy and desperate, playing into Democrats' hands. Rather, these Republicans said, McCain needs to strike a balance in his tone appearing presidential while also questioning Obama's readiness to serve and judgment to lead. And, several said McCain should close the campaign on an honorable note. "He doesn't need an attack strategy, he needs a comeback strategy," said Alex Castellanos, a longtime national GOP media consultant who worked for McCain primary rival Mitt Romney. The unsolicited advice comes as McCain campaign officials are becoming increasingly discouraged. From junior aides to top advisers, the frustration is palpable. Some argue the media isn't giving McCain a fair shake and are weary of the increasingly problematic environment working against the GOP. Tensions have grown over how hard to go after Obama amid concerns about irreparably damaging McCain's straight-shooter reputation. And the candidate himself, the target of a negative whisper campaign in the 2000 GOP primary, appears conflicted on the campaign trail. He's cheery and smiling during question-and-answer sessions with crowds but becomes visibly annoyed even surly when he reads aloud scripted attacks on Obama and Democrats. Despite the polls showing Obama with a lead nationally and challenging for states long in the Republican column, none of the Republicans interviewed said the race was lost. They said McCain can prevail if he presents himself as the optimistic visionary the public wants at deeply worrisome economic times.
"He needs to come forward with a serious new plan and announce it in a serious manner," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 campaign. "McCain cannot outdo Obama in just expressing outrage over Wall Street greed." The candidates meet Wednesday in their third and final debate; it's McCain's best chance to make a lasting impression. "He has an opportunity to step up and be a forceful leader during these challenging times," said Ron Kaufman, a veteran party operative who also worked for Romney. "McCain got the nomination because that's what his brand is, but somehow it's gotten muddled." Senior advisers insist McCain is trying to be such a leader. They note that his daily speeches are devoted heavily to the economy, including taxes and health care, and that he's been rolling out a series of prescriptions. They complain that McCain's not getting credit for those and argue that the media holds McCain to a higher standard than Obama, who they contend is getting a free pass. Over the past week, McCain also has been assailing Obama's character in speeches and TV ads. They include one that, with little proof, accuses Obama of lying about his association with Ayers and assails Democrats as irresponsible liberals on the economy. Some Republicans want McCain to keep it up, though strike a balance. Michael Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor and chairman of the candidate-recruiting organization GOPAC, said McCain must reassure people with a "clear and concise" economic message but also needs to "smack the other guy around a little bit." Ohio GOP chief Bob Bennett said the campaign must do more to "close the sale" on what McCain would do as president. But he also said: "I think he needs to get tougher." Others say the only thing McCain can do is hope Obama makes a huge mistake or an outside event changes the race. "Winning the campaign is totally out of McCain's hands," said Matthew Dowd, President Bush's senior political strategist in 2004, who now shuns the party label. The campaign struggled to find the right fit last week.
First, running mate Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," a clear reference to Ayers, and suggested McCain would go after Obama in last week's debate. Instead, the GOP nominee rolled out a proposal that the government buy bad home-loan mortgages. That drew the ire of conservatives. Said Gingrich: "I can't defend it." Last Monday, McCain gave a blistering speech asking "Who is Barack Obama" and asserting that Obama was not candid and truthful. He stood by as unruly GOP crowds hurled insults at Obama. On Friday, McCain called for the temporary suspension of the requirement that older investors liquidate their retirement accounts and defended Obama as "a decent, family man" the public shouldn't fear. That day, McCain's campaign also came out with its hardest-hitting ad yet. There have been internal disagreements over how far to go, with some advisers pressing McCain to criticize Obama on his relationship with his incendiary former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. McCain earlier had ruled that out of bounds. Some advisers fear charges of racism. One senior McCain adviser said the worry isn't just that McCain may lose but also that, in defeat, the attacks on Obama could cause long-term damage to McCain's image. It's not clear whether it's concern about McCain's legacy that prompted the senator to defend Obama on Friday, and advisers insisted there wasn't a conscious decision to soften the criticism. One, Mark Salter, told reporters traveling with McCain: "He responded to questions he didn't think were appropriate." There's been backlash to the negativity. "He is not the McCain I endorsed," former Michigan Gov. William Milliken told The Grand Rapids Press, calling the tenor disappointing. "He ought to be talking about the issues." Perhaps no place underscores McCain's woes better than Indiana, which hasn't voted for a Democrat in decades. Obama has spent an estimated $7 million on advertising there and polls show the race is tight. Republicans just went on the air. "He's got a great story and a great case to make," Murray Clark, the state party chairman, said of McCain. "Has he made that yet? Not really." Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.
-------------------- Let the world change you... And you can change the world.
Hide photos GOP senator: Democrats want to steal Indiana By Sylvia A. Smith Washington editor
WASHINGTON - The only way Barack Obama can win in Indiana is to cheat, one of John McCain's stand-ins said Thursday.
He said votes have already been cast by "people who don't exist" and that a national voter-registration effort is "trying to steal the election in Indiana."
In an interview before headlining the Indiana Republican Party's fund-raising dinner in Indianapolis Thursday night, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Hoosiers are too smart to vote for Obama.
Democrats, he said, "can't win fairly out here."
Asked if Democrats could win without cheating, Graham said, "No. They can't win fairly out here 'cause their agenda is so far removed from the average Hoosier.
"We could lose, I suppose, if they cheat us out of it," Graham said of Indiana's 11 electoral votes. "I think the only way we lose a state like North Carolina or Indiana is to get cheated out of it."
Kip Tew, a senior adviser to Obama's campaign in Indiana, said Graham's accusations are "highly irresponsible." He said the Obama campaign deplores voter fraud.
He said for Graham to suggest that Indiana's 92 election boards can't operate elections fairly is insulting.
Graham said here's "lots of energy by the Democratic Party. One thing we found out about Indiana: We're getting people voting out here that don't exist. Our friends at ACORN are trying to steal the election in Indiana."
Asked to identify non-existent people who have voted in the presidential election, Graham said: "Have you been following the ACORN investigation out there? They're registering people who don't exist." He said there are multiple registrations going on. "One lady registered 11 times. I'm saying that the dynamic out here of voter fraud is something we're concerned about."
Voter registration forms submitted to election offices by ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - in some states are under fraud investigation.
ACORN's Web site says it has registered 1.3 million people for the November election, including 23,090 in Indiana.
The Times of Northwest Indiana reported Tuesday that the Lake County elections board director said ACORN representatives submitted 2,000 new voter applications last week.
Sally LaSota said "about 1,100 are no good" because the forms are incomplete or contain unreadable handwriting.
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"We could lose, I suppose, if they cheat us out of it" and Other Tales of Republican Delusion by georgia10 Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 06:31:13 AM PDT
Ben Smith at Politico, like many others across the ****osphere, puts the ACORN story into perspective:
The key distinction here is between voter fraud and voter registration fraud, one of which is truly dangerous, the other a petty crime.
The former would be, say, voting the cemeteries or stuffing the ballot boxes. This has happened occasionally in American history, though I can think of recent instances only in rare local races. Practically speaking, this can most easily be done by whoever is actually administering the election, which is why partisan observers carefully oversee the vote-counting process.
The latter is putting the names of fake voters on the rolls, something that happens primarily when organizations, like Acorn, pay contractors for new voter registrations. That can be a crime, and it messes up the voter files, but there's virtually no evidence these imaginary people then vote in November. The current stories about Acorn don't even allege a plan to affect the November vote.
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Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 In Battleground Virginia, a Tale of Two Ground Games By Karen Tumulty
If John McCain is as serious as he says about running a "respectful" campaign against an opponent he considers "a decent person," word hasn't yet trickled down to his newly opened storefront field office in Gainesville, Virginia.
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Virginia since 1964, and most election years both campaigns pretty much ignore the state. This time, however, McCain is running behind Barack Obama in statewide polls, thanks in large part to the head start he got on the ground there. "We haven't seen a race like this in Virginia ever," said state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick. "The last time was 40 years ago, and they didn't run races like this."
Indeed, Frederick, a 33-year-old state legislator, hadn't even been born yet. But earlier this year Frederick unseated a moderate 71-year-old former lieutenant governor (who also happens to be Jenna Bush's father-in-law) to become head of the Virginia GOP, promising "bold new leadership" for a state party recently on the decline.
The McCain campaign invited me to visit Frederick and the Gainesville operation on Saturday morning, to get a first-hand glimpse of its ground game in Prince William County, Virginia, a fast-growing area about 30 miles from Washington, D.C.
With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.
Ground operations the doughnut-fueled armies of volunteers who knock on doors and man the phone banks are the trench warfare of political campaigns. These are the people charged with finding and persuading voters who might support their candidate, and then making sure they actually show up at the polls. A good ground operation might mean just an additional percentage point or two on Election Day, but in a close race, that margin could easily be the difference between winning and losing. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe calls his ground operation the "field goal unit," and it was one of the big reasons the Illinois Senator bested Hillary Clinton in the primaries. But Obama's team has yet to be tested against a Republican operation that was built and perfected over decades, culminating in the astonishing ground game that put George W. Bush over the top in 2004.
The Republicans wouldn't allow me to tag along with their volunteers, so I drove 30 minutes across the county to the Obama field office. Where the Gainesville GOP office that opened last week was still furnished only with a few folding tables and chairs (workers were hanging the McCain/Palin sign out front as I drove away), Obama's in Woodbridge has been up and running since July, and has the dingy, cluttered, lived-in feel that every campaign office eventually acquires. The campaign's "Votebuilder" software with house-by-house data on every registered voter in the area dominated a bank of computer screens, and the walls were covered with cartoons, volunteer signatures and lists of "star phonebankers." Young volunteers bustled in and out with stacks of clipboards and canvassing materials to hand to the volunteers who were showing up by the carful in the parking lot. Word had gotten out that a new load of yard signs had arrived, so they were handing those out to Obama supporters who had shown up asking for them.
The campaign handed me a packet of addresses and sent me out to meet Brian Varrieur. He's a 34-year-old lawyer who lives in Washington, D.C. and looks barely old enough to vote himself. This was the fifth weekend he returned to his parents' home in the neighborhood where he grew up to knock on doors for Obama. Brian is soft-spoken not exactly a natural personality for this kind of work; back when his elementary school would hold candy-sale drives, "I was one of those kids who would get their next-door neighbor and their mom to buy some, and that was it," he told me. "But this [presidential election] really matters to me."
It must. Saturdays in the suburbs aren't the ideal time to find people at home. I followed Brian to 13 houses on his list, and no one answered at 10 of them. (He left an Obama brochure in the door of each.) At one, the woman at the door told him she was "leaning" toward McCain, though I thought she seemed more settled in her decision than that. At another, a teen-aged girl told him: "My dad is a super-strong Republican. You're probably at the wrong house." (He duly marked that down, to save future canvassers the trouble.) Still, the yard signs we saw suggested that this was in fact a neighborhood divided. We discovered that was true when we approached another house on the list and found a father and son raking the front yard. "I'm voting for McCain," the father told us. But his 19-year-old son, a college student home for the weekend, told us he plans to send in his absentee ballot for Obama. His reason? "Palin's a retard," he said. As for the lady of the house? McCain, the man said. "She has to live here. The kids I can kick out."
quote:Originally posted by bdgee: Where I think things get queer is "How many people will say they voted and didn't?".
There are so many registering that never voted before, but traditionally, many newly registered folks usually don't vote, particularly black ones.
Some of those being registered have never lived before or died since their last vote. Acorn registered a 7 yr. old girl here in CT. Rumor has it she was going to vote for the annointed one.
-------------------- Let's Go METS!!!
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: Where I think things get queer is "How many people will say they voted and didn't?".
There are so many registering that never voted before, but traditionally, many newly registered folks usually don't vote, particularly black ones.
Some of those being registered have never lived before or died since their last vote. Acorn registered a 7 yr. old girl here in CT. Rumor has it she was going to vote for the annointed one.
So I understand. Are you one of them?
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See what I mean by a double standard someone refers to Obama as the annioted one because someone refers to him as that. And refers to him in a way that seems degradeing
Sara Palin hires a pastor from Africa who's profession is casting out demons to preform a public ritual on her and the town and she says god talks to her and folks just think she is special.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
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That is the single hate filled single minded republican standard of lie lie lie about anyone not deeply crusted in far right wings crap.
If Jesus Christ, whom they claim to love more than life, were somehow to appear and, on the one hand prove via appropriate miracle exactly who he was, and on the other say something favorable about Obama, they would declare him to have chosen Satan over god and threaten him with having to bear another cross and suffer crucifixion again.
The right wing republican base is not terribly bright, just terribly single minded and stilted.
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