The two mavericks John McCain and Sarah Palin appeared together in Pennsylvania in an attempt to battle ongoing accusations that there is a rift between the McCain and Palin camps. McCain focused on taking shots at Obama's tax plan and Obama's comments that he would redistribute wealth. The goal of the McCain campaign now is to win Pennsylvania. The consesus is they have given up on states like Colorado and Michigan. The one big problem with a Pennsylvania strategy is that most recent Pennsylvania polls show Obama with a 10-point lead. The McCain camp believes they can close this big gap before Election Day next week.
Here is some footage released by the French national audiovisual archive which shows young POW John McCain being interrogated in 1968, while he is bedridden. It was first broadcast on French television program Panorama in January 1968. How very young -- and how verybrave -- he seems.
Republicans and Democrats alike are still reeling from John McCain's shocking announcement Friday that he was choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate. So what do we know about Sarah Palin?
--She's only been in office for one year and eight months.
--When asked about the Surge in Iraq, she responded "surge? What surge?" She has no stated foreign policy positions, other than a video of her speaking to her Church about the Iraq War being a mission from God.
--She supported the Bridge to Nowhere until it became a national joke, then she quietly allocated the funds elsewhere.
--Billed as a tax cutter, she actually raised the sales tax and instituted a windfall profits tax on oil companies when she was governor.
--She loves to hunt and has photos of her next to a bloody caribou she shot and of a bearskin of a bear she shot. She loves to eat moose stew and caribou burgers.
--She used to smoke pot (it is legal in Alaska, although not under federal law) but said she has stopped smoking. Her comment in an interview was "I can't say, like Bill Clinton, that I didn't inhale."
--Her husband had a DUI at 22, and is a champion snowmobiler. He works for an oil company in the winter and is a fisherman in the summer.
--She has five children, including a four month old infant who has Down's Syndrome.
--She is rabidly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in cases of incest or rape.
--She opposes all sex education and birth control for teens.
--She has an unwed 17 year old daughter who is four months' pregnant.
--She said in an interview that she doesn't know what a Vice President does.
--John McCain had talked to her on the phone once before he invited her to Sedona, chatted with her and then offered her the job.
--She was raised in the Pentecostal Assembly of God church. She is an evangelical Christian.
--Reporters are still investigating whether it's true she first received a U.S. passport in 2007.
-- Her mother-in-law commented to a reporter "I don't see what she brings to the ticket."
Well, there you go. What else could we possibly need to know about a woman who is a heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world? Heckuva job, McCain.
Vanity Fair decided to create a cover in response to the infamous New Yorker Obama cover. It depicts John and Cindy McCain doing the fist bump in the oval office. The constitution burns in the fire place, George Bush's portrait is on the wall and McCain is using a walker. Cindy is holding a bunch of prescription pill bottles. It sounds shocking, but somehow the execution is kind of boring.
McCain Rejects Phil Gramm's "Americans are Whiny" Speech
John McCain had to quickly distance himself from his economic adviser former Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm said that we're a nation of whiners and that we're in an "mental recession." Democrats pounced on the comments as being out of touch and heartless. McCain does a good job with the recovery, but what in the world was Gramm thinking? It's true that we technically had two quarters of negative GDP, but the economy is in trouble and people are suffering. The comments were politically tone deaf, to say the least.
John McCain's campaign has been dogged by reports of disorganization and lackluster fundraising. McCain is now taking steps to right what some see as a faltering campaign. He's promoted Steve Schmidt, who will now be in charge of the overall operation.
Schmidt, who ran California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign and was a top communications aide in President Bush's re-election effort four years ago, is taking over day-to-day operations from campaign manager Rick Davis. Schmidt will shape the campaign's message, run its political operation and oversee most every facet of the organization, including the candidate's schedule, policy statements, deployment of surrogates and coalitions.
"He'll be the maestro who conducts the symphony," said McCain adviser Charlie Black.
A McCain insider said the change gives Schmidt "near total control of the campaign."
The shift was announced Wednesday morning at a staff meeting in the campaign’s headquarters in Arlington, Va., with Davis making the announcement that he would focus on long-range issues such as the Republican convention, selection of a vice-president and debates.
Schmidt, who had just recently returned full-time to the headquarters after spending most of his time with McCain on the road or with his family in California, responded by exhorting campaign aides with a speech that one staffer likened to a locker room pep talk out of the football movie, "Rudy."
He also, according to another McCain official in the room, made a joke about the move being made official on the anniversary of the McCain's last shake-up.
McCain will be elected president, Schmidt said, intoning the declaration by election night television news anchors 135 days from now, if campaign aides execute.
It's a word that his friends and fellow political operatives frequently turn to in describing the forward-leaning, 37-year-old New Jersey native.
"The one thing that Steve prides himself on is very good execution," said Terry Nelson, McCain's campaign manager until last summer's shake-up and a friend and colleague of Schmidt's for over a decade. "He has a sense of how to hold people accountable so they’ll perform for him."
McCain needs all the help he can get. The Obama campaign was hardened in battle because of the long Democratic primary. Obama has a great ground game. This is a good move for McCain. But questions linger. Can McCain sway those Bush donors who have been withholding their checkbooks? And can he hone his campaign message to something that really resonates with voters?
John McCain has released his first general election ad. It's a great ad which focuses on McCain's character and his love for America. It does mention tax relief, however as a headline that reads "McCain Promises Middle Class Tax Relief". McCain is also shown as a clearly scared but very brave young prisoner of war, being asked to give his rank and serial number. It's a gut punch to voters, reminding them of what he has been through in his life.
The tagline is a doozy: "John McCain: the American president that Americans have been waiting for." It's a riff on Obama's "we're the ones we've been waiting for." It also takes a subtle swipe at Obama and his wife on patriotism. The problem here is that no one doubts John McCain's patriotism. Voters aren't sure that he knows what he's doing on the economy, which is why his choice of running mate will be very important.
Overall, it's a very effective ad.
The Associated Press reports (see video below) that Mitt Romney is endorsing John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. The AP says Romney will be asking his 280 delegates to support McCain. At a news conference Mitt Romney said now was a good time for Republicans to come together while the Democrats were still battling for the Democratic nomination.
Romney said, "Even when the contest was close and our disagreements were debated, the caliber of the man was apparent. Right now, the Democrats are fighting; let us come together and make progress while they are fighting."
John McCain's rivals Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul do not appear ready to concede. Mike Huckabee intends to continue his campaign and could make a Texas win very difficult for John McCain. Ron Paul recently released a video called Going the Distance where he says he plans to continue until someone gets enough delegates to win. In the video Ron Paul also mentions plans for a big march to Washington D.C.
On the Republican side, John McCain trounced his opponents on Super Tuesday, emerging as the clear frontrunner after winning nine states, including New York, Arizona, Connecticut, California and Missouri. Mitt Romney won seven states, including Massachusetts, Utah and North Dakota. Mike Huckabee did surprisingly well in the South, winning five states, including West Virginia, Alabama and Georgia. The delegate count is with McCain (602): it's hard to see how Mitt Romney (201 delegates) can catch him at this point. Huckabee (152 delegates) is splitting off evangelical votes from Romney, making it difficult for Romney to emerge as the "truly conservative" candidate.
Although New Mexico's votes are still being counted, Hillary Clinton was the winner on the Democratic side in a very closely fought race. Although Barack Obama won a lot of states (13) including most of the small ones -- Alaska had only 400 or so votes and always goes Republican in the general election anyway -- he did take Connecticut and Delaware. But he totally failed to meet the giant-sized expectations of the last minute polling. Zogby was especially wrong: he had Obama winning by double digits in California, which he lost by ten points to Clinton.
Hillary Clinton held off a media onslaught by Oprah Winfrey, Maria Shriver, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to handily win California, Massachusetts, New York and Arizona. Missouri was very close, but eventually went to Obama. Hillary also won Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
Overall, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and the big states that Democrats would need to win in November. The delegate counts won't be in until all votes are counted, but it looks like Hillary is ahead in pledged delegates, and when superdelgates are factored in she's ahead of Obama by about 80.
McCain looks like he has clear sailing ahead for the nomination. On the Democratic side, it looks like a long and ugly primary season is ahead.
John McCain won the Republican primary in Florida, thereby picking up all 57 of the delegates (for the Republicans it's a winner take all state). Romney came in second and Guiliani came in third. Guiliani then withdrew from the race and is expected to endorse Senator McCain tomorrow.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won by a very large margin, with Barack Obama in second and John Edwards in third. Because of Howard Dean's boneheadedness, the delegates will not be awarded to punish Floridians for moving up their primary ahead of Super Tuesday. At a large victory rally, Hillary vowed to try to have Florida's and Michigan's delegates seated at the convention. 1.68 million Democrats voted in Florida. For the DNC to tell them their votes don't count would be a decision rooted in idiocy.
Tomorrow night the Republicans will debate at the Reagan Library in California. On Thursday, the Democrats will debate. Everyone is now campaigning frantically until Super Tuesday.
John McCain made a statement in a stump speech that stumped most of the audience: he warned
them that "there will be other wars."
The presidential candidate who sang "Bomb bomb Iran" is already looking towards the war after the war in Iraq.
Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, "It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars." Offering more of his increasingly bleak "straight talk," he repeated the claim: "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."
McCain did not elaborate who the United States would be fighting. But he did warn the crowd to be ready for the ramifications of current and future battles.
"And right now -- we're gonna have a lot of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] to treat, my friends," he said. "We're gonna have a lot of combat wounds that have to do with these terrible explosive IEDs that inflict such severe wounds. And my friends, it's gonna be tough, we're gonna have a lot to do.
This is after he told us that we could easily be in Iraq for "the next 100 years." Has Senator McCain not been reading the polls? 60% of Americans think the Iraq war was not worth it and the midterm elections made it clear that the public wants out of Iraq as soon as possible. Instead, he's running on a platform of 100 years in Iraq -- plus some exciting new wars, full of post traumatic stress disorder and ghastly injuries? That's quite a campaign strategy.
