McCain: So who exactly is the celebrity?
Posted: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:29 AM by Domenico Montanaro
The McCain campaign may contend that Obama is the "biggest celebrity"
in the presidential race, NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy notes, but its
candidate has spent most of this week hobnobbing with as many GOP
celebrities as his campaign can find.
On Monday, McCain kicked off the Democratic Convention with an
endorsement from Puerto Rican Reggaeton star Daddy Yankee. He then
hopped on a plane to fly up north for a fundraiser in Sacramento with
Patricia Heaton (from “Everybody Loves Raymond”) and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Heaton then traveled to Burbank, CA on McCain's
Straight Talk Jet Monday afternoon to attend a fundraiser at the
Beverly Hilton featuring stars from both big and small screens. Those
in attendance included Robert Duvall, Gary Sinise, Stephen Baldwin,
Craig T. Nelson, Dean Cain (Lois and Clark), Jon Cryer, and long-time
McCain supporter Wilford Brimley.
Then on Tuesday, McCain raised money in his hometown of Phoenix and was
introduced by TV and movie star Angie Harmon and her husband, long time
NY Giants defensive back Jason Sehorn. Capping off the star-studded
start to the week, McCain took a brief afternoon trip to San Diego
yesterday, making a surprise appearance at a fundraiser hosted by John
Voigt.
Politico reports
that McCain “is planning to rollout his vice-presidential nominee in
three battleground states this weekend, with large-scale rallies
planned for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri, according to aides and
advisers. The GOP nominee-in-waiting will move to immediately change
the campaign conversation from Barack Obama’s football stadium
acceptance speech Thursday to the new Republican ticket, to be revealed
at a noontime Friday rally in a Dayton, Ohio, basketball arena. McCain
and his running mate will then travel by bus to Pennsylvania, where
they’ll hold an outdoor event at a minor league baseball stadium in
Washington County, just southwest of Pittsburgh. On Sunday, the duo
will head to suburban St. Louis for another event to be held at a minor
league baseball stadium, this one in O’Fallon, Mo.”
Yesterday, McCain
assailed Obama on several fronts, spoke of the Cold War -- and got in a POW reference. Some excerpts: "'The next president must bring to office a clear-eyed view of our nation's role in the world as the defender of the oppressed and a force for peace,' McCain told the American Legion national convention, which Obama is to address today.
"The presumptive Republican nominee pointed out that Obama asserted in his Berlin speech last month that the Cold War ended because major nations came together. 'Now I missed a few years of the Cold War as a guest of one of our adversaries, but as I recall the world was deeply divided during the Cold War - between the side of freedom and the side of tyranny. The Cold War ended not because the world stood as one but because the great democracies came together, bound together by sustained and decisive American leadership."
"[W]herever Romney went yesterday, from a downtown luncheon with several dozen reporters, to the Republican Party's 'Not Ready '08' press conference, he
faced questions about whether his primary-campaign attacks on McCain will hurt his chances to become the vice presidential nominee. Romney's responses, monitored by McCain's aides, sometimes sounded like a dress rehearsal for the job."
