McCain: Lashing out at Bush
Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2008 8:58 AM by Carrie Dann
The Washington Times reports, “Sen. John McCain on Wednesday blasted President Bush for building a mountain of debt for future generations, failing to pay for expanding Medicare and abusing executive powers, leveling his strongest criticism to date of an administration whose unpopularity may be dragging the Republican Party to the brink of a massive electoral defeat. ‘We just let things get completely out of hand,’ he said of his own party's rule in the past eight years. In an interview with The Washington Times, Mr. McCain lashed out at a litany of Bush policies and issues that he said he would have handled differently as president, days after a poll showed that he began making up ground on Sen. Barack Obama since he emphatically sought to distance himself from Mr. Bush in the final debate.”
Politico’s Mike Allen reports, “One of the most senior Republican strategists in the land warns the McCain campaign after reading the WashTimes interview: “Lashing out at past Republican congresses instead of Pelosi and Reid, and echoing your opponent's attacks on you instead of attacking your opponent, and spending 150,000 hard dollars on designer clothes when congressional Republicans are struggling for money, and when your senior campaign staff are blaming each other for the loss in The New York Times [Magazine] 10 days before the election, you’re not doing much to energize your supporters. The fact is, when you’re the party standard-bearer, you have an obligation to fight to the finish. I think they can still win. But if they don’t think that, they need to look at how Bob Dole finished out his campaign 1996, and not try to take down as many Republicans with them as they can. Instead of campaigning in electoral-college states, Dole was campaigning in places he knew he didn’t have a chance to beat Clinton, but where he could energize key House and Senate races. I think you’ll find these sentiments shared by MANY of my fellow Republican strategists.” Ouch.
The New York Times writes about McCain’s struggles with Latino voters. “In the early days of the presidential campaign, Senator John McCain seemed to be in a good position to win support among Hispanic voters. He had sponsored legislation for comprehensive immigration overhaul in Congress, made a point of speaking warmly about the contributions of immigrants and was popular among Latinos in Arizona, his home state, which borders three battleground states here in the Southwest: New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.”
“But less than two weeks before Election Day, those advantages appear to have evaporated. Recent Gallup polls show Mr. McCain running far behind Senator Barack Obama among Hispanic voters nationwide, only 26 percent of whom favor the Republican. The possibility that Mr. McCain can duplicate George W. Bush’s performance among Latinos in 2004, when Republicans won 44 percent of the vote, now seems remote.”
The Washington Post looks back at the Keating Five scandal and how McCain responded to it. “The means and manner of McCain's political resuscitation during the weeks that followed provided a window to his emerging style amid controversy -- his zest for the big gamble, the aggressive push-back while his similarly beleaguered Keating Five colleagues took refuge behind closed doors, his deftness in recasting himself as a chastened reformer and his skill in turning a potentially disastrous setback to his advantage.”
“Oddly, the crisis some thought would destroy him proved to be fortuitous. While the Keating episode was the most searing moment of his career, his response to it launched him into the national spotlight. Ever since, he has been on the long, if bumpy, ascension that led him to the Republican presidential nomination. Later those same instincts helped make his recovery possible in the wake of his crushing loss to George W. Bush for the 2000 presidential nomination. In both crises, he proved himself to be a resilient and resourceful fighter, a dangerous politician to underestimate.”
