Straight Talk Distress

[ProSense]

Bill Cunningham says McCain campaign told him to throw out the Red Meat during intro.

By: John Amato on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Yesterday one of the big stories was when walkie-talkie Bill Cunningham voraciously attacked Barack Obama warming up a crowd for John McCain. He was so over the top that supposedly the McMaverick campaign told John about his performance and after the crowd left—McCain apologized to Obama. Cunningham was so incensed over being repudiated by McCain that he pulled the Limbaugh trick of saying he’s now supporting Hillary Clinton.

Cunningham: His people told me to give the faithful red meat. Give them red—raw—meat.

He’s a big favorite of Spawn Hannity and so it was not a surprise to see him on H&C last night to comment on the day’s events. (He reminds me of David Lynch’s hard of hearing character from Twin Peaks called Gordon Cole.) If he’s to be believed then McCain has more more splainin’ to do because he said that McMaverick’s people told him to throw out the red meat for his opening.

Even if McCain wasn’t familiar with his act—his camp knows it and to tell Cunningham to go all out only means one thing—the apology was a fraud. The straight talk express is being as disingenuous here as it has been with regards to his own finance law that he’s failed to comply with. And that’s really the story here. Who cares if a wingnut walkie-talkie is upset about being dissed.

UPDATE: Even Karl Rove says that conservatives shouldn’t demagogue Obama’s middle name if they don’t want to appear “bigoted.”

Rove: I'm a compassionate conservative!

Me: Turdblossom, you are not to be trusted! Neither is McCain, with his good cop bad cop act.

Straight Talk Distress

Commentary: It seems to some mainstream pundits that Sen. John McCain, by doing practically nothing at all, is doing everything right.

By Eric Alterman

May 26, 2006

Back in 2000, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) called the Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwell ''an evil influence'' on the Republican Party and an “agent of intolerance” in the American political discourse. These quotes have recently made a reappearance in history owing to McCain’s decision to give the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University in early May and the now-infamous appearance McCain made on “Meet the Press” a month earlier, when he disavowed those previous comments made six years ago.

Recall this is the same Jerry Falwell who not only hawked a video on television accusing then-President Clinton of murder and drug-running but two days after 9/11 explained, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'”

This, from a man who the “straight-talking” John McCain now thinks is no longer intolerant or destructive. But the bigger flap occurred last week when McCain gave essentially the same address at the New School in New York, in what some mainstream media pundits — who have been acted as unpaid publicity agents for McCain for more than a decade now — praised as a balanced approach, proving that McCain willingly takes on all comers.

Indeed, mainstream media pundits praised McCain’s mostly milquetoast speech, with George Stephanopoulos calling his mention of the Iraq war a smart move. McCain should “still get some points for courage because he's talking about an unpopular issue right now, Iraq," said Stephanopoulos. A day later, on “Meet the Press,” Judy Woodruff claimed that it was a “smart speech” because it was safe and he “didn't say anything he's going to have to defend.”

more

In this piece about Obama's name, Juan Cole makes a couple of observations relevant to McCain and the type of smear Cunningham attempted, which is continuing to make the Obama-Muslim connection:

It is worth pointing out that John McCain's adopted daughter, Bridget, is originally from Bangladesh. Since Hussein is a very common name in Bangladesh, it is entirely possible that her birth father or grandfather was named Hussein. McCain certainly has Muslim relatives via adoption in his family. If Muslim relatives are a disqualification from high office in the United States, then McCain himself is in trouble. In fact, since Bridget is upset that George W. Bush doesn't like her "because she is black," and used her to stop the McCain campaign in South Carolina in 2000, you understand why McCain would be especially sensitive to race-baiting of Cunningham's sort. The question is how vigorously he will combat it; he hasn't been above Muslim-taunting in the campaign so far. (And, the McCains really should let Bridget know that she is Asian, not "black." The poor girl; Bush and Rove have done a number on her, and Cindy's confusion can't help.)

McCain's judgment is extremely questionable. Why on earth would anyone want a guy who can't hold a position for 24 hours serving as president and commander in chief?

Speaking of judgment, consider Iraq. Today, McCain also went after Obama on the Iraq war, and Mr. 100 Years in Iraq got a well-deserved smack down.

The last thing the world needs is another "stay the course" arrogant American president who believes that bombs are to be used to clear a path to democracy.

This is a good time to bring up McCain's "rogue state rollback," debate Feb. 15, 2000:

LARRY KING: Senator?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: China is obviously a place where this... One of the signal failures of this administration, although there are certainly many failures throughout the world. But I would also look very... Revise our policies concerning these rogue states-- Iraq, Libya, North Korea-- those countries that continue to try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

LARRY KING: And you'd do what?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: As long... I'd institute a policy that I call "rogue state rollback." I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically- elected governments. As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, I am convinced that he will pose a threat to our security.

McCain = Wars R Us




edited typos

[ProSense]

1. McCain = Bush: Waterboarding

Army Official: Yes, Waterboarding Breaks International Law

McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill


This appears to be McCain's only constant position: supporting Bush.

[ProSense]

2. Strange article

McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out

[ProSense]

3. Road Map...the McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama.

Road Map

02.27.08 -- 11:04PM
By Josh Marshall

Hopefully, everyone can now see the McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama. Yes, we have some general points on taxes, culture wars and McCain as war hero who can protect us in ways that flash-in-the-pan pretty boy Barack Obama can't.

But that's not the core. The core is to drill a handful of key adjectives into the public mind about Barack Obama: Muslim, anti-American,BLACK, terrorist, Arab. Maybe a little hustler and shifty thrown in, but we'll have to see. The details and specific arguments are sort of beside the point. They're like the libretto in a Wagner opera, nice for some narrative structure. But it's the score that's the real essence of it, the point of the whole exercise.

Now, a good deal has been made out of John McCain's repudiation of talk radio yakmeister Bill Cunningham, who led off for McCain at one of his rallies with the full run of Obama sludge. But don't be distracted or fooled. This is more like an example of what the digital commerce folks refer to as 'channel conflict'. You've got your multiple distribution channels. You've got the way McCain's selling the product. Broadcast. Broad and thematic about McCain. But you've got a number of other product channels to sell through, most of them a lot grittier, but no less essential for ultimate success.

Both can work simultaneously. In fact, in the kind of campaign McCain's running, they're both essential for success (see the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina). The key is just that the channels don't cross. Because that's when the trouble starts and they can begin to undermine or even short-circuit each other. And that's what threatened to happened here.

Don't insult your intelligence or mine by pretending that John McCain's plan for this race doesn't rely on hundreds of Cunninghams -- large and small -- across the country, and the RNC and all the GOP third party groups, to be peddling this stuff nonstop for the next eight months because it's the only way John McCain have a real shot at contesting this race.

more

[ProSense]

4. Eventually, people will

see that McCain is winning the GOP nonimation by default. He is a lousy candidate.

[ProSense]

5. Good grief!

McCain ‘Very Honored’ By Support Of Pastor Preaching ‘End-Time Confrontation With Iran’

Yesterday, hard-line conservative Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, endorsed John McCain. Hagee said that McCain “is a man of principle, (who) does not stand boldly on both sides of any issue.” McCain, who had been courting the endorsement for over a year, said that he was “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement.”

Demonstrating how wildly out of the American religious and political mainstream Hagee’s views are, McCain’s acceptance of Hagee’s endorsement was condemned today by conservative William Donohue, president of the Catholic League. Calling Hagee a “bigot,” Donahue said the right-wing pastor has waged “an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church” by “calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’”

Hagee holds many other radical beliefs. In a 2006 address to CUFI, Hagee declared:

The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.

Speaking to the 2007 AIPAC conference, Hagee compared supporters of a two-state solution in the Middle East to Nazis. Hagee also echoed right-wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu, telling the audience that “Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler.”

<…>

God’s plan for…a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation” as Hagee does.

UPDATE: Faith in Public Life has more.

UPDATE: Hagee’s tv show, “John Hagee Today,” is also broadcast on Cornerstone Television. In 1999, McCain wrote to the FCC on behalf of campaign contributor Lowell “Bud” Paxson, urging a deal that would have made $17.5 million for Cornerstone.

McCain accepts!

[ProSense]

6. McCain: Obama Represents Politics of the Past

McCain: Obama Represents Politics of the Past


I'm speechless!