Tag: John McCain (page 19)

On the Republican side, the New York Times endorses John McCain. That's not a story. The story is why it says it doesn't support Giuliani. It says the man who cleaned up New York and stood tall on 9/11 is not the man running for President.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

Ouch! But how true.

A new Marist poll taken Jan. 15-17 finds John McCain ahead of Rudy Giuliani in New York and Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama, 48% to 32%. The full poll is here.

• 79% of likely Democrats who back Hillary Clinton say they are strongly committed to her. This compares with 58% of Barack Obama’s supporters who are firmly committed to him.

• A majority of likely Democratic primary voters in New York think Hillary Clinton has the best chance of beating the Republican candidate for president in November. 59% think Clinton is the most electable Democratic presidential candidate compared with 24% who believe Obama is.

The Guardian reports on Rudy's strategy of foregoing the early states to focus on Florida.

Shorter version: Rudy's last stand.

My take: A loss in Florida will be a body blow. But Tsunami Tuesday, with California, New York, New Jersey and others still count. Don't underestimate him and don't over-estimate McCain. Rudy still needs defeating. Ignoring him or dismissing him is not the right strategy. It's what he's hoping for, that while others see him as laying low in the weeds and stop paying attention, he's been making gains pounding the pavement in Florida with a ten day advantage over his rivals.

Will it work? Hopefully not. But it's not over yet. From the Guardian: [More...]

Bump and Update: It's a done deal. Lieberman has endorsed John McCain for President.

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Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard reports Sen. Joe Lieberman will endorse John McCain for President in New Hampshire tomorrow.

This is not surprising to me -- it's just two of your father's Oldsmobiles sticking together. MSNBC asked in January whether a McCain-Lieberman ticket was not a possibility.

More....

Drug War Rant and Hit and Run pick up on John McCain's recent statements on a blogger conference call about medical marijuana. The question posed was:

"Should federal law supersede the will of the people in a given state when it comes to medical marijuana?"

McCain's answer:

McCain started chuckling. "The will of the people, my friend, is that medical marijuana is not something that the quote 'people' want," he responded. "Certain people feel strongly about this issue, and they show up at most town hall meetings, obviously feel very strongly about it. There is no convincing evidence...there's evidence, but no convincing evidence to me that medical marijuana relief of pain and suffering cannot be accomplished by prescriptions from doctors... So, when you're talking about the will of the people, you're going to have to show me the will of the people besides the will of a small number of people who feel very strongly about the issue, as obviously you do."

More...

A McCain aide points out the problem with Rudy, Kerik, Judith Regan, et. al.

"Obviously there are some very serious charges involved for a guy who was his protégé and one of his closest friends. And for Rudy to go out and say this is not worthy of discussion when it directly involves him and his decision making, and in the case of department of homeland security, the security of our country - it's disturbing that Rudy would think it's not something he is going to have to address. "

And a Romney aide says:

"Voters grow very weary of story after story after story having to do with public officials who have not adhered to higher ethical standards," said Madden. "Right now it is very important to Republican primary voters that we have a candidate who can draw a very clear contrast between a Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton. If you have a nominee who is distracted by this type of narrative, you lose the ability to contrast yourself with Hillary Clinton and past Clinton administrations. It cancels out any advantage you would have."

In an interview published Saturday, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain said we are a Christian nation and he prefers a President of the Christian faith.

"I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles ... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith."

.... He added that "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation."

Jewish groups roundly criticized him. The American Jewish Committee released a statement:

McCain should know that the United States is a democratic society without a religious test for public office.

"To argue that America is a Christian nation, or that persons of a particular faith should by reason of their faith not seek high office, puts the very character of our country at stake," Jeffrey Sinensky, the group's general counsel, said Monday in a statement.

Who came to McCain's defense? Joe Lieberman. And of course, McCain is now backtracking.

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Sen. John McCain, who thankfully appears to have little chance of winning his party's nomination, let alone the Presidency, is now advocating stepping up the domestic war on drugs.

We are creating the demand. We are creating the demand for these drugs coming across our border, which maybe means that we should go back more trying to make some progress and in telling Americans, particularly young Americans, that the use of drugs is a terrible thing for them to do," he said.

Yes, lets jail some more non-violent drug offenders, that will work. (strong sarcasm.)

Is it time to stick the fork in yet? Looks like it's getting closer, according to ABC News.

On Monday, five McCain press aides -- including his three top communications officials -- quit en masse, just days after the campaign lost its chief strategist and campaign manager among dozens of aides being shed as part of aggressive cost-cutting measures.

The aides to resign -- communications director Brian Jones, deputy communications directors Danny Diaz and Matt David, and press aides Adam Temple and Amanda Hennenberg -- all agreed to stay on a few extra days out of loyalty to McCain, and helped him set up his weekend trip to New Hampshire.

Reasons given by the aides were loyalty to the campaign manager McCain replaced last week. But, there was also grumbling about why he bothered to have a national communications staff when he only appears to be running in three states -- New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina.

Can things get any worse for John McCain's campaign?

Justin Rood at ABC News reports:

An official with the John McCain presidential campaign was arrested for allegedly soliciting oral sex from a policeman in Florida yesterday.

Bob Allen, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, is one of six Florida co-chairs for the Arizona Republican senator's 2008 White House bid.

The allegation is he offered an undercover cop $20 for a quickie.

This shouldn't be illegal at all, but that doesn't make it any less a hit for the McCain campaign.

Via Raw Story: As part of his "Straight Talk" tour, John McCain visited Murrells Inlet. Asked a question about Iran, he launched into an impromptu version of the Beach Boys "Barbara Ann," changing the words to "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran."

He says he was just trying to add a touch of levity.

For some time, there has been a meme in political discourse indicating that Republicans choose their Presidential candidates based on some notion of whose "turn" it is to win the nomination.  I have found evidence of this meme from both the right (William F. Buckley) and the left (a MyDD commenter).  Given the pervasiveness of this meme, I decided to test the historical evidence behind it by examining Republican presidential nominations from 1960 -- a full twelve years before the first election in which primaries played a deciding role in the delegate count -- through 2004.

According to most versions of this theory, there are three ways that one establishes one's "turn" in line: 1) by being a sitting or former Vice President; 2) by running in a previous year, losing but doing better than expected; or 3) by attaining some sort of formal institutional leadership, i.e., serving as Senate Minority Leader or Speaker of the House.  I aim to show that criterion #1 is both natural and common to both parties, and that criteria #2 and #3 are simply not the hard-and-fast rules they have been made out to be.  In fact, in the past twelve election cycles, there has been only one instance where a Republican presidential primary was decided by anything close to the concept of "turn," and even in that instance the outcome was far from certain until well down the stretch.  Essentially, the Republican presidential "turn" is a myth with no predictive value for the 2008 GOP primary.