Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > August > 01
Friday, August 1, 2008
McCain revives campaign with scrappy smarts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Updated 8:30 a.m. Monday
The entire country noticed the week that the John McCain campaign sprang to life. The polls confirm it. Both the Gallup and the Rasmussen tracking polls released Sunday put the race with Barack Obama as essentially tied. Gallup has Obama 45, McCain 44. Rasmussen has Obama 47, McCain 46.
Obama, starting certainly with his “we are the ones we have been waiting for” speech back in February has solidified an image as somebody who sees himself as larger than mere mortal — a messiah, says Rush Limbaugh.
That continued, certainly, with the knock-off presidential seal that made a brief campaign appearance and with his European tour. McCain is taking note. With humor. His latest Internet commercial captures Obama’s grandiose statements and concludes with Moses (Charlton Heston) parting the Read Sea in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 movie “The Ten Commandments.”
This is clearly a race John McCain can win.
For months, I’ve thought Barack Obama has a problem he’s incapable of overcoming. He doesn’t know when to quit talking. He’s really not disciplined, especially when he’s before a like-minded crowd. And he is arrogant. As we saw through the Democratic primaries, he does not wear well. It’s infatuation at first eye-lock. But then, when the potential partners start sizing him up for long-term commitment, the flash fades.
Ummmn, no, don’t think so.
McCain nailed him last week, picking up immediately something the American people clearly sensed from his Berlin rock-star tour: Obama is a celebrity of the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton variety who just says things. Sometimes they sound insightful. Sometimes they hint at profoundity. Always, when prepared in advance, they are a beautifully written script. Connecting Obama to politically dilettantish Hollywood and by inference the Hollywood left is an indication that the McCain organization can get it together and mount a smart, aggressive campaign over the next three months. “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” the McCain ad asserts, “but is he ready to lead?”
Obama’s assertion that we won’t need to drill for oil if we just put more air in our tires is a Hollywood-starlet alternative to a national energy policy.
McCain affirmed his intention to play hardball, too, in his response to Obama’s casual use of the race card. After referring to President Bush and to McCain, Obama had said: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘He’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’”
McCain responded immediately, expressing his disappointment that Obama had chosen to play the race card — the only possible inference to be drawn from his observation that he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents.”
Obama’s a tough guy to run against for any Republican. The hit squads of the left are positioned on the periphery of the campaign battlefield to pounce at the first use of a word or phrase that can be interpreted as calling attention to Obama’s race. Republicans are stereotyped. Even straightforward efforts to curtail voter fraud like, for example, requiring legitimate proof at the polls of a potential voter’s identity has created a cottage industry among Democratic partisans determined to establish it as evidence of racism.
Be prepared: Any clumsy or stupid utterance by anybody who ever voted Republican that can be interpreted as racism between now and election day will be represented as an extension of the McCain campaign. It’s standard drive-the-vote business.
McCain, in any event, demonstrated that he’ll not allow this advantage to be one-sided. Calling Obama’s hand early on the use of the race card is a signal that he won’t be intimidated on the issue.
McCain recovered well, too, on the issue of higher taxes. For a Republican to indicate an openness to higher taxes with a Democratic Congress is suicide. McCain appeared to do precisely that in speaking with reporters on the campaign bus and later in an ABC interview.
When asked whether he would support higher payroll taxes to fix Social Security, he responded that nothing is off the table. “Nothing” includes, of course, higher taxes.
McCain thus appeared to have given away the franchise. Any Republican who agrees to a dollar of new taxes with this spendthrift Congress will get a thousand.
McCain quickly recovered.
When asked on Tuesday by a young girl in Sparks, Nev., whether he would raise taxes as president, McCain gave a one-word reply: “No.”
He’d promised that repeatedly, before appearing to drift away. The simple, emphatic “no” is the correct answer.
It was a good week. He can win.
Permalink | Comments (198) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Good guys, trade talks, a facilitator
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Anybody who stereotypes Republicans as low-tax fiscal conservatives doesn’t recognize the true diversity that reigns in the party, both here and nationally. Example: State Rep. Ron Stephens of Garden City, the first Republican to hold that seat, thinks the tobacco tax should be raised by a dollar. He’d fall into that category of Republicans who don’t mind more government, if it can be used to punish targets of their choosing —- in this case, smokers.
Praise be the five Georgia congressmen who oppose earmarks —- the pork barrel projects that go through no cost-benefit or need competition. The good guys on this issue are Reps. Tom Price of Roswell, Paul Broun of Athens, Nathan Deal of Gainesville, John Linder of Duluth and Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville. The political bosses can’t own you if you don’t want anything.
Saddest —- and most depressing —- quote of the week comes from Kevin Wiggins, who operated a mortgage-loan scheme that defrauded lenders of $7 million. He used straw borrowers and phony appraisals to obtain inflated loans for 88 rundown houses. Reasoned Wiggins: “Most of the homes are in gross states of disrepair. Although our fraud has contributed to some negative consequences, we were able to change the face of that entire neighborhood by our actions. We were there every day.” Wiggins got 12 years and was ordered to repay $6.5 million.
A record deficit, $482 billion, is projected for the 2009 budget year. So what does Congress do? Spend. There’s method to the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid madness. Run up the deficit and then argue that the Bush tax cuts, set to expire in 2010, are “unaffordable.” Barack Obama will do his part, too. Part A of most every speech he makes is fluff. Part B is a new spending proposal. Thank goodness for U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and a handful of other fiscal conservatives. Without them, it’d be worse.
The dip in state tax collections —- down 1.1 percent in the last fiscal year —- is a reminder that tax cuts require spending cuts, too. Pass spending caps.
Conserve water, rates are increased. Drive less, and some in Congress see it as a need to raise the gas tax. Don’t raise it. Cut it, as well as the federal programs funded by it. Let states have that taxing capacity for their own priorities.
Save this headline, since it has a thousand more times to run: “Agriculture disputes torpedo trade talks.” Print it in a dozen languages. Works everywhere.
When a news account of the Jim Martin-Vernon Jones debate on public broadcasting says it was “carried live,” one should not necessarily infer that the candidates were, you know, live. I’m thinking Tuesday’s turnout drops by half. One more live debate and it’ll be in the single digits.
Interesting to note, as The New York Times does in a profile of the Barack Obama years at the University of Chicago Law School, that he lectured on rights, race and gender and in a dozen years on its faculty “never completed a single work of legal scholarship.” The Times quotes a colleague, Richard Epstein: “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.” He’s a facilitator, not a decision-maker. He’s where he belongs. Outside the Oval Office. No fingers on triggers. No instant to decide whether America’s at fault when bad things happen.
A national study that reports that young black men in DeKalb County are at greater risk of being homicide victims without reporting who’s doing the killing or why gives us little of value. The study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, was done by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Meanwhile, one wonders: Why couldn’t the source of the salmonella that sickened 1,300 people across America and that cost tomato growers $300 million have been identified sooner?
Permalink | Comments (444) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
