Watched one of the news channels and showed McCain defending Obama at one of his "angry mob" town meetings. He got booed rather loudly.
Does this mean we see an end to the very negative character attacks?
Now with this Palin Troopergate issue starting to come up, what is McCain's best plan now?
Makes for great TV though.
Yeah, looks like McCain is trying to calm down the people who were starting to display such rage and fear toward Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf6YKOkfFsE
No, it means he wants to have it both ways. He'll publicly call Obama a stand-up guy, while all the rest of his campaign slimes non-stop.Originally Posted by The Bitter Cynic
No that won't fly. His own people, talk radio, are going to go apeshit on McCain now. They didn't like him much before and now he's going back on his campaign's message - something they've all signed on to. He's making them look stupid and small but they were doing that crap because his campaign was pushing that in the first place.
He's got to get off that message entirely at this point. It's a no win situation.
McCain is a fantastic hypocrite isn't he? When "on the spot" he can't stand up for what's right and smiles when someone says, "Kill Barack Obama".
I'd be equally pissed at Barack if someone said, "Kill McCain" and he smiled it off.
I don't think McCain's comment in the above video had any genuine feeling behind it. I think he's only covering his ass, because if there was an attempt on Obama's life, then McCain would be greatly responsible for not quieting the calls to murder him when he had the chance.
After one woman in the rally stated that she would be scared if Sen. Obama became the next president, Sen. McCain tried to assure the crowd there's nothing to be scared of Sen. Obama.
McCain knows that no American would ever be named Hussein!
Gawd now I have to like McCain??? Jeezus.
More on Sen. McCain trying to calm an angry crowd in Wisconsin.
"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."
McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:
"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."
He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."
....and there goes a week's worth of attacks. If this was a board game, today McCain did the inevitable and landed on "go back three spaces".
Not a good development for Team McCain.
You are wrong. The people who believed those attacks will still believe them. McCain is trying to get some of the independents to swing back his way. This is his ONLY shot at that.
Like? For what, being a liar and a hypocrite?
McCain is doing the right thing. He's still running bullshit ads, but it's important that he let people know that there's a limit to the rhetoric.
Oh bullhockey, he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. The only reason he's trying to rein it back is because he say poll numbers that have shown the slide increasing.
There's some of that, I'm sure, but I also suspect that McCain saw how far the rage meter was swinging with some of his supporters and would prefer not to be blamed for something a crazy sore loser might do should Obama win.
He's approved a lot of negative stuff, but when has he ever personally said anything to provoke that kind of incendiary reaction? Palin, yeah. But McCain?
Come on now - it's practically political suicide for him to dial back his campaign like this. He's telling his supporters that they shouldn't fear an Obama presidency!
Between this pull back in tone, adding Palin to his ticket, and his crazy mortgage buy-back plan, I'm not sure he really still has a base anymore.
Nothing he could say would stop someone who was bent on killing someone else. And if you think no one has wanted to kill Dubya you would be wrong;) so I don't see how anyone could be blamed if someone tried to kill Obama.
I really am glad that he is going to try to tone down the stupidity. Even if it is because the stupidity isn't helping him. I felt very strongly that the stupid attacks on Kerry is what won the election for Bush and I really don't want to see that happening again. (Fortunately?) there are larger issues facing the country than any of the personal attacks the Republicans have made against Obama and so those nasty ads aren't working the way they thought.
Wonder if Bob Cherub cried when he saw those videos?
Plausible deniability. Sure, if someone was bent on killing Obama, McCain's words probably wouldn't matter one way or the other, but you know the media would trace it back at least in part to his campaign's attacks on Obama's character and values.
That's unfair. I think McCain got swept up in a GOP agenda that he didn't like. Now that he sees the election slip away, he's doing what he can to divorce himself from the ugliness that he probably found distasteful from the start. I think he got some bad advice along the way and is now realizing it.
Bingo. Even David Gergen was openly positing that McCain was inciting violence.
If he can't control the tone of his own campaign, he's incapable of being President.
No recovery possibly?
No its not. He's after independants now not radicals. He's already got the radical vote no matter what he does. This is to try and get back votes of people that lost all respect for him due to his nasty tactics. People like myself. It makes him look like the "good guy" while Palin and co continue to sound off that Obama is Satan reincarnated.
Plant the seed of doubt, then come back and look like an Angel. With the state this country is in, he should be losing by a landslide in every state and he's not.
According to TPM, Sen. McCain's campaign is now trying to tie Michelle Obama with Bill Ayres as well.
The attack? Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers' wife and fellow former Weatherman, went to work in 1984 for the major Chicago-based national law firm of Sidley & Austin, and three years later, Michelle joined the mega-firm as well.
...
Murtagh didn't even bother alleging that the two even knew each other, instead suggesting that they might have. If so, he said, the Obamas have known the two longer than suspected.
"If it is true" that the two women knew each other, Murtagh said, "the relationship is almost a decade older than Senator Obama has acknowledged. And that can very easily be resolved by Senator Obama, by Mrs. Obama, by Mr. Ayers and by Ms. Dohrn."
I'm actually heartened by how ashamed of his supporters McCain looks in those clips. Whether or not the base will listen to him, McCain has to start speaking up because the cultural division that Republicans have been peddling for so long seems ready to boil over into violence. I hate to blame an entire party, but the GOP looks willing to take the country down with it. Ignoring comments like, "Terrorist" and "Kill him." is very dangerous.
The fact that he's remained silent until now doesn't say much for his leadership abilities though. His campaign has become an agent of intolerance and I hope we start seeing a change in Palin's speeches as well.
I'd like to think that part of what McCain is doing is recognizing that he probably isn't going to win and needs to think about the fact that he is still an important senator with a job to do after the election if he loses. This isn't like Dole in '96 who walked away from the Senate and bet his political future on being the president. I don't think he is motivated simply by political calculation here, I think McCain really does disagree with those radical ideas that are floating around among some of his supporters, even if at times he has seemed to look the other way or even actively support them.
Plus, I'd expect Obama to do the same if one of his supporters expressed a similarly irrational viewpoint.
But then again I don't think McCain is the total bastard some members of this board do. I think he's wrong on a lot of issues, but have to respect his right to have a different view, just like I try to do with anyone else (that isn't a true extremist).
I think McCain has opened Pandora's Box and now he's genuinely trying to cram some of the vile shit back in. No politician outside some of the right wing Euro nuts want to be associated with some of the shit that is going down. That "I don't trust Obama,I have read about him. He's an Arab." is nothing short of blatant racism and he knows it.
I really think that he is trying to distance himself from some of the grime oozing out of the woodwork since they are a small minority of his support base and he runs the risk of them alienating the rest of them.
oh yes... oh yes:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2102757/posts
Doesn’t he understand that this election is bigger than him ? This election is about socialism taking over the country. He fought the Commies in Viet Nam, but he is unwilling to fight them on his own soil.I don’t understand this man at all .
I don't think anyone here thinks he's a total bastard. I used to like him, I used to like the person he was back in 2000. However, the level he sunk to really has left me completely disgusted.
There is negative campaigning, and there is character assassination, and McCain had to realize he was going over the line, and I'm glad it's coming back to haunt him.
It's ok to have different views from your opponent, but you need to attack the issues and policies, not the person.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote