McCain Made the Right Call Going “Kitchen Sink” Negative
From a strategy perspective, it is the only card he has left to play.
Right now it is not about winning for McCain, it is about not losing by a landslide, so these negative attacks will fire up the base and make sure he does not lose by enough for the current GOP power brokers to be challenged by any party activists.
Given the context, Sarah Palin’s attack yesterday on Barack Obama’s patriotism and his “ties” to former Weather Underground ringleader William Ayers works.
Of course this turn is bad for the country and bad for our democracy, but McCain has shown time and time again that he does not give a crap about the country. He also knows that there will not be any blowback from so-called Republican moderates like Mike Castle, or Dave Burris for going negative – so there is no real downside for him.
If I’m a republican right now, I’m thinking McCain made the right call for once.
Why not go super-positive? No one is expecting that. I think McCain’s plan is very, very risky to him. Who wants to talk about something that happened 40 yrs ago when the sky is falling now?
Going “kitchen sink”, though does make the flopsweat on the McCain side awfully obvious.
What is good though, is that Obama’s people haven been ready. Their website did not just happen over the weekend — they were ready to go when they needed the Keating card. And airing Keating now gives the press their “he say, she say” which will neutralize some of the impact of the Palin lies re: Ayers.
On one hand we have Palin quips, and McCain’s short ads featuring Ayers.
On the other hand is Obama’s 13 minute web documentary on the Keating Five.
I think McCain wins that matchup. Anytime you need to explain your opponent’s skulduggery for more than ten seconds, you lose.
What I can’t figure out is why McCain and Palin are taking it easy on the Fannie Four: Dodd, Shumer, Obama & Frank.
I can only guess there are still too many folks out there who still think there was nothing wrong with FNMA sponsoring the subprime lending mess, so long as it “helped the poor.”
Haven’t you heard? The McCain campaign is ready to “turn the page” on the economy. Should be an interesting debate.
“What I can’t figure out is why McCain and Palin are taking it easy on the Fannie Four: Dodd, Shumer, Obama & Frank. ”
Nor can I. McCain should be hammering Obama on this and several other issues.
The economy isn’t McCain’s strong suit.
Nor is it Obama’s. At least McCain can admit his shortcomings.
FNMA sponsoring the subprime lending mess
They didn’t do this — period. And while McCain doesn’t have any problems lying his ass of about damn near anything else, I can’t imagine that he wants to continue the stories of how much of his campaign staff made their fortunes and their bones on lobbying for Fannie and Freddie.
nor is it mike’s…..shortcomings, blah, blah…i’m so smug! don’t u luv me?
G Rex, on the other hand, is talking out his ass.
and no, i won’t respond to your bigoted accusations – it’s not worthwhile.
Ah, I see how it is Von – Facts you don’t like are racist and bigoted. Kinda like Pandora’s reaction to my posting facts showing that violent crime in this country is predominantly done by young black males. I was racist and bigoted for pointing out the truth.
Oh, and of course Von offers no substantive counterpoint to G Rex, only the baseless, childish accusation that he’s “talking out his ass.”
Nice.
I never called you those names. You are a lying ass – There. Now I’ve called you a name.
“I never called you those names. ”
I didn’t say you called me racist and bigoted. You did however display incredible willful ignorance.
Cass, I’m not saying Fannie Mae was the only culprit in the subprime mess (Moody’s and the other credit raters were willing accomplices in getting the infection into the bloodstream) but it couldn’t have happened without them – and they paid the Fannie Four millions in campaign cash to keep their gravy train rolling.
(I forget who it was who said it last week, but he said it was like Murder on the Orient Express – Poirot finds out that everybody did it.)
I’ve been saying the same thing you have G-Rex, but these folks simply cannot accept that their beloved liberals had a hand in this mess.
You can’t lay the blame for this on one person, event, or party, but you certainly can’t exonerate an entire party either.
It sure could have happened without them.
Fannie and Freddie, by virtue of their charter, could not buy a subprime loan back — until very recently, like February this year, when Congress and BushCo asked them to buy back jumbo loans. They loosened their criteria to buy certain types of Alt-A paper in the 2000’s, but even then that was subject to certain of their conforming requirements. Fannie and Freddie were caught by all of the MBS and credit derivatives they bought trying to increase the performance of their investment portfolio. And Fannie and Freddie were pretty much out of the loan business from 2002 – 2004. The loan firesales were definitely done by the mortgage brokers (most of whom are very much out of business now) who wrote any paper they could because they were selling it off to be syndicated as a MBS.
Von Cracker is the biggest racist on this blog. Your true “colors” really show.
Hey!!! I have white friends!
Oh – and the ‘Low Income’ excuse has been refuted – asked and answered.
It’s not my fault you guys are too lazy to look it up for yourself.
So you really believe the CRA had nothing to do with the mess we’re in Von?
Nope.
Another thing – a majority of these poor-performers are for 2nd & 3rd mortgages on the primary residence or additional homes, as well as HELOCs.
They are not part of the CRA programs.
Mike The Racist:
You and your racists rants are beyond disgusting. Your views are despicable, revolting and founded in ignorance . I am not sure why DL continues to tolerate your vile pompous bigotry.
Blaming this crisis on the CRA “is unconscionable. This problem is not a problem that was caused by the Community Reinvestment Act. The data is very clear that the Community Reinvestment Act loans were being offered in a way to people that were much more responsible and had none of the characteristics of default that are being attributed in this discussion. And what this does is to say, this problem is a problem that was caused by black people.”
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/its-a-racial-th.html
You are both nuts if you can’t / won’t accept that loosening of lending standards with the express goal of forcing banks to loan to minorities contributed to this meltdown.
I’m not saying it was the ONLY factor, as I think that Von makes a good point in comment #21, but to deny that it had any negative impact is ludicrous.
You are both nuts if you can’t / won’t accept that loosening of lending standards with the express goal of forcing banks to loan to minorities contributed to this meltdown.
OH I GET IT. They had a gun to their heads and made those loans.
You seem to be saying it is a big factor though Mike. Which of course it isn’t.
Strapping young buck, Welfare Queen…
gee do they sound familiar?
Nahhh, let’s blame the minorities.
Once again, you show your racist tendencies.
“Once again, you show your racist tendencies.”
Once again you show that the “racism” card the left uses in this election is basically just the boy who cried wolf. Anytime you can’t actually debate something or you want to deflect criticism just pull out the race card. Obama’s done a good job with that.
It’s a shame that Obama’s doing it though, since he’s said he’s going to be a uniter and all….
McCain made the Keating 5 an issue again. For many years, he has said that his actions on behalf of Keating were improper. Now he’s saying that it was a partisan witch hunt. McCain has just made it an issue!
McCain is running the worst campaign of a Republican that I can remember, and I remember Bob Dull’s campaign.
“express goal of forcing banks to loan to minorities contributed to this meltdown.”
Come On!!! These lenders were making money hand over fist….do you really think anyone was “forcing” them to lend????
If you look into it very few of the active lenders were even a part of the CRA….
“McCain is running the worst campaign of a Republican that I can remember”
Well at least we agree on something.
No one forced a bank to lend money to ANYBODY who wasn’t qualified for that loan. Any bank that made loans to unqualified people did so on their own.
All of this handwaving to Fannie and Freddie and the CRA demonstrates that after all of these weeks, you haven’t even begun to understand the magnitude or scope of the current banking problem.
And what else is new? Actually educating yourself on ANYTHING is simply not in your skill set. Get back to your parent’s basement Cheetos-boy.
Hey mike from 1994 till 2006 the Repuks had control of congress and the White House since 2001 so what was the action that they took to prevent this mess
I find it funny that Obama supporters are saying that this will hurt him. If that is the case why do you care? Obama says the same thing. I think the more likely reason is that Obama doesn’t want people to know about him, so he tries to intimidate the situation.
“OH I GET IT. They had a gun to their heads and made those loans. ”
Yes, they did.
And Elmer Fudd (Barney Frank) and Daffy Duck (Barack Obama) were holding the gun.
Do we know the REAL John McCain?
Do we? Really?
Well, let’s just PRETEND Barack Obama is a terrorist. If that’s the case, I like the way John McCain has put the heat on him.
With logic like that no wonder Barry has a ten point lead.
10 points outside the curtain is -3 points behind the curtain.
That’s why you so and the Youtube dude want to know and control what people are thinking. You’re afraid of getting bowled over by the unknown.
I will love the next 21 days.
What ever gets you through the nite bro.
Your anger, pain, frustration and fury. 😉
Like sedatives to me.
I’m a junkie!