Today, John McCain stakes out the greenest position of any Republican presidential candidate in decades. He’ll visit a wind turbine manufacturer in Portland, Oregon… and put his money where his mouth is with a new ad signaling a new direction on the environment for his party.
“I believe that climate change is real. It’s not just a greenhouse gas issue. It’s a national security issue. We have an obligation to future generations to take action and fix it.”
McCain’s climate change ad highlights his courtship of independents & moderates. He chastises the far left for overreacting to the problem & the far right for being too dismissive of it.
“One extreme thinks high taxes and crippling regulation is the solution. Another denies the problem even exists. There’s a better way.”
In his prepared remarks the Republican party’s fall standard-bearer pronounces the debate over the existence of global warming and mankind’s responsibility…over!
“We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion.”
In an interview with Fox News he said that it is better to accept that climate change exists and take steps to address it:
McCain will lay out specific goals for reducing greenhouse gasses -with a cap & trade program. Industries would be given emission targets (caps.) If they produce less than the targets, they could sell (trade) their surplus polluting capacity to those industries and firms unable to meet their targets.
“By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by 2020, a return to 1990 levels, and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. “
McCain will criticize former President Bill Clinton and current President George W Bush for failing to broker an international climate change agreement years ago.
“I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears. I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges. I will not accept the same dead-end of failed diplomacy that claimed Kyoto. The United States will lead and will lead with a different approach – an approach that speaks to the interests and obligations of every nation.”
He specifically hits China and India, two leading polluters for not doing their part.
“No nation should be exempted from its obligations. And least of all should we make exceptions for the very countries that are accelerating carbon emissions while the rest of us seek to reduce emissions.”
But McCain promises to move the U.S. forward with or without others.
“If the efforts to negotiate an international solution that includes China and India do not succeed, we still have an obligation to act.”
Though the GOP has been turning greener in recent years and President Bush acknowledged man’s role in climate change years ago, skeptics of global climate change remain. OklahomaSenator James Inhofe, last year said:
“the man-made global warming fear machine crossed the ‘tipping point’ in 2007. I am convinced that future climate historians will look back at 2007 as the year the global warming fears began crumbling. The situation we are in now is very similar to where we were in the late 1970’s when coming ice age fears began to dismantle. We are currently witnessing an international awakening of scientists who are speaking out in opposition to former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, the Hollywood elitists and the media-driven ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming.”
[source: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, “INHOFE FLOOR SPEECH ON GLOBAL WARMING: 2007 - GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM REACHES A TIPPING POINT,” October 26, 2007
John McCain came to Wake Forest University in North Carolina hoping to grab a headline during Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s protracted duel. He tried to gain the upper hand on a key presidential issue: The picking of federal judges, 3 Supreme Court justices are over 70 years old and hundreds of positions are open for federal judges. The next president will likely have the ability to shape the bench.
“Senators Obama and Clinton have very different ideas from my own. They are both lawyers themselves, and don’t seem to mind at all when fundamental questions of social policy are preemptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives”
McCain will reaasure conservatives he’ll appoint strict constructionist judges who, as he says, will apply the constitution rather than create new law in their courts.
“My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power.”
Though McCain helped get Chief Justice John Roberts & Justice Samuel Alito (both conservative!) confirmed, some Republicans didn’t like that he led a gang of 14 moderates to broker the deal.
He calls Roberts and Alito models for the kind of judges he’d nominate, and rips Clinton and Obama for having voted against both!
“Somehow, by Senator Obama’s standard, even Judge Roberts didn’t measure up. And neither did Justice Samuel Alito. Apparently, nobody quite fits the bill except for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers, and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it — and they see it only in each other.”
While McCain expresses respect for the federal bench, his disdain for activist judges for being arrogant and dangerous is most pointed.
“Some federal judges operate by fiat, shrugging off generations of legal wisdom and precedent while expecting their own opinions to go unquestioned. Only their favorite precedents are to be considered “settled law,” and everything else is fair game.”
The next president could see as many as three (Stevens, Kennedy. Ginsburg) Supreme Court seats open up.
Though abortion politics can dominate such debates, McCain makes no mention of it in his prepared remarks. Like most Republicans, and unlike most Democrats, he has long promised he won’t have any abortion litmus test. He challenges Democrats to stop making confirmation hearings a partisan game of obstructionism and gotcha.
“Always hanging in the air over these tense confirmation battles is the suspicion that maybe, just maybe, a nominee for the Court will dare to be faithful to the clear intentions of the framers and to the actual meaning of the Constitution, and then no tactic of abuse or delay is out of bounds.”
Fred Thompson makes his first appearance on the trail with McCain since Thompson dropped out of the race. Thompson served as sherpa to both Roberts and Alito during their confirmation hearings, accompanying both men around the Hill as they courted senate confirmation votes.
Thompson has ruled out being both Vice President and Attorney General in a McCain administration.
Update to the previous post - RNC chairman Duncan writes DNC chairman Dean
Republican National Committee April 29, 2008 Chairman Howard Dean Democratic National Committee 430 S. Capitol St., S.E. Washington, D.C. 20003 Re: DNC’s Use of “Fahrenheit 9/11” Footage in “100” Ad Dear Chairman Dean: I write regarding the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) advertisement attacking Senator John McCain titled “100,” which was released on Sunday, April 27, 2008.
As you are already aware, and as has been widely reported, the DNC’s ad is troubling for at least two reasons. First, its message is factually false; the DNC is deliberately misleading American voters. Second, it constitutes an illegal excessive in-kind contribution from the DNC to its presidential candidates. Now the Republican National Committee has learned that the ad features footage from Michael Moore’s 2004 conspiracy theory, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
According to ABC News, the ad features “an IED blowing up near US soldiers,” an image ABC confirms that was used in “Fahrenheit 9/11.” It is no coincidence that the same Democrat advertising firm that produced this ad also was responsible for producing over $6.5 million worth of Democrat political advertising using themes from “Fahrenheit 9/11” in 2004.
The DNC’s combining its gross mischaracterizations with footage made famous by a movie director who meets with dictators and continually expresses caustic anti-American rhetoric only further reveals the DNC’s utter lack of respect for Senator McCain and his service to our country. Further, “Fahrenheit 9/11’s” director has compared Iraqi terrorists with American Revolutionary heroes. For the DNC to deploy such footage in a political advertisement suggests at best a lack of appreciation, and at worst a disrespect, by the DNC for the sacrifices America’s brave men and women have made and continue to make to protect our freedoms on the front lines in the war against radical Islamic extremism.
As a national party chairman you have an obligation to be straightforward with American voters. Continuing to air this ad, and others like it, is inconsistent with that obligation. Your responses to the falsity and the prohibited financing of this ad demonstrate that the DNC does not feel constrained by the law from running the ad. I am hopeful, however, that in light of this new revelation, simple common decency will prevail upon the DNC, and you will pull this advertisement off the air immediately.
Get your mute buttons ready, the attack ads have begun.
Today John McCain provided more details on his healthcare plan in Tampa, Fl….he promised to work with states to find creative ways to cover approximately 7 million Americans with pre-existing conditions who would have difficulty getting insurance. At the same time his campaign released an ad touting the already released cornerstone of his plan…a voluntary alternative to employer paid insurance:
While McCain chose healthcare as the focus of his first issue ad as the presumptive GOP nominee, the SEIU in Ohio launched its first attack ad
The ads are not only on domestic issues, the DNC unveiled an attack ad against McCain for his “100 yrs” remarks at a NH town hall mtg in January.
The ad excerpts McCain’s remarks in context then follows with some tough political hits, but the RNC is screaming foul. They want networks to refuse to air the ad asserting that it is “false and defamatory.”
In addition the RNC is threatening legal action arguing that the DNC unlawfully coordinated the ads’ message with the Clinton and Obama campaigns. They are not showing their hand prematurely by presenting evidence of such illegally coordinated communication, but there are a few people who have worked for both the DNC and the campaigns in recent months.
The RNC complaint appears flimsy on the surface, but they may have more cards to play. In the meantime the RNC has pout out a web ad aimed at shaming Obama for countenancing attacks on McCain.
Jim Angle starts the reporting on the ongoing Rev. Wright saga. Rev. Wright appeared at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and by all accounts kept the controversy alive. Major and Carl report on how it is playing on the campaign trail for Democrats and John McCain.
New Orleans, La:
For the second day in a row, John McCain strongly repudiated the negative ad put out by the NC GOP which uses video of Barack Obama’s former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright saying “God**** America.” The ad ends saying, “North Carolina is not ready for Obama”.
When McCain was asked again today by reporters during his tour of the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, he reiterated his dismay and said he wished the N.C. GOP would stop airing it. He did however say there was no way he could force them to cease and desist. When asked if he would censure the NC GOP by not allowing them seats at the Convention he hedged, suggesting that he would wait to see if they would respond to his request to stop running it.
Though Hillary Clinton’s big win over Barack Obama was THE story out of Pennsylvania, there were candidates on the GOP ballot too.
John McCain has long since clinched the Republican nomination so the Keystone primary results are basically irrelevant as evidenced by the 800 thousand votes that were cast in the Republican race, as compared to the more than 2.2 million Democratic ballots cast BUT….
McCain got 575,000K votes or 73 percent. Ron Paul, who did a little campaigning in Pennsylvania received 125,000 votes or 16 percent. And Mike Huckabee won 90,000 votes for 11 percent.
Huckabee endorsed McCain weeks ago and will campaign publicly for John McCain starting Friday in Little Rock.
Paul raised surprising amounts of money last year, and still has plenty to spend but has given no indication that he intends it.
McCain has used this uncontested time to work on GOP unity, self definition, and expanding his party with gutsy visits to Selma, Alabama to court black voters and Youngstown, Ohio to give unemployed blue-collar manufacturing workers some straight talk about the need to retrain for new jobs that will last and compete in the new economy.
The fact that McCain, without serious competition, only got 3/4ths of the GOP votes in a key general election bellweather swing state may cause some to speculate that he’s still having trouble unifying his party…but from the moment his major rivals dropped out major polls including Gallup have said more than of 80 percent of GOP voters are comfortable with McCain.
There is little doubt that Republicans will rally around McCain (and against Democrats) in the general election…if he is to win however it will require Independents and Reagan Democrats. It is his efforts to court THEM that may matter most…
John McCain kicked off his ‘Time for Action Tour’ at Selma, Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge where civil rights marchers in ‘65 were tear gassed & clubbed.
Selma’s part of “The Southern Black Belt” so named initially for it’s rich soil but now for the 96 distressed rural counties across the old south - where blacks often outnumber whites.
While democrats pound one another, McCain hopes to court minorities, moderates and independents…but his remarks didn’t impress one of the few African Americans who turned out to hear him. She said McCain had been invited to the Selma Civil Rights Museum and he declined to visit.
Pittsburgh, PA:
John McCain makes a populist economic pitch and offers some relief today at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The gas tax holiday is part of the short term economic stimulus plan, he will push in Congress as a senator this year, but he has long term plans for his presidency too.
“I will send to Congress a reform to increase the exemption – with the goal of doubling it from 3,500 dollars to 7,000 dollars for every dependent, in every family in America”.
McCain would eliminate the alternative minimum tax entirely.
“I will also send to the Congress a middle-class tax cut – a complete phase-out of the Alternative Minimum Tax to save more than 25 million middle-class families more than 2,000 dollars every year.”
There is help on the way for small businesses too:
“I will send to Congress a proposal to cut the taxes these employers pay, from a rate of 35 to 25 percent”.
Young people can look forward to changes in the student loan program designed to make college more affordable.
To pay for it all McCain would freeze non-military & veteran discretionary spending and begin a “prompt and thorough review” of the budgets of every federal program, department and agency. McCain says it will save $100 billion a year.
He’d reform the Medicare Rx drug benefit by charging more to wealthier patients.
“Those who can afford to buy their own prescription drugs should be expected to do so.”
He’d form a Bipartisan commission on reforming social security and medicare and says all options including privatization are on the table.
He hit both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s plans to let the Bush tax cuts expire which he says would amount to the biggest tax hike since the Great Depression.
” All these tax increases are the fine print under the slogan of “hope”: They’re going to raise your taxes by thousands of $s per year – & they have the audacity to hope you don’t mind”.
He slammed both Democrats for opposing free trade and the Columbian Free Trade Agreement
“We can compete with anyone. Senators Obama and Clinton think we should hide behind walls, bury our heads and industries in the sand, and hope we have enough left to live on while the world passes us by”
But he also criticizes the GOP for congressional pork barrel spending and President Bush for not using his veto pen enough.
“For Republicans, it starts with reclaiming our good name as the party of spending restraint. Somewhere along the way, too many Republicans in Congress became indistinguishable from the big-spending Democrats they used to oppose. The only power of government that could stop them was the power of veto, and it was rarely used.”
Sen. John McCain raised more than $15 million in March for his presidential campaign, more than any month since he started running. It’s way short of his democratic rivals.
He is returning $3 million in donations given for the General election but contributors are being asked to resend the money to his legal fund (see “McCain and the Money” April 4th post). A source says the money was raised primarily from large donors but he did receive $3.2 million from internet and small donations.
Obama raised $40 million for his primary race in March, the majority of which came from small donors. Clinton raised $20 million.
Taken together various steps and utterances from McCain insiders over the last few weeks make it clear he intends to accept taxpayer funded matching funds for the general election.
Winning Hand Still Loses? West Virginia voters expected to give Clinton needed boost, Obama nets more superdelegates | BRIEFING BOOK (pdf)• Still Fighting, Clinton Grapples With $20 Million Debt• Watch FNC West Virginia Primary Coverage, 7 p.m. ET
Hagee Sorry for Bashing Catholics Pastor and prominent McCain supporter expresses ‘deep regret’ for calling the Catholic Church ‘the great whore’
Arsonists Sought in Fla. Wildfires; 100 Homes Burned Investigators are searching for one or more arsonists who apparently started a string of fires around a city on Florida’s Atlantic coast, destroying or damaging about 100 homes, a police chief said Tuesday.
