Obama calls criticism of spouses unfair, HRC says she will continue until there is a nominee, Major reports. Carl follows McCain as he accuses Obama of foreign policy inexperience.

from www.hulu.com posted with vodpod

Major reports on Obama’s aggressive linking of McCain to the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Carl is with Republican hopeful, John McCain as he addresses the NRA convention in Louisville, Ky.

from www.hulu.com posted with vodpod

As McCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, collects questionaires from campaign staffers about their past lobbying and political activity it’s important to remember what happened to the McCain campaign last year.
McCain’s bloated 2007 campaign imploded after spending huge amounts of money and nose-diving in the polls.
Davis, last June and July, cut most people loose and put a skeleton crew together of people willing and able to work for free. This meant he needed volunteers with separate incomes- some were lobbyists and political professionals with histories.
Campaigns routinely let people go when their outside pursuits conflict with the candidate’s desired image.
That is what the McCain camp is checking for now.
The revelation that two McCain aides had ties to the military Junta in Myanmar sparked this house cleaning; they are no longer with the campaign. A third aide, Craig Shirley, who’d been involved in an anti-Obama 527 has now also been moved on.
It was overdue, not so much for any one individual to go, but for the campaign to KNOW what they had been involved in.
There is still a haphazard feel to much of what the McCain campaign does.
While they have plans, tactics and a strategy, there are bugs in the system that often complicate the message.
Two weeks ago McCain was planning a theme of courting conservatives and intended to highlight judicial conservatism.
The week started with Cinco de Mayo, so he instead found himself starting a “conservative week” pitching comprehensive immigration reform, opposed by most conservatives as amnesty for illegal aliens.
This week was supposed to court independents and moderates with his anti-global warming agenda…he ends the week at the NRA convention talking gun rights, a conservative favorite.
The conflicting messages and events are a temporary glitch of the last 2 weeks which illustrates how some events and devlopments are reacted to by the McCain campaign rather than managed and massaged.
The staff housecleaning is not a big deal – beyond it’s timing.
It should have happened a long time ago.
The McCain campaign needs to tighten up fast.
Obama is gonna come out of his corner in top flight fighting condition with a battle tested and fleet-of-foot team.
McCain’s got a strong team and strong campaign plan. But this type of inside baseball staff problem illustrates that it is not yet exactly firing on all 12 cylinders.
He has had more than two months without a GOP rival, to get things in order…crunch time has arrived.

Major reports on top Dems coming out in support of Obama after President Bush suggested he was an “appeaser”. Carl Cameron outlines John McCain’s expansive vision of American after four years of a McCain presidency.

from www.hulu.com posted with vodpod

Portland, Oregan:

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:

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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. Oklahoma Senator 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

McCain has his work cut out for him.

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

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.

from www.hulu.com posted with vodpod

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.

See what he had to say

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