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.

Columbus, Ohio:

Reported by Jake Gibson, Producer  

McCain laid it all out today in a broad reaching speech on how he saw the world after four years of his administration.

It was a little prospective retrospection, fast-forwarding to 2013 in order to look back on his first four years in the White House.  He painted a pretty picture!

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

Columbus, Ohio:

John McCain came to Columbus, Ohio to outline his vision of America and the world after four years of his presidency. His campaign also launched a new web ad highlighting that expansive vision of:
The Middle East stabilized.
Nuclear terror threat reduced.
Border security strengthened.
Energy independence advanced.
Wasteful spending reformed.
Health care choice delivered.
Economic confidence restored.

In his speech in Columbus, Ohio, JSM plans to go back to the future laying out his vision – or at least what he VERY OPTIMISTICALLY envisions the nation and world will be like AFTER what he anticipates will have been a TREMENDOUSLY successful 1st term as president. (The speech comes a few days after a comic six minute video from UBCComedy where a man wakes from a coma after seven years to see the new and improved world after Barack Obama)

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won.”

Internationally, McCain boldly predicts Al Qaeda in Iraq will have been defeated, Afghanistan will ALSO be stabilized and NO Major attack will have occured in the US since 9-11. He forecasts stunning diplomatic successes negotiating the elimination of stubborn rogue nuclear threats that have for yrs been unresolvable.

“Concerted action by the great democracies of the world has persuaded a reluctant Russia and China to cooperate in pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and North Korea to discontinue its own.”

McCains economic forecast is all sunny skies too. He assumes implementation of aggressive tax and spending cuts and that congress will have adopted his domestic agenda.

“The United States has experienced several years of robust economic growth, and Americans again have confidence in their economic future.”

While Obama advocates hope, McCain predicts triumph: ever expanding global free trade will have made up for US job losses in manufacturing and other sectors

“New free trade agreements have been ratified and led to substantial increases in both exports and imports.”

McCain assumes cooperation with congress…on a host of long deadlocked issues, energy independence, revamping the tax code, public education, healthcare, medicare, even Social security.

“The reforms include some form of personal retirement accounts in safe and reliable index funds, such as have been available to government employees since their retirement plans were made solvent a quarter century ago.

Despite ardent opposition from his own party NOW to what many call amnesty for illegal immigrants McCain anticipates victory on comprehensive immigration reform which would include provisions for a guest worker program.

“the American people accepted the practical necessity to institute a temporary worker program and deal humanely with the millions of immigrants who have been in this country illegally. “

Only toward the end of his remarks does McCain acknowledge political opposition and how unlikely such wholesale success will be…he blames it on partisanship and the seemingly unending election cycle.

“This mindless, paralyzing rancor must come to an end. We belong to different parties, not different countries. We are rivals for the same power. But we are also compatriots. “

This almost idealistic and hopeful tone is sure to draw sharp reaction from the Dems!

Major Garrett reports on the Democratic race on the day of the W.Va primary, Carl is in North Bend, Wa and follows McCain’s second day of the  “global climate change” tour.

from www.hulu.com posted with vodpod

Major is in West Virginia following the Dem’s race on the eve of the primary there and Carl is in Portland, Oregon as McCain unveils his plan to tackle Global Climate Change.

from www.hulu.com posted with vodpod

Wake Forest, NC:

On a stunning spring day on the campaign trail in North Carolina, I chatted up Fred Thompson who was on the stump for the first time since dropping out, campaigning for John Mccain. McCain was giving a speech at Wake Forest University on judicial conservatism (see earlier post.)
When I asked Thompson if he experienced any ‘crash’ or difficulty readjusting to the pace of a slowed down normal life after his campaign, he paused, grinned and with a twinkle in his eye said:

“That’s one of the advantages of the way I campaigned”

He winked and joked that you don’t have to make that many adjustments.

I laughed out loud, and reminded Thompson that he and I have history together with him dissing his own candidacy in front of an open mike, he laughed and barked amiably:

“Who cares?”

Back before the NH primary as Thompson and I waited for FNC to take our interview live after his remarks to the famed “Politics and Eggs” breakfast, I joked to the producers that we were keeping the ‘next president’ waiting too long and we should go live quickly.

Thompson quipped for all to hear that HE too had a busy schedule.

Reporters took it as proof that Thompson was not a serious candidate.

In fact, Thompson both then, and again today, was attempting a self deprecating joke. It’s funny in all sorts of ways.

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