2008 USP(G)ET pt. II: counting the days to 2012 primary thread 1

Is the Keating Five thing really going to make any impact on the McCain campaign?

It depends. If they bring back the video of the old people who lost all their money in the courtroom trying to literally strangle Keating in the court, then that might bring back painful memories and resonate.

I think this is aimed toward the older and/or baby boomer crowd though.

its just noise to counter the Wright/Ayers noise (which also isn't gonna gain any traction)

what the Keating thing did was knock down the Ayers nonsense. IE, it was a prepared attack for when McCain pulled that stuff back out.

or what shakey said

the renewed offensive by surrogates on Fox today has been especially hilarious. One of them even had the brain damage to point out that while Hillary did exactly the same things, when she did it, it was "too little, too late."

^^^^genius!

it's quite a lol in the big picture, but talking points and debate "fact checking" is now trendy in mass media (for now), so Palin's lies and McCain's lie about saying Obama's lying, etc., is just for rallying the converted. It's all they can do now. And yeah yeah it could backfire, but probably not enough to make a difference. Although the backfiring upon the GOP is more just the added election stress from the Liar Liar thing moreso than people actually trying to followup on the statements, i.e. the thing that has probably rotted away at McCain's numbers slowly.

i don't even think it's just that they're lying, it's that they're getting called on it too regularly and it's giving the impression of their tactics as tactics, as negative campaigning. they obviously are dishonest, but they look dishonest. in the vp debate, palin would say obama had voted to tax families earning $42000, biden would respond that mccain had voted the same way, and palin would say nothing: it comes across as an admission of error.

i think the problem for the gop is that too much of the wright/ayers stuff occurred while obama was still a fledgling figure, to some - in the primaries, it was dragged out, and done with. he's since crafted his narrative, so rewinding to "what about reverend wright!" seems passé.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27053000/

Republican lawmakers: Stop Palin ethics probe
GOP state legislators say investigation is too political

updated 11:55 a.m. PT, Mon., Oct. 6, 2008
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Republicans are asking the state's highest court to block an abuse-of-power investigation into vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's firing of a state commissioner before a potentially embarrassing report on the matter is released.

Five GOP state lawmakers, in a brief filed Monday, say the inquiry has exceeded its authority and is too political.

Palin is the focus of a legislative investigation into allegations she abused her power by firing her public safety commissioner. The commissioner says he was pressured to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in a messy divorce with Palin's sister.

it could backfire easily too w/palin's vp debate insistence on looking forward and not talking about the past suddenly becoming "obama went to this dude's party 14 years ago!"

xpost yeah and palin is opening herself up to more direct hits about that too.

i'm a little depressed about the keating 5 shit now, because the prospect of another solid month of negative bullshit really depresses me. and it is kind of unpredictable -- who knows a turn to negativity might work for john mccain. a month is a long time.

but rly tho, they said BHO didn't know how to fight, and look, here he is, fighting. the ayers/wright stuff has been fully aired out in the primaries, and is part of a whole pile of nonsense brewing sub-rosa constantly. it's shit that, i think, has been fully digested by the public and hasn't made much of a difference since. the keating shit has been completely ignored the entire cycle and slots in perfectly next to the issue of the day: a financial scandal. mccain may have jabbed below the belt only to get walloped across the jaw.

heaven forbid we should know if a potential VP abused her power when she was governor. isn't it almost like admitting guilt? wouldn't they want her to be vetted if they knew she was innocent?

Joe, but it's TOO POLITICAL

but in a larger sense there's only so many turns an individual campaign can take. you can only rebrand on the fly so many times before the public gets sick of being asked to believe the changes, and mccain has worn out his welcome there i think. they already went negative once! and then it was mavericky reform, and then this, and then that, and then another thing...

if the cool headed vs. erratic meme has taken hold enough (put forward by none other than charles krauthammer! that's gotta hurt), it won't matter much what mccain says -- just more crazy bs from the angry loser.

the keating shit has been completely ignored the entire cycle

by the MSM, yes, but Obama's camp has definitely been biding their time and until October to drop it, which was a great move. The juxtaposition of it with the current financial turmoil couldn't have been more favorable to Obama. If there's any justice, a substantive scandal a la Keating Five should grip voters much more than Obama spending five minutes with a criminal.

he spends time with TERRORISTS is a very 2004 thing to say, but nobody believes a thing the republicans say about national security anymore anyway.

he spends time with DEREGULATORS is a little more au courant...

really they just have to play it up like "they have no answers, so they're resorting to pathetic attacks on issues that have been debunked months ago and oh by the way keating scandal" which seems to be what they're doing.

haha holy shit

someone paraphrase that clip?

god McCain is so stiff and awkward and painful to watch

he's losing his fucking shit

even McCain winced at the "Terrorist!" catcall.

In retrospect, had McCain suspended his campaign to *fight* the bailout and not do the opposite, he might be polling mightily close to Obama right now -- although it wouldn't be for any sane reasons, but still. I don't know anybody who's thrilled about the bailout. Maybe a dozen top-tier banking dudes, obviously.

Anyway, McCain lost his chance to be the lone banshee against the bailout. Oh well!

if he fought the bailout and the economy did even worse than it is now, im not sure it would have been a winning campaign strategy

i think the common perception that mccain suspended his campaign as a ploy rather than out of actual concern for the economy would lead to him dropping back, whatever the result was.

http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/sarah-palin-vogue2.jpg

"In retrospect, had McCain suspended his campaign to *fight* the bailout and not do the opposite, he might be polling mightily close to Obama right now"

Nope.

Gosh darn. Oh well.

i love how it seems like the Dow is dropping in real time throughout that petty attack speech.

what i've noticed w/r/t the attacks of the past several days is that mainstream media outlets are--within the stories, no less--debunking the claims made by mccain/palin.

its hysterical the degree to which the corner has become propaganda pusher rather than a place of discussion. at least after the palin nom. there was some back-and-forth discussion between True Believers and (somewhat) realists

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/06/in_fla_palin_goes_for_the_roug.html

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/10/06/PH2008100601159.jpg

production still from Mannequin 3: Road to the White House

how had i not heard this:

Like Obama, McCain too has a troublesome pastor in his past: the Reverend John Hagee. McCain actively spent more than a year courting Hagee to win his endorsement during the Republican primary, only to renounce the association last February after footage emerged of the pastor describing the Nazi holocaust as part of God's plan.

No idea. It was a big deal earlier in the year.

see that's why wright is "off limits" for mccain

He's not off limits so much as no one really gives a shit.

well mccain said he wasn't going there and i figured that was the reason, b/c he's got his own "unsavory pastor"

I like my savory pastors salty

Yeah, but Hagee wasn't his pastor and no matter how crazy a pastor is, it's not going to swing evangelicals (Hagee endorsed Bush IIRC.)

He said he wasn't going there because he was pretending to take the high road. I believe Palin brought him up earlier today anyway so much for that.

Credit this man for encouraging Ragin' Palin:

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/original/KristolThug.jpg

meanwhile TedStevensGate is heating up

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008230898_apstevenstrial.html

mccain and palin will try to compel the media to cover the wright angle again by stumping about the story and raise doubts about WHO IS THIS BLACK GUY, but it's an inefective media strategy, really. the first time around, wright was a juicy story but it was the media who did all the work on that story -- the clinton campaign got the media to work on their behalf without much coaching. then obama gave an historic speech on race and that was pretty much that. unless there is any NEW aspect of the wright story, cable news doesn't want to cover rev. wright anymore, it's a dead horse and they have no new content. so naturally, the networks will take the story of "john mccain is being negative" as their news and ha ha ha.

imho

we've missed you here, elmo. You posted more often

might be a good time to review a list of logical fallacies - a few faves from the nutball right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

yeah I mean it's not as if the media is interested in actually pursuing the question of "is Obama a muslim terrorist?" unless G. Gordon Liddy and Hannity count as the media. This is such a non-starter. Everything that could possibly be said about this tactic will have been said by tomorrow night (larry and wolf being a day late and a brain short as usual) and they'll have to try something else again. Hey, I have an idea. Let's put the two of them on teevee again for an hour or two, have all the fucking pundits call it a tie and watch another state turn blue.

hey i know! let's invest social security benefits in the stock market! no? ok, then let's make cuts in medicare. right? i'm old. yay florida! palin-mccain 08

http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Obama

Obama is likely to be Muslim because:

* Obama's background and education are Muslim
* Obama's middle name remains Muslim, meaning "descendant of Muhammad," which most Christians would not retain[8]
* Obama recently referred to his "Muslim faith"[9]
* Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather than the common American one[10]
* Obama, in his autobiography "Dreams from My Father" (1995), descibes Muslim Malcolm X as his favorite black leader
* Obama's claims of conversion to Christianity arose after he became politically ambitious, lacking a date of conversion or baptism.[11]