I'm so sure.
Posted on 10/05/2008 2:20:37 PM PDT by hecht
If McCain Doesn't Want to Talk Fannie and Freddie, Why Is He Running?
Palin is bringing up Barack Obama's long connection to William Ayers... okay.
I don't doubt that not enough Americans know about Obama and his ties to Ayers, and what an unrepentant domestic terrorist and SOB Ayers is. But that message is going to come up against a media that is hostile, determined to downplay the ties and/or willing to lie. (What the heck got into CNN lately? The past few weeks, they're getting things 180 degrees flat wrong, again and again, about easily verifiable facts and the mistakes always benefit Obama. When all the mistakes point in the same direction, one suspects they're not really mistakes.)
But I cannot emphasize enough how much the Campaign Spot's readership is yearning for the Republican nominee to lay out the various ways that Democrats on Capitol Hill aided and abetted the mismanagement and risky gambles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Atrocious management at Fannie and Freddie isn't the sole reason for our financial mess, but it's a big one. And there were certain voices in Congress, generally on the right, who saw it as risky, and a lot of loud voices on the Hill, generally on the left, insisting that nothing was wrong.
The RNC web ad is a pretty good start, but how many will see it? (About 155,000 so far, in an electorate that will be measured in the tens of millions, probably considerably more than 2004's 122 million.) Can the 1:30 version be cut down and put on television? Why can't John McCain and Sarah Palin make the points about the how the crisis was built illustrated in the "Burning Down the House" (with the revised music) YouTube video? Could McCain please, please bring up some of this in Tuesday's debate?
Don't the American people deserve to know that Democrat Barney Frank, the ranking member and now chairman of the House, said, “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing”? Isn’t the fact that the ranking Democrat in charge of oversight of Fannie Mae was in a sexual relationship with a high-ranking Fannie Mae executive a glaring conflict of interest ? Isn’t it worth noting that Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters insisted, “we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines”? Shouldn’t the American people know that Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks insist that “there's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong with Fannie Mae”?
If nothing else, shouldn’t we salute Democratic Rep. Artur Davis for saying, “Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.” (His statement also criticized Republicans for lax regulation of Wall Street.)
One has to suspect that Obama's ties to Wright, Rezko and Ayers — sounds like a law firm of evil — have persuaded just about all the voters that they're going to persuade. But Americans are furious over the financial mess, and eager to blame somebody. The McCain campaign would be doing the nation a service by spelling out exactly whose bad decisions helped get us into this mess and how.
The excuses given by an unnamed source to U.S. News and World Report will not fly, and Spruiell's objections are spot-on. I might even be harsher - does McCain want to be president and lead on all issues, or does he just want to handle the easily-explained issues? If John McCain doesn't feel that the Democrats' refusal to confront mismanagement of government-backed institutions that gambled and lost, requiring a massive infusion of taxpayer dollars, isn't worth making an argument about, then you might as well let Obama have the presidency.
(And ever since the convention speech, I've gotten several e-mails a day, with many readers saying, "Since you're in a position to suggest lines to Palin's team, why don't you tell her to say, 'blah blah blah.' Some are great, some are okay, and some are dreadful. But I haven't forwarded any, and don't plan on doing so, since my job is to write about the campaigns instead of writing for them. I'd urge readers to use their best lines themselves.)
It is FAR too late in the game to try to tie the economy to the Dems. Wasting too much time on this will lead to an Obama landslide of Reaganesque proportions. The President gets blamed for the economy, regardless of the facts.
While it is important that Kurtz goes after the terrorist connections I feel its far more important to reveal what Obama and Ayers did with those CAC funds. This gives the American public an idea what direction Obama would take as POTUS once entrenched in office. That is something Joe Sixpack will be able grab on to far easier than the terrorist charge/connection which MSM finds easy to dismiss.http://www.theusmat.com/
Wasn’t one of McCain’s top advisors a lobbyist whose firm collected millions from F&F?
This fact might be preventing McCain from going on the warpath and naming names-——he has “his own” name.
They don’t call it “the stupid party” for nothing.
“What the heck got into CNN lately? The past few weeks, they’re getting things 180 degrees flat wrong..”
They are not wrong because of misinformation that they may have received — they are flat out lying. What do you expect from CNN?
That is already happening. When the likes of SNL and Alex Baldwin are already starting to do that the word must be starting to get out. Fox had an hour long show last night (replayed today) that did a good job explaining this.
I think McCain can do a lot in the debate also explaining the blame for the economy.
Normally that is the case. This time however there are days of C-Span testimony showing who is to blame. Use it McCain and the GOP!
Huh? I thought he was lying . . . covering his own you-know-what . . . possibly mulling over pushing it harder in the future to make things hard for Obama without spoiling Hillary's chances in 2012 . . .
Fine, I will follow your suggestion. Ignore any possibility that McCain may not level an honest blow to the liberals. Time will tell.
Game on Tuesday.
Don’t forget the sweetheart loans from Countrywide to Jim Johnson!
The beginning of those risky subprime loans was Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin changing the rules at Fannie/Freddie. Bill’s going to need the services of Sandy Bergular again.
Many people are rightly frightened about the economy, and all the media lets them hear is Obama promising to protect them from “greed”. They need to know that Obama got a lot of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie, as did other politicians who swore there was no problem. We have video clips of the liberals all saying there is no problem, while McCain and others said that there was a problem brewing. It would be a devastating ad to show those clips. The simple but true explanation is that Fannie and Freddie were under political pressure to make bad loans, these bad loans were packaged with good loans to disguise the problem and these bad loans are a big part of what is undermining the economy. And this is mostly the Democrats’ doing. This is a gross oversimplification but the McCain campaign should be on the offensive. They don’t have to explain the whole economy, just the major part of what went wrong.
BTTT
AMEN! McCain is actually doing the country a disservice by not making an absolute stink about Fannie and Freddie.
As a candidate it’s his job to hold the opposing party accountable and to use the platform he’s been given to see the truth gets out.
It would be SO easy to parlay such an attack into an attack on Democrat-run socialized health care. It’s just unconscionable.
As far as the Ayers, Rezko stuff, et al voters assume it’s just typical campaign dirt and tune it out no matter the merits.
Fannie and Freddie affects pocket books and tax bills, it’s an unbelievably potent issue and McCain is guilty of campaign malpractice for not making the center of an attack on Obama.
I completely disagree with Geraghty here. There’s 30 days to go, this Fannie/Freddie thing is too complicated, and it returns the conversation right back to the economy which is Obama’s turf.
All this attack will do is satisfy the conservatives who want justice (I’m among them), but it won’t persuade anyone as Obama and the MSM muddy the waters with who took lobbying money from whom.
Hit the trillion in spending, raising taxes during a recession, Rezko, Ayers, and Wright. These are simple and easy to understand for those undecideds who — if you’ve watched those focus groups — aren’t made up of the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.
Yes, the column is wrong. It was the Democrats who introduced Fannie Mae into the election, with Paulson pulling his October Surprise. Sure, McCain and Palin need to address it, but it’s hardly the only thing they need to talk about.
Moreover, what needs to be done is to show how OBAMA is linked to the Fannie Mae fiasco, and the only way to do that is precisely through the Ayers connection, the Community Action stuff, and his lawsuit against a bank in Chicago for not giving out enough subprime mortgages.
It’s irrelevant that Barney Frank is guilty as hell. Let the voters in Massachusetts worry about that. McCain needs to destroy Obama, not Frank.
My thoughts exactly. Glad National Review is coming round. What bloody well took them so long?
1. Economy. To win this battle it is a must to explain how this happened.
2. Energy independence. McCain has a much better plan than Obama, he needs to use this.
3. Obama's character.
I agree on all three. The economy & energy must be discussed since they are costing voters money/pain right now. I also agree that Obama's free ride must end and his negatives need to go up.
I'm so sure.
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