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Posted on 10/05/2008 8:23:34 PM PDT by tcrlaf
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday will launch a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the “Keating Five” savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain’s public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.
Pushing back against what it calls McCain's “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign is e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The overnight e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.
The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis.
Obama-Biden communications director Dan Pfeiffer said: “While John McCain may want to turn the page on his erratic response to the current economic crisis, we think voters will find his involvement in a similar crisis to be particularly interesting. His involvement with Keating is a window into McCain’s economic past, present, and future.”
Obama’s offensive comes after McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent two days telling voters, donors and reporters that Obama showed poor judgment in his relationship with the former radical William Ayers.
McCain’s campaign has vowed to make a major issue of Obama’s Chicago relationships in coming days, with a senior McCain official telling Politico that they are “the vehicle that allows us to question Obama’s truthfulness about his past and his plans for the future.”
The McCain campaign also plans to invoke money launderer Tony Rezko. Officials say they will not bring up Obama's former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, because McCain has forbade his campaign from using that as an attack. But the officials said outside groups supporting McCain might highlight Wright.
Responding to the Keating blast from the past, a Republican official said the Obama team seemed "frantic" at "the mere mention of the word 'Ayers.'"
“The fact that the Obama team is recycling this old garbage 24 hours after Bill Ayers entered the race is a testament to how worried the Obama camp is of an unfettered airing of his associations," the official said. "Obama is a clever enough politician to know that his unexplored relationships with terrorists and felons are a serious liability in a race this close.”
The Obama website says: “The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. ... The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules.”
In 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared McCain of corruption charges but cited him for “poor judgment” in meeting with federal regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr., a political patron who went to prison for fraud in connection with the collapse of the California-based Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which at the time was one of the biggest financial failures in the nation’s history.
Plus, he has many more shady affiliations than with just Ayers..
Obama can try to dredge up ancient history about McCain, but he’ll never be able to deny that his relationship with Ayers or Rezco is recent history.
Me too. Very good analysis and I agree 100%. I think McCain telegraphing his plans has put Obama completely off and it is showing going back to Keating 5 which is laughable.
Actually, one of the regulators is a 40+ year friend of Bush’s; they went to prep school and college together.
Dollar to a donut, if Wonderboy pushes this, DeConcini and maybe John H. Glenn will come out in an ad for McCain. I hated Glenn’s politics but I still admire him for his non-political career and accomplishments. Those two could put a screeching halt to Wonderboy’s smear. And I believe that they will.
“I’m rvoitier and I approve this post.”
Palin has to continue hitting Obama on this. Obama does not seem able to handle being criticized by her. If I had to guess, I’d say he doesn’t respect women as his equals in this profession and, in general, he hates whites, especially those he views as vastly inferior (ie “rednecks”) to him. Having Palin attack him is, in reality, baiting him. The one thing the McCain campaign would love is for him being forced to address the Ayers relationship personally. Because if he talks about it, then the media is forced to cover it, which ultimately gives it more coverage and then, perhaps (finally) some enterprising reporter in the MSM will put two and two together.
Right now his campaign is doing the absolute last thing they should be doing tactically to address this issue. They should be laughing it off and talking about whatever handout they want to promise this week. Instead they are wigging out about it. That tells you there is more there. So Palin will hit him more until the smoke cloud is big enough that Obama will be forced to respond in person.
And this is the guy Americans want facing down Putin?
from wikipedia on ‘Keating Five’-
McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981,[11] and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators.[31] Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona.[25] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.[32] In addition, McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.[7][33]
In the research I did earlier, I kept seeing articles that alluded to Michelle knowing Ayers and Dorhn a long time before she met Obama. In fact one article said that Dorhn got Michelle the job with the law firm. Sounds like someone has a lot more info.
yes but that is not in any way relevant to peoples perception, especially when 50 % of them don't know their @$$ from a hole in the ground. The WHOLE problem is not that McCain is guilty or anything close to it, in fact he was the token Republican in a gang of Democrats, but the fact the Democrats have successfully labeled the GOP as the cause of all problems and this just adds to the drumbeat. The GOP needed to attack long ago not just Barry but to hit the Democrat party which they have failed to do.
I think it’s much simpler than that. McCain is great at pulling punches. And obama can’t stop himself. He’s got that same psycho thing going that clinton had going. Order more popcorn.
If you think he is erratic now, wait until he gets elected if he does
He can sure star in a campaign where he is micromanaged and exposed to adoring crowds, has almost no decisions to make, at least before pollsters tell him what to do, he can lie and charm everyone or flip off people he loses his temper at (like Hillary),
but no one can run the USA on lies, tap dances, flip offs, and illusions (or delusions) of being a strong leader.
I lived in AZ during this time and alot was made of this. If I recall correctly DeConcini (d) was the bad apple.
Let the electorate know about each and every terrorist tie, money scandal, radical society, racist pal & shady deal that 0bomber has ever had. Don't hold back on any of the truth!
What’s the matter Barry? I thought you were going to play nice in the sandbox. McCain and Palin can not quit. They need to finish this. Who the hell ever said politics was warm and fuzzy?
the way I remember it from watching the actual hearings on C-Span is that McCain split from the meeting when he realized why it was called......Democrat lawyer Robert Bennett was the Special Counsel
McCain is an idiot. He waited too long, and now Obama’s negative barrage will drown out McCain’s Ayers/Rezko attacks.
Sarah Palin is like our fullback. She opened up a hole. Now McCain has to run through it.
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