Posted on 10/13/2008 1:21:13 AM PDT by MartinaMisc
It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.
He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.
He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.
But I’m not convinced by such claims of inevitability. McCain isn’t Bush. The media isn’t all-powerful. And the economic crisis still presents an opportunity to show leadership.
The 2008 campaign is now about something very big — both our future prosperity and our national security. Yet the McCain campaign has become smaller.
What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.
And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
McCain brought up Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers wife, but he needs to follow up and tell Americans what a terrorist she’s been too, and make Øbama talk about their relationship
McCain’s campaign has sent an incoherent message about 0bama.
It has failed to define him.
What good is talking about William Ayers or ACORN if the campaign doesn’t use these associations to draw a conclusion about 0bama?
McCain needs to use not one, but rather the aggregate of 0bama’s influences in life to bring him into focus. Frank Marshall Davis, Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Saul Alinsky, ACORN, The Democratic Socialists of America, The New Party. What do they all have in common?
The answer: a dangerous, radical, far left ideology.
McCain must make this about ideology, and take 0bama’s associations as instructive. He should highlight that Saul Alinsky taught radicals to cut their hair, put on a suit, and take down the government from the inside, and 0bama was so versed in Alinsky’s tactics that he taught them to ACORN activists.
McCain’s ACORN ad reveals that 0bama taught for ACORN, but it never reveals the substance of what he taught.
The substance is what we need to understand 0bama. The substance is what makes it tangible.
McCain needs to call 0bama wolf in sheep’s clothing. A clean-cut radical with very little papertrail infiltrating the system in order to destroy it.
Exposing 0bama’s radical agenda would be enough to ensure his defeat. It is what McCain must do.
Strange frontpage says 21 replies and I am stuck on 6.
There is the fraud but give him credit, he managed to tap into a young demographic that typically doesn't vote. He has a base that is really pumped whereas McCain really had nothing of a campaign until Gov. Palin came along.
Despite it all, had the banking crisis not occurred, McCain would still be be ahead.
Add some Lawrence Welk bubbles, maybe a children's choir and smiley face buttons and it's all the way for John McCain.
What could possibly go wrong?
Anyone spending time here attacking McCain instead of attacking Obama is doing exactly what they hope articles like this make you do.
Remember last week’s article about Obama’s stinky plane and disorganized staff?
Cheerful, yes, fine, Bill. But open and accessible to whom, exactly? The voting public? I think they’re doing that, and it seems to work well as and when they do. The press? They’ve tried that, and it seems to be working...somewhat less well. I’m being kind. The major media players appear to be so much in the other party’s pocket that except for the occasional “Sister Souljah” moment, dealing with them seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. And maybe even then.
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Forget how you feel about the messenger for a second — the McCain campaign has not been a good one. His message is all over the place — splatter paint, like something created by Jackson Pollock. He’s almost incoherent, and not helped by the press, which doesn’t let most of his message through anyway, even assuming that he has one.
Kristol is wrong on the solution, but not completely off on the analysis of the problem — the problem being McCain himself, a fine man but a flawed candidate who continues to think that this campaign is about him, not about the party or the country. Kristol, as an early supporter, probably can’t go as far as I just did; he has to blame the campaign, not the candidate.
Frankly, in my estimation, all that’s keeping McCain afloat right now are 1) doubts about Obama, and 2) Palin. The MSM is working overtime to deal with those two issues, assuring everyone that Obama is just fine, that Palin is Hitler in a dress, and that the outlyer 10%+ polls are the real ones — knocking off McCain’s supports and suggesting that Obama’s victory is inevitable.
McCain is helping. I think he wants to finish his campaign as “a good guy,” once again respected by his media buddies — who will all then blame Palin for all the problems and accept him back into the fold.
Abyway, what should happen is not completely the opposite of what Kristol suggests, but certainly different: more media exposure, but continue the attacks, and a strong debate performance centered on the attacks and the economy. But if — as I suspect he will — McCain gives another sleepwalker debate performance, then it’s all over: an Obama sweep. Buckley, Brooks, & Will will be happy.
This is inside the beltway speak. This is the media elite speaking. This campaign will come down to you and I - all of us contributing money and time to McCain.
I agree with this article and have been complaining for weeks about this and I’m starting to think his campaign is being run by an Obama or DNC mole.
But McCain is not showing good leadership in surrounding himself with a good campaign crew and I have to question how he would handle his cabinet.
That doesn’t mean I would vote for Obama, or not vote for McCain, I’m just concerned because when you have people in a frenzy at your campaign rallies to get tougher and begging your candidate to get off their duff and BEAT THE OPPONENT because we are all terrified of the possibility of this candidate. And you are trying to convince them that he is really just a good guy! It’s really frustrating. This is not just a battle for who has the best economic plan. This is a battle for the direction of our country in a most dire way and for some reason John McCain hasn’t got this through his head.
Kristol is just plain wrong—again!
Kristol is just plain wrong—again!
This is inside the beltway speak. This is the media elite speaking. This campaign will come down to you and I - all of us contributing money and time to McCain.
The problem is not McCain's campaign staff. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt have worked miracles with what they have, which amounts to a horde of pissed off Conservatives and Sarah Palin. The problem is McCain himself.
He thinks that he's Teddy Roosevelt running for President in 1904, a time when that politics was a bit more gentlemanly, at least on the surface, and can't bring himself to get down and dirty with Chicago street thug Obama and his criminal ACORN and foreign backers.
Governor Palin is doing a fabulous job under the difficult circumsyances she's being forced to work under, namely toeing McCain's line, but when McCain tells a GOP rally that we have nothing to fear from Obama, what the hell can you do???????????
The problem is not McCain's campaign staff. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt have worked miracles with what they have, which amounts to a horde of pissed off Conservatives and Sarah Palin. The problem is McCain himself.
He thinks that he's Teddy Roosevelt running for President in 1904, a time when that politics was a bit more gentlemanly, at least on the surface, and can't bring himself to get down and dirty with Chicago street thug Obama and his criminal ACORN and foreign backers.
Governor Palin is doing a fabulous job under the difficult circumsyances she's being forced to work under, namely toeing McCain's line, but when McCain tells a GOP rally that we have nothing to fear from Obama, what the hell can you do???????????
The problem is not McCain's campaign staff. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt have worked miracles with what they have, which amounts to a horde of pissed off Conservatives and Sarah Palin. The problem is McCain himself.
He thinks that he's Teddy Roosevelt running for President in 1904, a time when that politics was a bit more gentlemanly, at least on the surface, and can't bring himself to get down and dirty with Chicago street thug Obama and his criminal ACORN and foreign backers.
Governor Palin is doing a fabulous job under the difficult circumsyances she's being forced to work under, namely toeing McCain's line, but when McCain tells a GOP rally that we have nothing to fear from Obama, what the hell can you do???????????
The New York Time said this?
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