* The leftist who wanted Obama to undo everything the Bush administration had done in the last eight years.
* The right-winger who wanted to be able to run on a platform that blames Obama for the years of financial damage that preceded his administration.
* The person who has health insurance, hasn't (yet) been hurt by the current system and doesn't want to help pay for those who have.
* The voter who may not have liked the imperial presidency of Bush/Cheney but resents the messiness of having Congress' constitutional responsibilities returned to Congress.
* The Social Security and Medicare beneficiary who thinks there won't be any curbs on those programs unless the healthcare bill passes -- even though there will be more limitations if nothing changes and the country can't pay for the escalating entitlements.
But the solution the angry voter seems to have chosen is to return to power the party that caused all the problems Obama hasn't yet been able to fix.
Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, defended himself from allegations of campaign finance improprieties on Sunday, saying the Washington Post should be "ashamed of itself" for running a story highlighting irregularities from his 2006 Senate campaign in Maryland.
The (now convicted) former finance chair of Steele's own Senate campaign made the allegations in question. Here's some more info:
In March 2006 or thereabouts Turner filed the necessary paperwork to have her company disbanded but supposedly her ghost company did work for the Steele Senate campaign in October of 2006 and July 2007. Sounds very Chicago, though it happened in Maryland. [...]
[W]hat obviously raises red flags here is the timing of her business dissolution paperwork and the supposed work she did for campaign which was followed by the payments.
The WaPo contains other allegations by Fabian against Steele but the other allegations about campaign funds beings shifted between a state campaign fund to a federal one frankly aren't as sexy as the payment to his sister's dead company.
This is obviously not the way any party chairman wants to start his term in office, especially a Republican chair at this point in history where all of his efforts need to be aimed at rebuilding the party following two unsuccessful national elections,
Maybe this will turn out to be nothing more than Fabian's unproven allegations. If that's the case it will soon be forgotten. That has to be the prayer of Steele and fellow Republican officials right now.
If there's one thing the Republicans like to quack about, it's their predilection for prayer.
But in his interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Michael Steele seemed to suggest, as he did back in January, that government jobs are not, in fact, really jobs.
Rather, Steele said, government jobs are "just work." (Is work not a job?) The newly-minted RNC Chairman added that when it comes to the private sector, job loss is never permanent.
"They come back though, George," said Steele. "That's the point. They've gone away before and they come back."
Stephanopolous did his best to sift through the logic, pointing out that millions of private sector jobs have been lost in just this past year.
There he is, folks: The RNC Chair. This is the man who represents the Republican party's collective-- and embarrassingly stunted-- mindset. Show him your appreciation by donating to the Democratic party.
Joe Sudbay writes: "Maybe Joe was meeting with his PR team trying to get his country music deal. No matter, even Joe the Plumber has gotten what he can out of John McCain."
Yesterday, I posted a quickie about how IWRC* Palin is geographically challenged. She referred to Afghanistan as "our neighboring country". Yglesias takes it a step further:
In an interview with the Denver Post yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) attempted to explain why he voted for the Wall Street bailout, despite previously saying that a bill that included earmarks would be “unacceptable.” McCain remarked, “I talk to…economists that have said, ‘Look, you don’t understand how serious — ’” before cutting himself off. Seeming to realize that he was once again admitting he doesn’t understand the economy, McCain corrected himself saying, “I mean, ‘We have to understand how serious this is.’”
Oops. Gramm-pa's losing it more and more every day now.
In a speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa today, Sen. John McCain said that if he were president, he would fire Chris Cox, the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with regulating the stock market. From McCain’s prepared remarks :
[...] "The Chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were President today, I would fire him.”
The only problem is, as ABC’s David Wright points out, “while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair,” the president does not have the authority to “fire” the head of the independent commission.
From time to time, presidents have attempted to remove commissioners who have proven “uncooperative.” However, the courts have general upheld the independence of commissioners. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt fired a member of the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court ruled he acted unconstitutionally.
But why let a little thing like constitutional authority get in the way of a fiery, populist stump speech?
Add it to the list of confused, out of touch, lying remarks by Gramm-pa J Sid.
Did John McCain really just suggest that the Prime Minister of Spain might be one of America's enemies? One of those international leaders he'd refuse to meet with?
Does he want to liberate Spain too?
¡Dios mío! El Sid = El Stupido y El Viejo. Ayayay!
And the way it's being interpreted in the Spanish press is that McCain got confused about the fact that Spain is a country in Europe, rather than a rogue state in Latin America. [...]
In the interview, McCain is asked about Hugo Chavez, the situation in Bolivia and then about Raul Castro. He responds to each of these with expected answers about standing up to America's enemies, etc. Then the interviewer switches gears and asks about Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister. And McCain replies -- very loose translation -- that he'll establish close relations with our friends and stand out to those who want to do us harm. The interviewer has a double take and seems to think McCain might be confused. So she asks it again. But McCain sticks to the same evasive answer.
Well, it doesn't appear to have registered in the American press yet. But the story keeps bubbling in the Spanish press about McCain's bizarre gaffe about the Spanish Prime Minister. Here's the front page cut out from the Spanish news channel that did the interview. They've talked to the interviewer now. Her take? McCain didn't know who Zapatero was ...
In our News interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove. As with Politico’s question about home ownership, he didn’t know and had to ask a nearby aide. “A Cadillac CTS,” she told him. But then the senator was quick to point out that he had bought his daughter a Prius — the prefect (sic) halo symbol for his green pretensions. […]
We also pressed McCain on the home issue, though at that time he was only willing to reveal two of his dwellings: one in Phoenix and a second home in Sedona. And he was quite proud of the fact that he had installed solar panels on the Sedona pad.
It doesn't say how many cars he owned/owns. 7? 8? 9?
Good lord, if this is what a maverick is, then Jon Lovitz's conflicted character Tommy Flanagan (see video) is a maverick:
Senator John McCain is so quick to pick up his gold-colored cellphone to solicit advice — from senators, campaign consultants, even the stray former deputy press secretary — that aides, concerned about his tendency to adopt the last opinion he has heard, have tried to cut back on the time he has to make calls.
Mr. McCain is known to sign off on big campaign decisions and then to march off his own reservation. Two weeks ago, he publicly disagreed with his own spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, after she used a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama that he had approved after careful strategizing within his campaign. Ms. Hazelbaker raced out of the Virginia campaign headquarters and refused to take Mr. McCain’s calls of apology, aides said, and a plan to have Republican members of Congress use the same critical line about Mr. Obama’s foreign trip fell apart.
Yeah, I'd want him running the country.
Even now, after a shake-up that aides said had brought an unusual degree of order to Mr. McCain’s disorderly world in the last month, two of his pollsters are at odds over parts of the campaign’s message, while past and current aides have been trading snippy exchanges debating the wisdom of attack advertisements he has aimed at Mr. Obama.
Why, if I didn't know better, I'd say the candidate of hopeless is starting to sound a little like-- dun dun dun-n-n-- Hillary! Uh-oh, read on, it gets better:
[His campaign] offers a contrast to the more rigidly controlled and nearly corporate management style that has marked the campaign of Mr. Obama, his Democratic counterpart. If anything, it recalls the freewheeling ways of the last Republican senator to win his party’s presidential nomination, Bob Dole in 1996.
While he avidly seeks advice and contrary opinions, he routinely resists basic political counseling, such as when aides pleaded with him not to campaign sitting on a horseshoe-shaped couch in the back of his bus because they feared it made him look like an old man rumbling around the country in an R.V. He refused.
What a maverick.
For now, Mr. McCain’s executive style looms as a potential obstacle to his hopes of getting to the White House. His campaign has been rocked by personnel changes and often well-publicized differences. And for all the efforts to maintain discipline, he continues to be plagued by misstatements and apparent gaffes as he at times bucks what his own campaign is trying to do.
What a bumbling, disorganized, confused leader he would make.
In recent weeks, Mr. Murphy and another former top aide, John Weaver, were critical of Mr. McCain’s advertisements attacking Mr. Obama. The two men privately urged Mr. Schmidt and Charlie Black, a senior adviser, to get off that course and spend as much time building up Mr. McCain as tearing down Mr. Obama, advice also offered by a member of Mr. McCain’s panel of outside advertising consultants, Alex Castellanos. They met stiff, angry resistance, several people familiar with the episode said.
Confused, mixed messages, angry resistance... yeah, that's the ticket.
If it pays off for Obama, then keep "having fun", J Sid. But if you don't think you're running a negative campaign, you're more confused than we thought:
On whether the campaign's general tone has been negative, McCain said, "I don’t think our campaign is negative in the slightest. I’m, we think it’s got a lot of humor in it and we’re having fun and enjoying it..."
Who could have imagined that the seasoned, mossy, wizened 72-year-old would act less mature than the inexperienced, presumptuous, fledgling 47-year-old?
The other day, Rachel Maddow, or someone she interviewed (Howard Fineman?), strongly suggested that Obama should start attacking McCain's weaknesses (so many, so little time). Voila:
Obama Camp Hits McCain On Confusions
Here's a memo from newly titled "senior strategist for communications and message" Robert Gibbs painting McCain in the deep purple of confusion.
The self-professed candidate of “straight talk” and “experience” spent today changing his position on gay adoption, adopting Senator Obama’s position that we need more troops in Afghanistan after having resisted taking that position, flip flopping on whether he’d send U.S. or NATO troops (he actually offered three different explanations on where those additional troops would come from), and referring to a country that hasn’t existed since 1992 for the second time in two days.
Yum, read the whole thing, with all its gory details. It's deelish!
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