McCain’s Interesting Campaign Idea
April 18th, 2008 at 09:00am Mark Noonan
From Politico:
McCain will rely on free media to an unprecedented degree to get out his message in a fashion that aims to not only minimize his financial disadvantage but also drive a triangulated contrast among himself, the Democratic nominee and President Bush…
…aides also hope they can turn necessity into virtue and argue that by facing tough questions from reporters on his bus each day and potentially even tougher ones from audience members at frequent town hall meetings, McCain will demonstrate how he’s different from two politicians who are far less accessible.
“People in the country are in a very bad mood, and they want to have change,” says Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain. “And the first place they evaluate change is through the prism of what kind of campaigns candidates are running. Voters will have an indication of the different kind of presidency he would preside over by looking at his campaign.”
Mark Salter, another top aide to McCain, says Obama is running “one buttoned-up, conventional campaign.”…
…McCain aides also want to paint their guy as different from an unpopular administration that prefers secrecy to transparency and friendly crowds to unpredictable ones.
“Sen. McCain believes every American should participate in the arena, and that includes people that don’t agree with him,” Schmidt says, taking care to note that such unscripted exchanges have waned “in the last decade.”
Additionally, McCain and his advisers want to pursue voters that look different than the bare majority coalition that Bush put together twice.
“We’re running a campaign that is not designed to get 50-plus-1 percent of the vote,” says Schmidt.
Even if they can’t win in places such as California or inner cities — both of which McCain will stop in during his different-sort-of-Republican tour starting this week — they want to send a signal that he intends to at least compete for nearly every vote.
Bravo! to that - while I have immense admiration for Karl Rove and his work in 2000 and 2004, I’ve long felt that we GOPers write off far too much of the country at election time. If you think of American politics as a giant chessboard, the plain fact of the matter is that both parties unilaterally deny themselves whole swaths of the board. While McCain won’t win San Francisco in November, there’s still no sense in writing off the whole of California and just handing over, unfought, 20% of the electoral votes Democrats will need to win.
Without going too much into the MSMisms of the report (that Bush likes secrecy, eg), the pragmatic facts of life are that President Bush is unpopular, the liberation of Iraq is unpopular, and the economy appears shaky - this is an immense uphill climb for McCain to make, but it can be done, as President Sarkozy recently demonstrated in France (not that France and America are alike, but Sarkozy was a conservative running for the office held by an unpopular conservative after a long period of conservative power in France…always a hard task, but it is doable). The way to do it is to fight it out everywhere, and draw those sharp contrasts between McCain and whatever part of HillBama emerges as the nominee.
A lot of people have said that a lot of different things will be decisive in November - for what its worth, what I think will decide the issue is whom the American people latch on to as the person they want to have dealing with all the troubles of the world. The growing political sophistication of America understands that there’s no magic wand in DC to solve all the problems - and absent such a magician, it is my view that people - in the majority - want a President they can reasonably rely on to do the right thing when the chips are down. In such a contest, McCain wins hands down over Hillary and Obama - and if we add to this the liberal/left extremism of both Democrats, we have the right mix to emerge victorious in November.
My phrase for the GOP in 2008 is, “Fight it Out”. Concede nothing - battle them everywhere and all the time. They are wrong, wrong, wrong about everything; we, on the other hand, are as right about things as fallible human beings are ever likely to be, and right makes might. John McCain wasn’t my first choice, but he’s my man now - and I’m his - right through this fight, win or lose; as long as we battle it out, we will at least be able to look back with pride upon ourselves in this year of 2008.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Republicans
9 Comments
1. John McCain News » &hellip | April 18th, 2008 at 10:09 am
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
2. Joe | April 18th, 2008 at 10:36 am
People in the country are in a very bad mood
— I guess that is a nicer way to say that people are bitter.
McCain aides also want to paint their guy as different from an unpopular administration that prefers secrecy to transparency and friendly crowds to unpredictable ones.
— I know you address this, but… Why is McCain telling lies???? You have claimed over and over and over that the Administration is not unpopular, that is just the MSM saying so. You also say they are not secret and they do not speak only to friendly, hand-picked crowds. So who is lying? The McCain campaign or Blogs for Bush/Victory?
Additionally, McCain and his advisers want to pursue voters that look different than the bare majority coalition that Bush put together twice
— Again, someone is lying here. Is it McCain or this blog? A “bare majority”??? Wow.
They are wrong, wrong, wrong about everything; we, on the other hand, are as right about things as fallible human beings are ever likely to be, and right makes might.
— How do you really feel Mark? Glad to see your mind is made up before hearing the other side of anything.
3. Nietzsche-Is-Pietzsche | April 18th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Did you catch last night’s “30 Rock”? Best episode ever!!!! LMAO!!
….and so so true.
4. clark smith | April 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
“Even if they can’t win?!!” Why even RUN if it’s not about winning?! Damnit, McCain, run where you CAN win, and run TO win!
Message to John McCain: Johnny, winning the Presidency is all about electoral votes … period! You need 270 electoral votes to win—no more, no less.
McCain’s going to have to have some things break right for him in this election, PLUS, he’s going to have to campaign smart. Wasting time in Democratic locks like California is campaigning stupid, and may fritter away a deciding swing state he could have won by campaigning smart.
I’m no fan of McCain, but at least he’s preferable to either of his Democratic opponents. I hope his campaign doesn’t lose stupid when it might have won by campaigning smart.
5. LiberalMind | April 18th, 2008 at 11:15 am
You “have immense admiration for Karl Rove,” eh?
That shows you have no respect for the democratic process, little regard for truth and even less respect for ethics.
6. Sunny | April 18th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
That you have immense admiration for Karl Rove is truly disturbing. This man is such a sleazy human being. Did you forget that this is the man who distributed the flyer insinuating that John McCain, a married man, had fathered a black child? This was in 2000 when McCain was leading Bush in the primaries. Real classy guy, huh? And you think he deserves admiration when he will stoop to the lowest level to smear another person with total lies? You have never responded to this, but it would be nice to hear how you really feel about such tactics. Is all fair in politics, no matter how sleazy or untruthful?
7. Tractatus | April 18th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
They are wrong, wrong, wrong about everything; we, on the other hand, are as right about things as fallible human beings are ever likely to be, and right makes might.
If you keep believing and keep clapping, this will come true!
Actually, no it won’t because it is, of course, total BS, but it’s funny to watch you try so hard to believe it and convince other to believe as well.
8. Diana Powe | April 18th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
“…aides also hope they can turn necessity into virtue and argue that by facing tough questions from reporters on his bus each day…”
Oh, please, stop. The uncontrolled laughter might make me dizzy and topple out of my chair. The “tough questions”?
The fact that reporters covering the McCain campaign are almost all operating at the level of high school students hanging out with the cool kid on the bus is painfully evident. Despite his legendary temper, Senator McCain has a great ability to charm reporters even when he’s not cooking for them:
Yep, gotta remember those ribs…
9. Dennis | April 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
“We, on the other hand, are as right about things as fallible human beings are ever likely to be.”
Echoes of then-commissioner of the Patent Office Henry L. Ellsworth, in his 1843 report to Congress: “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.”
Seeing Mark and cohorts are at the end of either their imagination or their own evolutionary branch, it now falls to the rest of us to pick up the march of human development.