Republican Race: Notes
February 3rd, 2007The way some people tell it, John McCain is Class personified. I’ve long been critical of him (for his phony attacks on lobbyists, when he himself is stuffed by the bum by the lobbyists; for his treatment of his first wife; for his pretending to be a Moderate and the fact that he gets away with it because the media appreciates his “candor”). Further proof that he is unprincipled and unadmirable, here:
Senator John McCain, intent on succeeding where his freewheeling presidential campaign of 2000 failed, is assembling a team of political bruisers for 2008. And it includes advisers who once sought to skewer him and whose work he has criticized as stepping over the line in the past. In 2000, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the advertisements run against him by George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, distorted his record. But he has hired three members of the team that made those commercials — Mark McKinnon, Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens — to work on his presidential campaign.
In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was “dishonest and dishonorable.” Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year. In October, Mr. McCain’s top adviser expressed public displeasure with an advertisement against former Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, that some saw as having racist overtones for suggesting a flirtation between Mr. Ford, who is black, and a young, bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress. The Republican committee that sponsored the spot had as its leader Terry Nelson, a former Bush campaign strategist whom Mr. McCain hired as an adviser last spring. In December, just weeks after the Ford controversy broke, Mr. McCain elevated Mr. Nelson to the position of national campaign manager.
He’s a man of class, but he doesn’t have the market on it cornered, no sir, because Rudy Giuliani says there’s a “good chance” he’ll run for President in 2008. I say, there’s a good chance they both lose. I’ll reiterate: neither of them will have much traction in 2008, if my estimates are accurate. McCain might, I’ll concede, but I’ll eat my blog if Rudy Giuliani goes anywhere in the Primaries.
To more pleasant news! Al Gore will be testifying before Congress about Global Warming, soon. On March twenty first. That is great news, and it does my heart well to hear.