Would John McCain's Election Really Represent a Third Bush Term?

Joined at the Hip?

Barack Obama says John McCain represents a third Bush term and that he has voted with the president 90 percent of the time.

But senior research scientist John Lott at the University of Maryland writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer "the 90 percent figure from Congressional Quarterly is nonsensical" and says most of those votes were just procedural. He adds, "Obama might want to be a little careful with these attacks, as the same measure has him voting with Democrats 97 percent of the time."

He cites research from the right-leaning American Conservative Union, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and the non-partisan National Journal. It indicates that from 2001 to 2007, McCain voted to the left of most Republican senators and to the right of most of his Democratic colleagues. Americans for Democratic Action even says McCain voted liberally 24 percent of the time — twice as much as the average Republican.

Party Poopers?

Third party presidential candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr will be on nearly all state ballots for the November general election and could play the role of spoiler in a tight race.

The Politico newspaper reports Nader — who is running as an Independent — is on the ballot in 45 states and the District of Columbia. That is two more states than in 2000 when he won just over 2.5 percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate. He was blamed by some Democrats for taking votes away from Al Gore and tilting the election in favor of George W. Bush.

Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate. He has made the ballot in at least 44 states. He is currently challenging decisions to leave him off in five others.

Read the rest. And for the record... yes it would be a third term for Bush. In fact, it would be worse.

Sarah Palin and John McCain Starring in "Baby Mama"

A reader e-mailed this in today:

I've gotta say the resemblance between Sarah Palin and Tina Fey is pretty striking.



Thanks for the laughs!

...Bizarre

Democrats are not caring for their Stars and Stripes. At least that’s the message out of John McCain’s campaign.

McCain supporters, claiming they rescued 12,000 miniature American flags from the site of Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech last Thursday, redistributed the orphan flags to audience members ahead of a McCain rally in Colorado Springs on Saturday.

The move was an overt swipe at Obama from a campaign whose motto has been “country first.” But Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”

McCain supporters said the flags were discovered by a vendor at Denver’s Invesco Field after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention. The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.

Read the rest here.

Sarah Palin has yet to do an interview

When political junkies flip through television stations on Sunday morning, they'll find policy-driven interviews with three of the four candidates on the presidential tickets — John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They won’t, though, see Sarah Palin.

Less than two months before voters hit the polls, Palin has yet to sit down for or even schedule an issues-oriented interview with any newspaper, magazine or television network.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has significantly scaled back the access of the national press he used to jokingly refer to as his “base,” and several speakers, including Palin, took shots at the media in their speeches at last week's Republican convention.

Since her debut in Dayton, Ohio, the McCain campaign has been receiving about 80-100 requests a day from news organizations around the world, according to spokesman Ben Porritt, who said interest in an interview was "through the roof" and that the campaign was going through them now.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the McCain campaign would like to run out on the clock on this," said David Chalian, political director for ABC News.

He expects the campaign will tightly manage access to Palin, but give some national interviews shortly before the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with Biden, moderated by PBS' Gwen Ifill.

"They know they're not going to get through the next 60 days without doing interviews and being tested and prodded," Chalian said.

But even if Palin does submit to a few carefully selected interviews around the October debate, that means another month before the 37-million-plus viewers who tuned into Palin's speech and others get their first look at how the newcomer to the national stage performs outside of a campaign-controlled setting.

In the meantime, Fox News is rolling out a special (as are other networks): "Gov. Sarah Palin: An American Woman," a one-hour biography hosted by Greta Van Susteren that includes "exclusive video and photos" and "interviews with her family, friends and colleagues" — but not Palin herself.

Palin has already become a ubiquitous presence on newsstands. Presently, her face adorns the cover of traditional newsweeklies Time and Newsweek, Beltway favorites The New Republic and The Weekly Standard, and even celebrity glossies Us Weekly and Ok!.

While everyone from the New Yorker to CNBC has rushed to republish their older interviews with the Alaska governor, it's People magazine that has the only actual interview she’s done since joining to the ticket.

Read the rest here.

McCain vows to end partisan rancor in Washington

Yeah right...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - John McCain, a POW turned political rebel, vowed Thursday night to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" plaguing the nation as he launched his fall campaign for the White House. "Change is coming" to Washington, he promised the Republican National Convention.

"I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again," McCain said in remarks prepared for his prime time address. "I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not," he said of his rival for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama.

McCain also invoked the five years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison. "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."

McCain's speech was the highlight of the final night of the party convention, but before he took the podium, delegates unanimously awarded the vice presidential nomination to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She is the first female ticketmate in Republican history.

McCain, 72 and campaigning to become the oldest first-term president in history, faced a delicate assignment as he formally accepted his party's presidential nomination: presenting his credentials as a reformer willing to take on his own party and stressing his independence from an unpopular President Bush - all without breaking faith with his Republican base.

He and Palin were departing their convention city immediately after the Arizona senator's acceptance speech, bound for Wisconsin and an early start on the final weeks of the White House campaign.

Palin has been the object of intense scrutiny since McCain tapped her as his running mate last week. "I'm very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country," he said. "But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington."

The last night of the McCain-Palin convention also marked the end of an intensive stretch of politics with the potential to reshape the race. Democrats held their own convention last week in Denver, nominating Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as running mate for Obama, whose own acceptance speech drew an estimated 84,000 partisans to an outdoor football stadium.

The polls indicate a close race between McCain and Obama, at 47 a generation younger than his Republican opponent, with the outcome likely to be decided in scattered swing states in the industrial Midwest and the Southwest.

Ahead lie the traditional major checkpoints - presidential and vice presidential debates, millions of dollars in ads - but also the unscripted, spontaneous moments that can take on outsized importance in the race to pick a president.

The Arizona senator paid a brief visit to the Xcel center at mid-afternoon to check out a speaking podium remade overnight to capture the intimacy of a town-hall meeting that has become his trademark.

He was accompanied by his wife, Cindy, as well as two close allies, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat-turned-independent.

Cindy McCain recommended her husband to the nation. "If Americans want straight talk and the plain truth they should take a good close look at John McCain ... a man tested and true ... who's never wavered in his devotion to our country," she said in prepared remarks. She called him "a man who's served in Washington without ever becoming a Washington insider."

Graham also had a speaking slot, and he used it to criticize McCain's rival. He said Obama and the liberal group MoveOn.org were the only ones who didn't realize that Bush's decision to deploy additional troops to Iraq last year had succeeded.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge also had a place on the program, after being featured prominently in speculation about a running mate.

That was an honor that went unexpectedly to Palin, the first female vice presidential candidate in party history, a 44-year-old Alaska governor virtually unknown nationally a week ago.

In the days since, she has faced a storm of scrutiny, some of it relating to her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and her time as governor, but most involving her 17-year-old unmarried daughter who is pregnant.

For the most part, McCain's aides have kept Palin out of public sight while vociferously defending her readiness to become president. She emerged Wednesday night during prime time to deliver a smiling, sarcastic attack on Obama that generated roars of approval - and acceptance - from the delegates.

She followed up in the hours before McCain's convention appearance with a meeting with Republican governors and a fundraising appeal that blamed Democrats for spreading "misinformation and flat-out lies" about her family and her.

Even so, there were fresh questions about her readiness to sit one chair away from the Oval Office.

McCain has cited her authority over the Alaska National Guard as one example. But in a memo last spring, Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell warned that "missions are at risk" in the state's units because of a personnel shortage. The lack of qualified airmen, Campbell said, "has reached a crisis level."

In an interview on Wednesday with The Associated Press, Campbell said the situation has improved since then, but not enough to eliminate his concern that shortages will result in the burnout of troops.

McCain won the presidential nomination late Wednesday night in an anticlimactic vote that followed a campaign lasting most of a decade. He first ran for the White House in 2000, but lost the Republican nomination to Bush in a bruising struggle. He began the current campaign the Republican front-runner, but his chances seemed to collapse last winter when opposition to the Iraq war rose among independents and conservatives grew upset over his backing for legislation to give illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship.

In one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent times, he recovered to win the New Hampshire primary in early January, then wrapped up the nomination on Feb. 5 with big-state primary victories on Super Tuesday.

Obama, campaigning in swing-state Pennsylvania on Thursday, said he wasn't surprised at Palin's criticism of him, and said Democrats intended to focus on her record.

"I think she's got a compelling story, but I assume she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated," he said. "I've been through this 19 months, she's been through it - what - four days so far?"

Obama's campaign announced it had raised roughly $10 million from more than 130,000 donors since Palin delivered her speech Wednesday night.

Outside the hall, police on horseback thwarted plans by anti-war demonstrators to march on the convention hall.

protesters calling for an end to the Iraq war vowed to march as McCain spoke.

More than 100 demonstrators were arrested earlier in the day after a concert by the rock group Rage Against the Machine.

Police arrested more than 250 demonstrators on the convention's first day on Monday, but the streets have been relatively quiet since.

(Source)

Sarah Palin scores huge viewership at RNC

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's highly anticipated speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night nearly matched the record-setting numbers of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Palin pulled in 37.2 million viewers across broadcast and cable networks, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That's 55% higher than Day 3 of the DNC, when her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, and President Clinton took the stage (24 million).

It's also up a sharp 99% from the Republican convention's third day in 2004 (18.7 million) and easily bests the numbers viewers attracted by George W. Bush when he accepted the nomination (27.6 million). In fact, it came close to upsetting Obama's historic address last Thursday -- the most-watched convention speech in history (38.4 million viewers).

Palin's viewership is up 73% from Tuesday's RNC tally, when 21.5 million tuned in to see President Bush and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman endorse nominee John McCain. The event also drew more female viewers than Hillary Clinton's speech last week.

Palin has been beset by controversy since McCain shocked Beltway insiders by appointing the relatively little-known governor as his vice presidential pick. Her Wednesday night speech was presented as an opportunity to address her skeptics.

Reaction to Palin's speech was very positive: "Sarah Palin's perfect premiere" ... "connects with people in a way few politicians can" ... "Palin was stunning" ... "Palin sets high bar for McCain" ... as some have noted, the AP says some lines in the speech didn't pass their fact check. Here's the speech and video.

UPDATE: Cable news network estimates show Fox News is out in front with 9.2 million viewers (from 10 to 11:15 p.m.), followed by CNN with 6.2 million and MSNBC with 3.4 million. Note CNN won last week when the Democrats were on stage, and Fox News has been taking the lead now that the Republicans are having their turn. CNN and Fox News also bested the broadcasters in the adult demo. From 10 to 11 p.m., NBC had 7.7 million, CBS had 4.9 million and ABC had 5.9 million.

This was the third-highest telecast ever in the history of Fox News (only other two that were higher was a Bush address re: Iraq in '03 and a debate in '04).

Also, PBS just chimed in to say 3.2 million watched on their network, which brings Palin's total viewership on ad-supported and public airwaves to more than 40 million.

(Source)

How The Other Half Lives

Reader Paul e-mailed me this question today:

Cindy McCain just goes to Burma and brings John back a child. Nice for the child and must be a lovely souvenir for the McCains - but can any one just "pick up" a child and bring them home?

I ask because I have childless friends who have suffered all sorts of red tape and governmental restrictions in trying to adopt a foreign born child.

Is this another case of "those that have seven homes can and those that work for a living are derned lucky to be employed?"

Good question, Paul. Thanks for letting me share it with my other readers. Any thoughts, anyone?

John McCain Slams Madonna for Comparing Him to Hitler

Madonna has sparked another controversy by including Republican presidential hopeful John McCain in a video montage shown on her new tour that includes Adolf Hitler and Robert Mugabe.

"The comparisons are outrageous, unacceptable and crudely divisive all at the same time," McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement reported by Fox News.

The montage is shown as Madonna performs the song "Get Stupid" on her "Sticky & Sweet" tour. Images of McCain, Hitler and Mugabe appear among shots depicting destruction and global warming until the song ends, when images of John Lennon, Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama are shown.

See photos of Madonna's most scandalous moments.

"It clearly shows that when it comes to supporting Barack Obama, his fellow worldwide celebrities refuse to consider any smear or attack off limits," Bounds added.

Source

McCain weighs possible VP ticket mates

DENVER — Overshadowed by his rival's convention, Republican John McCain is hours away from grabbing back the spotlight by choosing his running mate.

McCain is expected to announce his choice Friday in Ohio , just as the newly nominated Democratic team of Barack Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden , D-Del., roll out of their convention in Denver and McCain heads to Minnesota for his nominating convention next week.

McCain hasn't given any clue, but Republican insiders and analysts say that a fast-changing landscape in recent days has helped some potential choices and hurt others.

Among the changes:

— McCain has pulled into a neck-and-neck fight with Obama after trailing for weeks. He led 46-44 percent in a Gallup daily tracking poll released Tuesday. That lessens the need for him to make a dramatic long-shot pick such as Carly Fiorina , the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer, to shake up the race.

— He's shored up support from social conservatives and has seen a payoff in the polls. That could make him less inclined to anger them now with an abortion-rights supporter such as former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge .

— Obama picked Biden, an experienced hand in foreign policy and debates, which could put a new emphasis on finding someone who could take on Biden in the vice presidential debate this fall.

Some insiders think that the prospects of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have risen; others think they've ebbed.

Regardless, the pick is crucial for McCain, especially as he announces it Friday on his 72nd birthday, which calls attention anew to his age and to speculation that he might serve only one term if elected.

"He's had a rocky relationship with the party's conservative base," said Greg Mueller , a Republican strategist and a veteran of earlier Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes presidential campaigns.

" The Republican Party is the-next-guy-in-line party. Whoever he picks as vice president could become the next guy in line. If he picks a mainstream conservative, then the conservatives can get excited not just about the McCain candidacy but the future of the party."

A look at the most-mentioned contenders in three categories:

THE MAINSTREAM:

Pawlenty and Romney top most lists.

"A week ago, Romney and Pawlenty looked like the two most likely conservative choices. But I think over the last several days, events have conspired against both of them," said Dan Schnur , a former aide to McCain in the 2000 campaign who's now the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California .

Schnur said Pawlenty might not match up well with Biden in a debate and that the flap over McCain not remembering how many homes he and his wealthy wife owned made it more difficult to pick another wealthy candidate such as Romney.

Another Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn't want to offend any potential candidates, said Romney's wealth might hurt him in economically depressed Michigan , offsetting the benefit he'd have because his father was the governor there in the 1960s.

Romney was in Denver on Tuesday to attack the Obama-Biden ticket. He gave a crisp performance and offered a possible preview of an attack on Biden's experience in foreign affairs.

As for his own prospects, Romney said, "I've got nothing for you on the VP question. . . . He will select a fine running mate. I don't know who that will be."

Read the rest here.

Gallup Daily: No Bounce for Obama in Post-Biden Tracking

PRINCETON, NJ -- It's official: Barack Obama has received no bounce in voter support out of his selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama's Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, not appreciably different from the previous week's standing for both candidates. This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

The race for president has been virtually tied since mid-August. In this period, Obama's support from national registered voters has consistently ranged from 44% to 46%. The 46% currently supporting McCain is technically his best showing since late May/early June, but is not a statistically significant improvement over his recent range from 43% to 45%. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

An analysis of historical election poll trends by Gallup Poll Managing Editor Jeff Jones shows that recent presidential campaigns have enjoyed a small (though short-lived) bounce from the running mate announcement. This includes a four percentage point bounce for John Kerry in 2004 after selecting John Edwards, a 5-point bounce for Al Gore in 2000 with his announcement of Joe Lieberman, and a 3-point bounce for George W. Bush in 2000 upon choosing Dick Cheney. Bob Dole received an extraordinary 9-point bounce in 1996 after bringing Jack Kemp onto his ticket.

All of these bounces occurred before the respective party's convention began, and in most cases the candidates received an additional boost in the polls upon completion of the convention. Thus, any increase in Obama's support in the coming days would seem to be more the result of the star-studded and well publicized Democratic national convention than the apparently lackluster Biden selection.

The official Gallup records will show that support for Obama declined by two percentage points in Gallup Poll Daily tracking (from 46% to 44%) conducted immediately before and after the Aug. 23 Biden announcement. (Because the announcement was made at 3 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 23, all Gallup interviewing conducted that day can be considered post announcement.)

Read the rest here.