Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - Posts
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sponsorship
From a McCain press logistics summary:
Thursday, October 23, 2008
ORMOND BEACH, FLORIDA
Event: John McCain Participates in "Joe the Plummer" Tour Rally
Location: All Star Building Materials, Inc.
1361 North Highway U.S. 1
Ormond Beach, FL 32174
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008
I had no idea John McCain was a Modest Mouse fan.
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sponsorship
See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: Republican
Jewish Coalition PAC
Purpose: To
advocate for issues relevant to Jewish Republicans. In this election, they
oppose Barack Obama.
Executive Director:
Matthew Brooks, who also directs the Jewish Policy Center.
Funding: Individual
donations.
Cost of the Ad: More
than $1 million.
Where It Ran: Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania
through Election Day.
Claims: Obama
would meet with leaders of unfriendly countries during the first year of his
administration. Hillary Clinton said she would not. She also said Obama's stance
was irresponsible and naïve.
Accuracy: Obama
and Clinton's responses are taken from the July 2007 CNN/Youtube Democratic
Primary debate in South Carolina.
(Watch their complete responses here.) As some have pointed
out, Obama never explicitly said he would meet with Ahmadinejad-only that
he would consider sitting down with unnamed leaders. (The questioner did not
specifically name the leaders, but a picture of Ahmadinejad was shown.) Clinton, in an interview
with the Quad City Times, called
Obama's comments "naïve and frankly irresponsible."
Background: Formerly
the National Jewish Coalition, the RJC lobbies on behalf of Jewish interests. The
PAC has contributed
heavily to state candidates in the past. They were responsible
for some pretty nasty attacks on Howard Dean in 2005. Last month, the group received
sharp criticism for a poll that asked Jewish voters to respond to negative
statements about Obama. One polled voter happened to be a writer for the New Republic
and blogged
about his experience.
Swift Boat Rating: 
Obama has reiterated his intention to meet with leaders of
anti-American countries. The ad leaves interpretation up to the viewer.
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sponsorship
Playing the terrorism card is risky: You could look desperate, and your opponent could accuse you of fear-mongering. But if your opponent brings up the subject, then you may have an opportunity.
Which is why the McCain campaign is probably sending Joe Biden a thank-you card (it doesn’t do text messages) right about now. Over the weekend, Biden suggested that Obama would face an international crisis soon after taking office: “Mark my words,” Biden said at a Seattle fundraiser. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. … Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
McCain pounced on the statement, claiming that even Joe Biden agrees that Obama presidency would be dangerous. The key words, according to the McCain camp, are “generated crisis,” as if Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office would provoke the crisis. “We don’t want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars,” McCain said.
Today marked Phase Two of Operation Terrorism Card. The McCain campaign held a conference call in response to a Washington Post piece about commenters on al-Qaida-related message boards celebrating the U.S. financial meltdown. The gist of the piece: These al-Qaida commenters generally think the crisis is caused by the U.S. spending its resources on foreign wars, and they suggest that McCain would be more likely to continue this trend.
McCain surrogates took the opportunity to refute the article and to spin it around on Obama. McCain spokesman and blogger Michael Goldfarb said that the article, in a “rather irresponsible and rather outrageous fashion, claims that al Qaeda supports John McCain for president.” McCain Foreign Policy Adviser Randy Scheunemann then read a series of quotes—“If we’re going to talk about who has support from terrorist groups”—from Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Muammar Gaddafi saying positive things about Obama. (Gaddafi has also attacked Obama.) Scheunemann said he was reading the quotes “without commentary.” Finally, former CIA director Jim Woolsey argued that one commenter’s motives are suspect: “This individual knows that the endorsement would be kiss of death, figuratively and literally. So it seems to me pretty clear that by making this statement, he is clearly trying to damage John McCain.”
As for Goldfarb’s complaint, the piece stops short of saying that al-Qaida endorses McCain or that the commenters are anything more than al-Qaida sympathizers. Adam Raisman of Site Intelligence Group, who was also quoted in the Post piece, emphasized to me that the commenter in question was “not affiliated with al-Qaeda. He doesn’t represent the group, he’s not spokesman.” Rather, he’s an al-Qaida sympathizer whose comment represents the prevailing views of other users—that McCain would keep America on its current trajectory. Raisman also dismissed Woolsey’s suggestion that the commenter was using reverse psychology to hurt McCain. “I don’t think the author wrote the message with any intention other than having like-minded individuals read it,” he told me. “I don’t think he thought he was … harming the campaign in any way.”
For weeks, the McCain camp has insinuated that Obama isn’t ready to handle crises. (Obama has said the same about McCain.) But until now it hasn’t made the explicit case that Obama would provoke and/or be unable to handle a terrorist attack. And just in time, too: With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, the McCain camp is running out of ammo. The “celebrity” angle flubbed, Ayers went nowhere, and the campaign is now mulling whether to invoke Jeremiah Wright, despite McCain’s assurances that he would not. The best part? Campaign apparatchiks can now claim it was Biden and the Washington Post who brought up terrorism—not them.
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