McCain’s step-by-step anti-Obama strategy

February 25, 2008

Time magazine’s Mark Halperin offered an interesting list today: a 16-point guide on what, in Halperin’s opinion, John McCain’s campaign can do to tear Barack Obama down. As Halperin sees it, McCain’s campaign is “staffed with savvy, experienced operatives who have closely watched the rise of Obama, and they have learned from Clinton’s failure to take down her Democratic rival.”

So, what’s the game plan? Here’s Halperin’s list, including attacks to be levied by McCain, McCain’s campaign, and attack dogs working on McCain’s behalf.

1. Play the national security card without hesitation.

That would probably be easier if McCain had an effective national security strategy — beyond “go get ’em” — and hadn’t been wrong about Iraq in every possible way for nearly six years.

2. Talk about the Iraq War without apologies or perceived contradiction.

Too late, McCain is already contradicting himself, claiming he opposed Rumsfeld (he didn’t), opposed “stay the course” (he didn’t), called for Rumsfeld’s resignation (he hadn’t), and insisting he warned Americans from the start how difficult the war would be (he hadn’t).

3. Go at Obama unambiguously from the right.

The more McCain gives up the middle, the more independents will prefer Obama.

4. Encourage interest groups, bloggers, and right-leaning media to explore Obama’s past.

I hear those kindergarten papers are fascinating.

5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use.

If you say so, but if they push this too far, Cindy McCain’s record might become fair game, too.

6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama.

If McCain wants his surrogates to play with fire, the whole lot of them are likely to get burned.

7. Exploit Michelle Obama’s mistakes and address her controversial remarks with unrestricted censure.

See #5.

8. Play dirty without alienating his party.

Why would playing dirty alienate Republicans? The bigger problem is driving independents right into Obama’s waiting arms.

9. Dismiss Obama’s brief national tenure from his own lofty platform of decades in the Senate – there will be no ambiguity about who has more experience as conventionally defined.

If experience was enough to tip the scales, we’d all be talking about Presidents Dole, Gore, and Kerry right now.

10. Use his sterling war record to reinforce his image of patriotism and valor – and contrast it with his opponent’s.

Maybe, if this race becomes “the future vs. the past,” heroic military service in the 1960s may prove to lack political salience now.

11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

If and when McCain gets to the “Hussein” nonsense, we’ll know his desperation factor is awfully high.

12. Employ third party groups like the NRA to hit Obama on issues that might turn off general election voters. Perhaps an ad such as this will run in Ohio: “So, what do you really know about Barack Obama? Did you know he supports meeting with the head of terrorist states? Do you know he wants to get rid of your right to own a handgun? Do you know he is calling for the repeal of the law preventing gay marriage? Do you know he is for a trillion-dollar tax increase? What do you really know about Barack Obama?”

Sounds like every conservative attack ad in recent years.

13. Face an electorate less consumed with “change change change” (the main priority for Democratic voters) and keenly interested in “ready from day one” as an equally important ideal.

Maybe, but it’s tougher to sell “ready from day one,” when McCain has been “wrong from day one” on all the issues voters care about.

14. Link biography (experience/courage) and leadership (straight talk) to a vision animated by detail – accentuating Obama’s relative lack of specificity.

That’d be great if McCain didn’t offer fewer specifics than any major candidate in either party.

15. Give Obama his first real race against a credible Republican. (Clinton has always asserted that Obama would wilt before a fierce Republican assault.)

OK. Sounds good.

16. Confront Obama with a united, focused campaign absent of second-guessing, which hits the same themes and message every day.

Given McCain’s propensity for saying whatever pops into his head, a disciplined campaign may prove to be a tall order.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough if Halperin’s 16-step guide is what McCain needs, but I’m a little skeptical.

Please, Please let the Republicans use Halperin’s game plan. He’ll fare worse than Goldwater in 1964.

  • I don’t understand point #15 at all. Is this just an anti-Obama hit job dressed as political-strategy commentary?

  • “11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.”

    Wasn’t the original “Manchurian Candidate” of movie fame a POW just like McCain?

    That said, I think the McCain team has a bigger task on their hands — keeping McCain from exploding or sticking his foot in his mouth. A couple of McCain errors like that and any of these strategy points simply become irrelevant.

  • Seriously, is there anything in that list that your local high school’s sophomore president of the Young Republicans didn’t already use in his last campaign?

    Only Mark Penn could charge more for even more stupid advice.

  • Oy. I loathe Halperin and love this blog. But in his defense, this is, specifically, a list of ways that McCain can campaign against Obama that are specifically unavailable to Clinton. She can’t “play dirty” because it would alienate her from her party; McCain can because Obama’s not in his party. He can use the vet thing because it’s a strength he has and she doesn’t. So that’s my only quibble with your deconstruction of this list.

  • 5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use.

    Counterpoint: Challenge Senator John McCain to defend his intercession in a DEA investigation of his drug-addicted wife. Point out that the senator helped his wife escape the same prison sentence meted out routinely to poor (i.e. minorities) people.

    If the Dems want to play dirty, they need to look no further than Cindy McCain’s carefully crafted image as a sexy, glamourous and youthful companion. Get surrogates to challenge the real state of Cindy McCain’s health. Start asking questions about how much brain damage was caused by her 2004 stroke. Refer to her “disabilities”, “limitations” etc.

    Make the McCains look old and broke down and depressing. That’s the way I’d go if I were playing dirty politics.

  • 15. Give Obama his first real race against a credible Republican. (Clinton has always asserted that Obama would wilt before a fierce Republican assault.)

    Do they have a credible Republican to use?

  • More dirty politics:

    Make fun of McCain playing drinking contests with Hillary Clinton in a war-zone on the taxpayer’s dime. Actually, that might work for Obama right now.

    Get surrogates to question McCain’s drinking. How many vodka gibsons does he put away every day, anyway. Mention the fac that his father and grandfather died early deaths in part as a result of heavy drinking.

    Ask how many reporters on the road with McCain drink with him.

  • This is disgraceful. I think Mark Halperin recipe is to sink McCain.

    Mr. McCain, wake up and smell the roses. Seventy percent of Americans ‘want the war to end NOW, not in four years, not in ten years and not in one hundred years.

  • 11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

    Isn’t Hussein a more common name worldwide than John or Smith? Emphasizing this point is just reveling in the total idiocy of your audience. Though given the current state of American discourse it will probably be very persuasive to a depressingly large portion of the population.

  • Dismiss Obama’s brief national tenure from his own lofty platform of decades in the Senate – there will be no ambiguity about who has more experience as conventionally defined.

    You mean that lofty 25 years and hardly any bills created? Or the one where McCain has admitted — repeatedly — that he no longer supports the few bills he once wrote?

    Dear lord … please oh please oh please let McCain take Mark “Drudge Rocks My World” Halperin’s advice. Please oh please oh please …

  • ***10. Use his sterling war record ***

    You call a hot-dogger jet jockey who single-handedly lost more planes than the entire Imperial Japanese Navy lost over Pearl Harbor “a sterling record?”

    BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-Ha!

    …i’m sorry…………you’ll have to excuse me for that br—br—brief…ou…….

    BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

    Please. Oh, if there’s a God, pleasepleaseplease let Halperin be “the Mark Penn of the McCain campaign.” That alone would be pure, poetic justice. With any luck at all, we’ll see “Senator Hothead” McCain literally butcher a flailing, screaming-for-mercy Halperin alive on national tv half-way through the first debate….

  • 11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

    If and when McCain gets to the “Hussein” nonsense, we’ll know his desperation factor is awfully high.

    I don’t like McCain. He’s mean-spirited and a hypocritical opportunist (see: torture), but I really think he won’t do this. His supporters, of course, already are, but I think McCain will have the same visibly pained look on his face as he does when he says nice things about Bush if he ever does this.

  • There is only one reason the Halperin 16-point plan would work, despite its substantive failings. And that is if McCain actually uses any part of it, Time (and the rest of the MSM) will of course think it is brilliant (being their idea and all) and continue to give McCain the massive and total pass that he has had for the past decade.

    Underestimate the gifts of his Media Base at your peril.

  • Aside from playing the vet card, this looks pretty much just like Mark Penn’s game plan.

    I could have come up with pretty much the same list while brushing my teeth this morning.

    If this is their actual strategy, I think it will show that they really haven’t learned anything from the Clinton experience.

    If you want to beat Obama, here are three suggestions:

    1. Replace McCain with Huckabee.

    2. Get Bloomberg or some other billionaire like Forbes as his running mate, so that money isn’t a problem.

    3. Find the ten best ground-organizers in the GOP. Get them working within the next ten minutes. Don’t let them rest or take any breaks whatsoever between now and November 5th.

    Do that, and you have a chance.

    McCain is dead-man-walking.

  • 2. Talk about the Iraq War without apologies or perceived contradiction.

    McCain, committed to ‘following Osama to the gates of hell,’ well, unless those gates are in Pakistan. Plus, why would McCain accept Osama as his leader? I definitely think that’s a quality we should avoid in a President.

    5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use.

    That attack didn’t work against Clinton, and he barely admitted he tried drugs. And everyone knows George was a drunk and a coke head. I’m starting to think drug use is actually a prerequesite for the Presidency.

    10. Use his sterling war record to reinforce his image of patriotism and valor – and contrast it with his opponent’s.

    Being shot down and captured is now a ‘sterling war record?’ Can I use speeding tickets and an accident as examples of an exemplary driving record?

    Anyone who thinks this game plan will work is a asinine moron who works for Time magazine.

  • What a wonderfully hacktacular list of suggestions from Halperin. He must have read through at least two, no it must have been three, comment threads on Red State to come up with those ideas.

    Obama’s camp is going to come up with ten times that many ways to attack McCain that involve substance and not things like this silly innuendo about a person’s middle name. McCain has an inordinate number of flaws and what folks like Halperin don’t get is that McCain has to turn back a tide of anger about how the Bushies have run government than won’t be neutralized by whether Barack wears a flag pin on his lapel or not.

  • Best plan for McCain to win:

    hire a dozen of teh most l33t script kiddies to create a crawler that systematically finds and destroys every copy of the Bush-McCain hug photo that exists anywhere in the tubes and continues to preventatively monitor for new uploads.

    absent that, he’s pretty toast.

  • Jim@17

    He’s mean-spirited and a hypocritical opportunist (see: torture), but I really think he won’t do this.

    McCain has Terry Nelson on his campaign staff. Nelson is the GOP scumbag operative who came up with the infamous “Harold, give me a call” ad. Don’t kid yourself that McCain won’t try every dirty trick in the book to win.

  • palmbeachmaven (24): “McCain has Terry Nelson on his campaign staff.”

    Actually Nelson left the campaign in July 07. He’s one of the lead suspects of leaking the Iseman sex story.

  • they have learned from Clinton’s failure to take down her Democratic rival

    Strangely, Halperin doesn’t seem to have paid any attention to the Democratic race, himself. Most of his points describe Clinton’s failed campaign perfectly (Ready on day one? Halperin is literally stealing the words from Hillary’s mouth).

    I also find it a little odd that Halperin doesn’t think appealing to voters with a better agenda has any place in a presidential contest.

  • Why would a so-called journalist spend a moment of his time preparing advice (good or bad) for one candidate to help him or her defeat another candidate? The whole idea behind this piece is fucked-up — especially for a “journalist” from a major news organization.

  • 13. Face an electorate less consumed with “change change change” (the main priority for Democratic voters) and keenly interested in “ready from day one” as an equally important ideal.

    Isn’t that exactly the positioning Hillary Clinton tried? How’d that work out again?

  • Did Halperin write this himself, or did he just get one of his Bob Jones University interns to write it for him? For the most part, this isn’t a list of potentially effective strategies — it’s a list of strategies the right would find soul-satisfying.

    I do worry that #10 and #12 will work, however. They usually do.

  • I think Tamalak answered my question in comment no. 3. It’s likely an anti-Obama hit job dressed as political-strategy commentary. Time magazine needs to drop this fucker.

  • If we’re going to talk about who is or isn’t patriotic, let’s start with Halperin. This piece isn’t “Here are McCain’s strong points, and here are Obama’s weaknesses.” This is “Here’s how to fool the public.” Is that consistent with news journalism in a democracy?

  • What’s amusing is that Halperin doesn’t list the one thing McCain has actually done that Obama claims he’s done: actually worked with members of the Senate from across the aisle. Regardless of what conservatives believe are McCain’s failings (and we do), the fact is he has authored or helped author many bipartisan bills over the last several years. These include McCain-Feingold (campaign finance reform), McCain-Kennedy (which should read Bush-Kennedy, last year’s comprehensive immigration bill), and he helped establish what was called the “Gang of 14” with Democrats to stop the obstruction of several very good judicial nominations by President Bush, and allowed Roberts and Alito to skate into the Supreme Court. That’s working as a uniter. If anything, McCain should shout that one out loud and clear.

    Obama is the most “liberal” (leftist) Senator on the Hill. However, he was a co-sponsor of a bill called Coburn-Obama, which created the database which people can use to see earmarks, and who sponsored them. There was another individual who was an original co-sponsor on that bill, but whose name didn’t appear as part of the bill’s name. It was John McCain. (Hillary Clinton also became a co-sponsor of that bill, but not until 3 months later.) Other than this, there isn’t anything that shows Obama to be any kind of uniter, and that he is only a follower of the Democrat “leaders” in the Pelosi-Reid Keystone Kongress (that’s a great phrase, ain’t it?). Unlike John McCain.

  • SteveIL

    I couldn’t agree with you more that McCain should shout out loud and proud that he and Ted Kennedy wrote that immigration bill.

    As others have pointed out, this bit by Halperin would make Machiavelli puke. But we have to bear in mind that he is the guy who proudly declared that Drudge rules his world, and burst into tears when Hugh Hewitt called him a liberal.

  • SteveIL (32) McCain-Feingold? McCain-Kennedy? Gang of 14? Are you saying he should shout those out loud and clear now? He’s recently said he would vote against McCain-Kennedy if it ever came to a vote. He’s trying to violate McCain-Feingold. And the right hated him for the Gang of 14. Confirming Roberts was never a problem.

  • This sounds like so much fun, I’ve got the final one:

    McCain can realize he’s a patsy who’s supposed to lose this election and decide to take the high road while collecting as much campaign money as possible while spending as much as possible touring the country on a pseudo-vacation before he goes back to the Senate next year without having tarnished his image with the negative campaign the Republicans want him to take.

    After all, McCain is just playing the role of the jerk at the end of Karate Kid who is supposed to break Danny’s leg, and they don’t care if he destroys his rep in the meantime. He’d be a fool if he does what he’s told. They know Obama’s going to win. They just want him to be crippled before this is done.

  • If experience was enough to tip the scales, we’d all be talking about Presidents Dole, Gore, and Kerry right now.

    Not to mention a second term for Bush senior.

    I was thinking about that just yesterday. In 2004, even after four years in the White House, George Bush was in many ways more inexperienced than John Kerry. This turns out to have been a minority opinion, however.

  • Danp@25

    Thanks. Was the Iseman story supposed to hit the press before Romney dropped out?

  • Translation: Run on anything but anything the Republicans have actually done.

    Really though that’s what it’s coming down to. What the hell can the Republicans run on? More war, bad economy, losing civil rights, etc. They have literally nothing to run on.

    The oddest thing is that 9/11 may ultimately have been their downfall. They took at as a godsend, exploited the hell out of it – and have nothing left.

  • Reading both Halperin and SteveIL @32 reminds me about how much these people really don’t understand how politics work or why Republicans dominated for so long. As others have pointed out, Halperin’s advice is akin to a Politics for Dummies book. Apparently someone didn’t bother noticing the 2006 election. And even then, that strategy only worked if the Dems remained dumb and ran away from the attacks. But Obama’s been paying attention and plans to take a bold stand that will repel all of these lame attacks.

    But SteveIL’s remarks are even worse. As it is, the wingnuts distrusted McCain because he was a “maverick” who played well with Democrats, and the name “Ted Kennedy” is pure poison to these people. If McCain ever mentions his bi-partisan credentials these people will stay home in droves on election day. One of these days, independents will realize McCain was just another politician who picked them as a constiuency, and that he never was one of them. And for as much as they imagined themselves to represent some secret populist majority, they were always a small subset being tricked by the Republicans into believing they were accepting the lesser of two evils. Obama really is the closest thing they’ve got to the freedom-loving president they need, and if they can ever get past the voodoo curse Republicans placed on the term “liberal”, they’d know he was their best choice.

    So I’m all for McCain following either Halperin’s or SteveIL’s advice; and think a combo of both would be great. Neither understand the dynamics of what’s really going on, with Halperin living in the past and SteveIL living in a fantasy. If we learned anything in the past fifteen years, it’s that Republicans DO NOT like uniters.

  • #26: “I also find it a little odd that Halperin doesn’t think appealing to voters with a better agenda has any place in a presidential contest.”

    LOL. What a concept. But much too high-minded for the lizard brains of the republican party.

    In any case this list is pretty amateurish. If McCain really wants to get into this, we can fight back with stuff on him that really matters: his role in the Keating Five, the telecome lobbyist stuff, his support of George Bush’s war, his apparent eagerness to bomb Iran, his volatile temper which would make him a risky commander in chief. I’m sure there’s plenty more.

  • Danp, I couldn’t agree with you more. The right hated McCain for those things. All of them. But he has proven that he actually can work and compromise with Democrats, whereas Obama just says he can. If the middle is to be the target, this is how McCain can target Obama. And that’s all I’m saying.

  • And by the way, I was one of those who has heavily criticized McCain for McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, and the “Gang of 14”. Yet, he is the Republican nominee. He didn’t get to be that without something.

    However, I still haven’t decided yet how I’m going to vote, since I am way more conservative than McCain. So don’t think I presented a commercial.

  • Use his sterling war record to reinforce his image of patriotism and valor – and contrast it with his opponent’s.

    Yeah! That cowardly Obama, hiding behind his mother’s skirts in kindergarten, while McCain was suffering in Vietnam! Could there be a starker contrast between the two?

  • 8. Play dirty without alienating his party.

    Why would playing dirty alienate Republicans?

    IMHO Halperin’s point is that when Hillary plays dirty she risks alienating her own party.

    Interestingly, Halperin barely alludes (in his point 14) to a point David Brooks made (and Karl Rove liked so much he echoed it) – ask just when the bipartisanship begins for Obama, if ever.

    McCain has a record of bipartisanship extending back to at least McCain-Feingold and including the Gang of 14, the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, and a McCain-Lieberman bill on carbon dioxide regulation, and has paid a political price in his own party because of it.

    So, why wasn’t Obama in the Gang of 14? Why wasn’t he in the lead on McCain-Kennedy? Where is his global warming bill? For all his centrist posturing, when does his bipartisanhip begin, and when does Obama show he is willing and able to move away from his own party and work with the bad guys?

    Presumably readers here will be delighted if he never does, and hope his talk of bipartisanship is simply an attempt to gull the moderate rubes. But over in reality, this race is offering a guy who has walked the bipartisan walk against a guy who does a great job talking the talk.

  • If the middle is to be the target, this is how McCain can target Obama. And that’s all I’m saying.

    SteveIL – That’s the whole point: The middle can’t be McCain’s target. He’s going to stay too busy trying to convince the base that he’s not a RINO. Not that they’ll vote for Obama, but they still need a reason to vote. That’s what the whole problem this entire primary season has been: There are no mainstream Republicans who are acceptable to the base.

    Sure, on foreign policy they were all on-board for a generation of wars. But on domestic policy, it was a choice between a moderate-Republican like McCain and liberal-Republicans like Guiliani and Romney. And even then, the worst part for McCain wasn’t that he was too moderate, but that he wasn’t partisan enough. And that’s what Republicans are really all about. And the only candidate who was crazy enough was Huckabee, who was clearly so crazy that he scared the Republican Establishment. And then there was Ron Paul, who never got the memo that the “Small Government” thing was a trick that only applies during Democratic presidencies.

    The fact of the matter is that Bush was really the only decent candidate Republicans have had since Reagan. And it only worked because he was a dunce whose political career was tailor-made for the presidency. The Republican Establishment knew he was one of them, while he pretended to be a moderate and winked to the wingnuts. No other Republican is able to get away with that. And again, the idea that McCain can possibly say any of the stuff you suggested without offending the wingnuts is absurd.

    As I said, there’s almost no chance that McCain can win this election and he’s not even supposed to. He’s just supposed to hurt Obama and that’s it, so that Obama will be crippled by the time he’s sworn in and he can have a “failed” presidency. That’s the plan.

  • But over in reality, this race is offering a guy who has walked the bipartisan walk against a guy who does a great job talking the talk.

    Tom @44 – Welcome to one of the big paradoxes of the 2008 Election Cycle. The guy with a longer record of working with the opposite party won’t be allowed to talk about it out of fear of scaring his base, while the guy with the shorter record gets to talk about it whenever possible. That’s just one of the many reasons why Obama will pummel McCain, because McCain has to run away from his record as much as possible.

    Bwa ha ha ha!!! A mad scientist like myself couldn’t have planned this any better.

  • What’s amusing is that Halperin doesn’t list the one thing McCain has actually done that Obama claims he’s done: actually worked with members of the Senate from across the aisle.

    I think you missed Halperin’s point, SteveIL. He thinks that McCain should run as an unrepentant conservative and move to the right. (See points 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 12 and 15).

    Bipartisanship is for suckers and Democrats.

  • Take it from me folks…

    Obama is going to landslide against McCain…

    just like he’s done 11 times against my Hillary…

    I predict McCain will be ousted way before September anyway allowing ROMNEY

    who only “SUSPENDED” his campaign to step back in. RNC attack dogs are

    cooking up a mean one to see McCain off right now, mark my words!

    Mark

  • Mark, what in the hail are you doowing in ere boy?????

    Hillary has a god daimed debate tomorrow sport, get back to work!

    Hey Y’all, Billy Boy Here! VOTE HILLARY NOW U HEAR! 😀

    I didn’t have sexual relations Neither!

    ok

    biddy bye

  • 1) Any Republican who votes for a Republican because they are on the Republican ticket, regardless of the misdeeds done by their elected officials, will vote for McCain ignoring any of his bi-partisan efforts, his shady dealings, his hot headedness, his flip-flopping because… he’s on the Republican ticket.

    2) Conservatives who tend to vote Republican might stay home if McCain does what SteveIL suggest by proclaiming his bi-partisan record and Gang of 14 stuff, being against the Bush tax cuts, etc… Conservatives found that behavior unacceptable.

    3) A plurality of Evangelicals tend to vote Republican as long as the nominee agrees with their stance on gay rights, gay marriage, abortion, etc… McCain has been on both sides on these issues.

    McCain certainly has a dilemma. If he follows Halpern’s attack list, he will definitely lose the independent, especially if the proclaims/proves his Conservative/Republican bonafides by doing the pledge to not impose new taxes, promises to overturn Roe vs Wade by appointing another Alito – Scalia – Thomas – Roberts to the SCOTUS, supports amendments to the constitution to ‘sanctify marriage between a man and a woman, keep the war going, get tough on Iran, etc…

    Not proposing real solutions and how you pay for things isn’t really a problem for Republicans, they’ve never worried about it in the past, and I doubt they will become concerned about it this election cycle. So , no problem in that department as McCain hasn’t offered any solutions so far.

    However Independents do want to know those things, and some conservatives points do not sit well with Independents. There is no way McCain can win without support of the Independents.

    So he either decides to tow the Party line, which a lot of Republicans want him to to, but then he can forget about a big chunk of the Independents. He will still have the so called independents who, in reality are, embarrassed Republicans who are ashamed to acknowledge they voted for Bush twice.

    It is Obama’s election to lose… If Obama plays it correctly he’ll be easing into the Presidency pretty easy, especially if he stays on the high road and doesn’t get drawn in by the typical Republican sleaze tactics. The high road not being a repeat of Kerry who thought he didn’t need to respond. You hit back harder than the Republican sleazeballs do – they’ve never had a Democrat do that. they won’t know what’s happening. But you don’t start throwing mud.

    McCain is getting the consolation price to run as the Republican nominee, having no clue that he’s the sacrificial lamb to try damaging Obama, as mentioned by a few posters earlier.

    The funny part is, if McCain was to follow some of the advice he’s been given by Republicans, he might end up with less votes than Nader. Now that would be funny. And prove once and for all that the Republican sleaze tactics are Rovean and are best for the history books and left alone.

  • palmbeachmaven(25) Absolutely it was intended to come out before Romney dropped out. The story was ready in Dec (I believe – may have been even earlier). That said, I am not certain Nelson was truly involved, since he was a Bushie in 2000,

    SteveIL (41,42) I appreciate your dilemma. No offense was intended, and thanks for your clarification.

  • “With any luck at all, we’ll see “Senator Hothead” McCain literally butcher a flailing, screaming-for-mercy Halperin alive on national tv half-way through the first debate….”

    Actually, that would go a little ways toward making me like McCain.

  • I hope they do use this junk. It is nothing but personal stuff, with the exception of one. Otherwise, there is nothing of substance here. And, since McCain has an image and temperment issue already, HE better not be going negative/personal on ANYONE anytime soon. As for Halperin, put the crack pipe down Junior. If you can’t beat em and you can’t join, just get your ugly bunk ass off the stage.

  • This was actually printed in a magazine? This crap? I can come up with better than that. My neighbors dog can do better than that. McCain has a much bigger issue. McCains task is to find something besides, National Security/Miltary/Defense/etc. to talk about. In case he or Halprin haven’t noticed, not everyone sleep, eats, drinks, dreams, terrorism, military and war carp.

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