{"id":14767,"date":"2008-03-03T16:40:48","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T21:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14767.html"},"modified":"2008-03-03T16:40:48","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T21:40:48","slug":"mccain-hosts-a-bbq-for-his-biggest-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-hosts-a-bbq-for-his-biggest-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain hosts a BBQ for his biggest fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can appreciate presidential candidates trying to establish a friendly rapport with political reporters, but this<\/a> kind of charm offensive, for those who apparently have already been charmed, seems a little excessive. <\/p>\n

Instead of appealing for votes on the campaign trail, Sen. John McCain spent the weekend playing host at his rustic Arizona home — and on Sunday members of the traveling press corps were his guests.<\/p>\n

It was a news-free zone, and a charm offensive to be sure — but also a window into the private setting and self-described oasis of the man who may be days away from mathematically clinching the GOP nomination, months after being left for political dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shortly after the NYT’s Iseman story broke, McCain seemed to want, for the first time in years, to keep reporters at arm’s length<\/a>. All of a sudden, the once available candidate decided he was mad at the press corps, and their free-wheeling access had been surprisingly curtailed. Even on the campaign airplane, “reporters were asked to sit farther back than usual<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But that was 10 days ago. Now, apparently, McCain wants to get along<\/a> with his base again, and his barbecue did the trick.<\/p>\n

* “There is something surprising — perhaps even metaphysically provocative<\/strong> — about the notion of Mr. Straight Talk in such close proximity<\/a> to what may be the nation’s highest proportion of crystal-wielding psychics.”<\/p>\n

* “McCain comes across<\/a> as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy<\/strong>, not terribly given to brooding or introspective meditation.”<\/p>\n

* “As grillmaster<\/a>, he looked like the all-American dad<\/strong>, with a story for every spot in the house.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have a sinking suspicion these guys were charmed before McCain fed them free food.
\n
\nDigby added<\/a> that the Washington Post ran not one but two<\/i> items on the get-together at McCain’s house.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be a long campaign. The Washington Post is so in love with St John of Sedona that it features two different stories in the paper today about a bar-b-que he gave for the boyz on the bus at his “cabin” this week-end. Feel the love<\/a>. […]<\/p>\n

But that one dispatch didn’t capture the full flyboy wonderfulness quite thoroughly enough. Another reporter filed essentially the same story but added some local color contrasting Sedona’s ridiculous, New Age, hippies (a cult<\/i> perhaps?) with the straight talking, regular guy McCain<\/a>. […]<\/p>\n

Personally, I can’t read enough about what an authentic all American fella John McCain is and I expect the papers will be dedicating at least three or four stories a day to exploring the full spectrum of McCain awesomeness. This is just the beginning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Clinton campaign has spent the last couple of weeks insisting that the media hasn’t been hard enough on Barack Obama. My hunch is the Clinton team may have matched the right problem with the wrong beneficiary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can appreciate presidential candidates trying to establish a friendly rapport with political reporters, but this kind of charm offensive, for those who apparently have already been charmed, seems a little excessive. Instead of appealing for votes on the campaign trail, Sen. John McCain spent the weekend playing host at his rustic Arizona home — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}