{"id":15335,"date":"2008-04-25T13:30:04","date_gmt":"2008-04-25T17:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15335.html"},"modified":"2008-04-25T13:30:04","modified_gmt":"2008-04-25T17:30:04","slug":"what-mccain-meant-when-he-promised-a-respectful-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-mccain-meant-when-he-promised-a-respectful-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"What McCain meant when he promised a ‘respectful campaign’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in November, when most of the Republican presidential candidates were taking cheap shots at Democratic candidates, John McCain said he was above such behavior. “I think people want a respectful debate and a respectful discussion. And if they don’t, then obviously, I’m not the person to be their candidate,” McCain said<\/a> at the time. “Legitimate policy differences, those should be debated and discussed. But I don’t think you should take shots at people.”<\/p>\n

It was an odd thing to say given McCain’s record of being a hothead<\/a> who drops F-bombs<\/a> on his colleagues who dare to disagree with him, but it was the kind of sentiment that sounded<\/em> quite pleasant. After all, who’s against “respectful discussion” that focuses exclusively on “legitimate policy differences”?<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, is how McCain defines “respectful debate.” To borrow a line, McCain keeps using the phrase, but it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.<\/p>\n

A week ago today, McCain’s campaign sent out a fundraising letter<\/a>, telling supporters, “Barack Obama’s foreign policy plans have even won him praise from Hamas leaders. Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to the Hamas Prime Minister said, ‘We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a vision to change America.’ We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas, surrenders in Iraq and will hold unconditional talks with Iranian President Ahmadinejad.”<\/p>\n

Today, McCain defended<\/a> his scurrilous fundraising pitch.<\/p>\n

“…I think it’s very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States,” McCain said. “So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas’s worst nightmare … If Sen. Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a good thing McCain doesn’t believe in “taking shots at people,” isn’t it?
\n
\nNow, on the substance, McCain’s fundraising letter went on to argue that Obama did not criticize Jimmy Carter’s recent discussions with Hamas. This is plainly false<\/a>; Obama did publicly criticize the meeting. (The McCain campaign would not apologize for the false attack.)<\/p>\n

As for Hamas’ alleged support for Obama, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of a quote attributed to some Hamas political advisor, but it’s worth noting, as Alex Koppelman does<\/a>, that the same Bush foreign policy vision that McCain loves has been fantastic<\/i> for Hamas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to [Muhammad Dahlan, Mahmoud Abbas’ former national security advisor], it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready. After Hamas — whose 1988 charter committed it to the goal of driving Israel into the sea — won control of the parliament, Bush made another, deadlier miscalculation. <\/p>\n

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.) <\/p>\n

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t recall McCain slamming Bush for doing so much to advance Hamas’ interests.<\/p>\n

And finally, if these Hamas-focused attacks against Obama are really what McCain has in mind when it comes to “respectful debate” and “legitimate policy differences,” it’s going to be a very long year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in November, when most of the Republican presidential candidates were taking cheap shots at Democratic candidates, John McCain said he was above such behavior. “I think people want a respectful debate and a respectful discussion. And if they don’t, then obviously, I’m not the person to be their candidate,” McCain said at the time. […]<\/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-15335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335","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=15335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}