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Obama-McCain: Public financing

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by beefncheddar, Jun 19, 2008.

  1. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    He's not. His spokesman said today they sat down to try and do a deal, but McCain wanted the issue.

    So he gets the issue and Obama gets his money.

    They made the right call.
     
  2. spinning27

    spinning27 New Member

    Let the Republicans hammer a Democrat for NOT taking the public's money. That'll really resonate.
     
  3. Dickens Cider

    Dickens Cider New Member

    And here it is:

    “He has completely reversed himself and gone back, not on his word to me, but the commitment he made to the American people.” -- John McCain
     
  4. spinning27

    spinning27 New Member

    Losing argument for McCain. Here's how the American public sees it:

    Obama: Not taking federal money to run for president.

    McCain: Taking federal money to run for president.
     
  5. PeteyPirate

    PeteyPirate Guest

    Exactly. Obama is taking public money that the public willingly donated for the purpose of helping his election. It's a flip-flop, but not one that will hurt him overall.
     
  6. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    As long as he reiterates several times that his is not a campaign funded by big-money donors, he'll be fine. Ideally, he'll find someone who gave him 50 bucks, then got 10 of her friends to chip in 50 bucks, and he can bring her on stage and talk about something tangible he spent the 550 on.
     
  7. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    This can hurt Obama.

    Campaign finance reform is a stupid issue. They did it with the McCain-Feingold legislation, and it paved the way for 527s. You can't stop people from finding a way to spend their money to support a candidate if they want. It's like pissing into the wind, and also, why get into the business of telling people what they can do with their money anyhow?

    What hurts Obama is that the early seeds are taking root of him being painted as a guy who said one thing to win the primaries and now is saying the opposite in the general election. It's how you end up being the "flip flopper." Every candidate does this. They have to get the nomination by appealing to zealots of some sort, but in the general election, they need to be bland to appeal to the majority. It's why there isn't a big difference in what candidates actually do or stand for, except in meaningless rhetoric.

    Just today, they have Obama saying he would curb fundraising and take public money if his opponent did, and now not staying true to his pledge, and they also hit him on NAFTA, with him now saying his rhetoric during the primaries was overheated and amplified.

    Obama was hurt by the primary being drawn out -- he had to be bold with his rhetoric to differentiate himself. He might pay for that now, as he tries to tone down the rhetoric to appeal to the unwashed masses. McCain has always been less specific--he was almost calculated about not doing anything too bold that could come back and bite him. And because he wrapped things up more quickly, he wasn't forced to say anything as extreme that can be used to paint him as the guy who will say anything when he backs off it now.

    This could be the makings of a trend that hurts Obama.
     
  8. PeteyPirate

    PeteyPirate Guest

    How bad is it going to hurt McCain? (tax cuts, offshore drilling in Florida, timeline for withdrawal, etc.)
     
  9. spinning27

    spinning27 New Member

    McCain has flip-flopped on every issue. Almost every one.
     
  10. PeteyPirate

    PeteyPirate Guest

    Maybe not all, but at least 10:

    1. Social Security Privatization. John McCain has apparently learned the lesson that the more President Bush spoke about his Social Security privatization scheme, the less popular it became. On Friday, Mr. Straight Talk proclaimed at a New Hampshire event, “I’m not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be.” Sadly, McCain and his advisers like ousted HP CEO Carly Fiorina are on record declaring fidelity to the idea of diverting Social Security dollars into private accounts. On November 18, 2004, for example, McCain announced, “Without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.” And in March 2003, McCain backed his President, declaring, “As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it - along the lines that President Bush proposed.” As they say, let’s go to the videotape.

    2. Raising - and Slashing - Defense Spending. As Steve Benen noted Friday, John McCain was also for boosting American defense spending before he was against it. In the November 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, McCain argued “we can also afford to spend more on national defense, which currently consumes less than four cents of every dollar that our economy generates - far less than what we spent during the Cold War.” But facing the $2 trillion budgetary hole the McCain tax plan is forecast to produce (a sea of red ink even the Wall Street Journal noticed), Team McCain changed its tune. As Forbes scoffed in amazement:

    “McCain’s top economic adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin, blithely supposes that cuts in defense spending could make up for reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% and the subsequent shrinkage in federal revenues. Get that? The national security candidate wants to cut spending on our national security. Wait until the generals and the admirals hear that.”

    3. First Term Balanced Budget Pledge. With its on-again/off-again/on-again promise to balance the budget by January 2013, the McCain campaign executed that rarest of political maneuvers, the 360. During a February 15th rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, “McCain promised he’d offer a balanced budget by the end of his first term.” But just days later, McCain’s senior economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin announced a deficit-ending target of 2017. In mid-April, Holtz-Eakin proclaimed, “I would like the next president not to talk about deficit reduction.” McCain, too, signaled the retreat from his first-term balance budget commitment, explaining to Chris Matthews on April 15th that “economic conditions are reversed.”

    Apparently economic conditions have improved dramatically since then. On June 6, Holtz-Eakin squared the circle, announcing, “That plan, when appropriately phased in, as it has always been intended to be, will bring the budget to balance by the end of his first term.”

    4. The Media’s Treatment of Hillary Clinton. No doubt, John McCain suffers from recurring bouts of selective amnesia. And some episodes take only days to manifest themselves. During his disastrous “green screen” speech on June 3, McCain reached out to Hillary Clinton’s supporters by proclaiming, “The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received.” But by June 7, McCain denied to Newsweek that his media critique never passed his lips, “I did not–that was in prepared remarks, and I did not–I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage.”

    5. The Estate Tax. Just days before his contortionist act on Social Security, John McCain reversed course on the estate tax as well. On June 8, 2006, McCain on the Senate floor expressed his agreement with Teddy Roosevelt that “most great civilized countries have an income tax and an inheritance tax” and “in my judgment both should be part of our system of federal taxation.” But after years of battling Republican colleagues dead-set on dismantling the so-called “death tax” and instead promoting a $5 million trigger, on Tuesday John McCain sounded the retreat. Now, he insists, “the estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books.”

    6. FISA, Domestic Surveillance and Telecom Immunity. When it comes to the Bush administration’s program of domestic spying on Americans, McCain has performed similar logical gymnastics. On December 20, 2007, McCain suggested to the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Charles Savage that President Bush had clearly crossed the line. As Wired’s Ryan Singel noted:

    “I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is,” McCain said. The Globe’s Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , “So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?” To which McCain answered, “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.”

    But on June 2, McCain adviser Holtz-Eakin put that notion to rest, telling the National Review:

    “[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.”

    Pressed to explain the glaring inconsistencies, John McCain on June 6 played dumb, deciding that cowardice is the better part of valor. As the New York Times reported, McCain now believes the legality of Bush’s regime of NSA domestic surveillance is unclear and, in any event, is old news:

    “It’s ambiguous as to whether the president acted within his authority or not,” he said, saying courts had ruled different ways on the matter. “I’m not interested in going back. I’m interested in addressing the challenge we face to day of trying to do everything we can to counter organizations and individuals that want to destroy this country. So there’s ambiguity about it. Let’s move forward.”

    As for immunity for the telecommunications firms cooperating with the White House in what before August 2007 was doubtless illegal surveillance, there too McCain’s position has evolved. On May 23, campaign surrogate Chuck Fish announced that McCain would not back retroactive immunity “unless there were revealing Congressional hearings and heartfelt repentance from those telephone and internet companies.” Subsequently, the McCain campaign swiftly backtracked, claiming its man supports immunity unconditionally.

    7. Restoring the Everglades. On June 5, John McCain traveled to the Everglades to win over Floridians and environmentally-minded voters. There he proclaimed, “I am in favor of doing whatever’s necessary to save the Everglades.” Sadly, as ThinkProgress documented, McCain not only opposed $2 billion in funding for the restoration of the Everglades national park, he backed President Bush’s veto of the legislation in 2007. “I believe,” he said, “that we should be passing a bill that will authorize legitimate, needed projects without sacrificing fiscal responsibility.”

    8. Divestment from South Africa. During his June 2 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), John McCain called for the international community to target Iran for the kind of worldwide sanctions regime applied to apartheid-era South Africa. Unfortunately, McCain’s lobbyist-advisers Charlie Black and Rick Davis each represented firms doing business with Tehran. Even more unfortunate, John McCain was frequently not among those offering “moral clarity and conviction” in backing “a divestment campaign against South Africa, helping to rid that nation of the evil of apartheid.” As ThinkProgress detailed:

    Despite voting to override President Reagan’s veto of a bill imposing economic sanctions against South Africa in 1986, McCain voted against sanctions on at least six other occasions.

    9. Fighting Job Losses in Michigan. During the run-up to the Michigan primary, John McCain cautioned workers there in January that he didn’t want to raise “false hopes that somehow we can bring back lost jobs,” adding that it” wasn’t government’s job to protect buggy factories and haberdashers when cars replaced carriages and men stopped wearing hats.” But after getting trounced in Michigan by Mitt Romney and watching the economy deteriorate further, McCain has had a change of heart. As Bloomberg noted on June 5:

    Nowadays, the party’s presumptive nominee is singing a different tune, striking a populist pose and saying “new jobs are coming”… …Over the past few months, however, McCain has taken a lesson from Romney, acknowledging recently that “Americans are hurting.” Returning to Michigan last month, the Arizona senator told a local television station that he would fight for new jobs and the state wouldn’t “be left behind.”

    Perhaps the good people of Michigan, as John McCain suggested to a Kentucky audience in April, can make a living on eBay.

    10. Opposing Hurricane Katrina Investigations. During a June 4th town hall meeting in Baton Rouge, John McCain answered a reporter’s question regarding Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the New Orleans levees by announcing:

    “I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on the ground.”

    As it turns out, not so much. McCain’s revisionist history neglects to mention that in 2005 and 2006 he twice voted against a commission to study the government’s response to Katrina. He also opposed three separate emergency funding measures providing relief to Katrina victims, including the extension of five months of Medicaid benefits. And as ThinkProgress pointed out, “until traveling there one month ago, McCain had made just one public tour of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina touched down in August 2005.”
     
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    FirstDown, Depends if they can successfully paint McCain as empty talk and willing to say anything. Scanning through the news and the editorial pages, I'm not seeing it. There was plenty of the campaign-finance and NAFTA stuff taking swipes at Obama today. It was a good spin day for McCain, particularly since he's fighting a very uphill battle.

    My guess is, they aren't going to have the chances to do that as effectively as it is being done to Obama right now, because Obama is getting his own words thrown back at him. McCain flew under the radar for so long, while Obama had to put a lot on the record because of Hillary Clinton. My guess is there will be more instances of things he wants to backtrack from because he wants to appear more moderate, and if he doesn't backtrack entirely, he will have to come off as slick or nuanced, the way they painted John Kerry.

    It's just a possible trend. If Obama can paint McCain that way, he will. I just don't think it is going as easy for them to get that tag to stick. It's perception, as much as reality. In the case of the things they got Obama on today, it was perception and reality.

    Spinning, the fact that it took hundred's of words for you to make your point *IS* the point. They are going to hit Obama with short soundbites that slug him with his own words--if this is a trend the Republicans can ride successfuly. They aren't going to be massive reaches into things that Joe Sixpack can't understand without a ton of explanation from someone "spinning" it for him.
     
  12. spinning27

    spinning27 New Member

    For most common folk, the idea of public financing of campaigns is too much nuance to fit into their daily lives.

    It's the same reason why 65% of people erroneously think that more drilling off-short will bring down gas prices.

    I'd say at least that many people, if not more, have no clue about how campaigns are financed. To Joe Blow, Obama is not taking tax dollars to run his campaign. John McCain is. End of story.
     
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