The Case Against John McCain

Well, in this case it's Cochran's word against McCain's and McCain has a witness who has also said it didn't happen.

So, I am sure that means you guys believe Cochran, right?

I mean because he is such an honest and straightforward guy who has nothing to gain or lose by making a story like this available to the press right?

Despite his saying "the idea of McCain as the GOP presidential nominee sent a chill down his spine."

Report: McCain campaign shakeup promotes 'Bushworld veterans' by Nick Juliano
Published: Wednesday July 2, 2008

Apparently undeterred by accusations that he is running for George W. Bush's third term, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is shaking up his campaign staff to promote several "Bushworld veterans" to top positions, according to a new report.

Politico's Jonathan Martin reports that Steve Schmidt, a senior communications aide in the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, is now in charge of the "day-to-day operation" of McCain's White House run. The shakeup has created some confusion within McCain's team about who's really running the show.

Schmidt's ascension seems to foretell McCain's campaign shifting towards more personal attacks aimed at Barack Obama. In a campaign memo released last week, Schmidt accused Obama of "self-serving partisanship" and of putting his own needs before those of the country.

The move to promote Schmidt came after "a sluggish ramp-up to the general and number of unforced errors had left the candidate, senior staff and elected officials unhappy with the state of the campaign," Martin reports.

Sources tell Martin that Schmidt, who also ran California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election effort, will coordinate McCain's daily message and "have an increased role in shaping most every facet of the organization," leaving current campaign manager Rick Davis, a former lobbyist, to focus more on big-picture issues.

Now, accounts diverge on the exact nature of the new chain of command. One top McCain source said that Schmidt "assumed full operational control of the campaign today" and described Davis as "a general manager."

But Charlie Black, another top adviser, said Davis was still in charge.

"Steve is going to function under Rick as a [chief operating officer]," Black said. "Rick still has authority over all things. Steve works for Rick."
One of McCain's earliest hires, Schmidt joined the campaign as a communications adviser in December of 2006.

Schmidt is a a veteran of the Bush White House and protege of Karl Rove, Bush's former top political opperative.

Martin reports that several other "Bushworld veterans" are taking on larger roles in the campaign, including Matt McDonald, who worked for the '04 campaign; Taylor Griffin, a former White House spokesman; and Mike DuHaime, who managed Rudy Giuliani's own failed presidential campaign.
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STARTING FROM SCRATCH?

I think we've now got the tell on the ouster of Rick Davis at the McCain campaign.

It's not just that Davis is being replaced by Steve Schmidt as campaign manager. They are reportedly also scrapping their system of 11 largely autonomous regional managers to run the campaign, an approach to running a national campaign that I do not believe has ever been tried before.

That sounds a lot like they're scrapping the whole operation and starting again from square one, thus squandering the huge advantage they got by sealing up the nomination months in advance of the Democrats.

No doubt, they'll talk about retooling and logical evolutions. But this sounds much more like scrapping the whole org chart and starting from scratch.

Late Update: The Trib discusses what appears to be another key part of this. The McCain hands getting their walking papers to make room for Rove's crew to take over.

But in McCain's case, the spin is wholly unfulfilling. First, McCain sells himself as a pol who never sways with the wind, and whose willingness to be consistent in the face of pressure is proof of his character. Second, Republicans have spent the last four years or so making policy reversals the single most serious political crime in presidential politics. The dreaded "flip-flop" is, according to the GOP, the latest cardinal sin for someone seeking national office.

And if we're playing by Republican rules, McCain's "evolutions" should be a fairly serious problem. I'm beginning to think they might be.

John McCain wants to tax employer provided health insurance benefits.
What do you think? Good? Bad? Indifferent?


McCain's health plan: A threat to employer plans?

By KEVIN FREKING and NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 12 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - There's a great unknown about Sen. John McCain's health plan: How many employers would drop insurance coverage for their workers because of his tax policies?

The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting has proposed that everyone buying health insurance get a refundable tax credit, $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. At the same time, he would treat employer contributions toward health insurance like income, meaning workers would have to pay income, but not payroll, taxes on it.

McCain's Democratic rival, Barack Obama, says the plan would "shred" the employer-based system that provides health insurance to about 158 million workers.

07.07.08 -- 1:03PM // link | recommend (11)
We'll Get Back to You on That

I think we may have come to that moment, that quick turn of events, that encapsulates the fact that there is apparently no limit to the howlers and nonsense that John McCain can throw out and still not generate collective guffaws or even scrutiny from the national political press.

Bear with me on this one because it's genuinely mind-boggling.

Today John McCain is getting lots of press for his new plan to balance the budget during his first term -- what can only be called an extraordinarily ambitious promise. The first pick was from Mike Allen's piece late last night in The Politico.

Now, the general routine is the face of this kind of candidate announcement is that journalists and economists look at the numbers to see if they add up. In most cases, the exercises generates fairly unsatisfying contradictory opinions, with some experts saying one thing and other experts another.

But here's the thing. McCain doesn't have any numbers. None. Not vague numbers of fuzzy math. He just says he's going to do it. Any other candidate would get laughed off the stage with that kind of nonsense or more likely reporters just wouldn't agree to give them a write up. But this is all over the place.

The simple truth is that given his foreign policy promises in Iraq and tax cut promises at home there's really no way McCain could come up with even a fuzzy plan to balance the budget in his first term. So he's decided instead just promise it. Included in his white paper is just the standard hocum about cutting waste, fraud and abuse in government and making sure we have "reasonable economic growth."

Remember, this is the guy who's riding on his reputation for 'straight talk'. And he's just promised that he'll balance the budget in his first term. For any serious reporter covering this campaign that should immediately lead to a request for actual numbers to back up how he's going to accomplish that.

As I noted last night, one of McCain's vague assertions was that he "would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit."

So what are the numbers behind that? We just asked the McCain campaign and the response we got was ...

Quote:

It's pretty straightforward, as we win, costs will go down with a smaller footprint over time, and those savings will go to deficit reduction. It's really the logical extension of Senator McCain's position as articulated in the 2013 speech. Achieving success in Iraq would obviously lead to reduced expenditures on the effort.

This is what's behind McCain's promise. I'll do a lot of things that will get the deficit down. One of them is the the guarantee of victories in Iraq and Afghanistan and obviously that will save a lot of money.

As I said, this is the reductio ad absurdum of the mad pass John McCain gets on everything. He's pledging to balance the budget in four years and when asked for details he says, 'We'll get back to you on that.'

--Josh Marshall

Originally I was focused on the lack of a W-2G, but thanks to comments from Mrick it is now clear the question is really why he never posted any winnings on line 21 of his 1040, or any losses on his Schedule A. However, the bottom line is still the same: If you are winning or deducting losses, you have to report this to the IRS and it looks like McCain has never reported ANY winnings or taken ANY deductions -- in spite of heavy betting over many years.