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Befuddling

 
 
Reply Thu 25 Sep, 2008 08:38 pm
Does anyone else feel just a little bit odd about the turn our election has taken?

I honestly can't get a handle on where McCain is going with things. Obama seems to be just kind of holding back, waiting for McCain to implode; and McCain is complying.

What's McCain's play here?

Cycloptichorn
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Type: Question • Score: 1 • Views: 1,336 • Replies: 9
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JTT
 
  2  
Reply Thu 25 Sep, 2008 08:53 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:
What's McCain's play here?


No play, Cy. Clearly, what we have here is a shining example of The Peter Principle.

At least Bush surrounded himself with competent people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfawitz, a couple of winner Attorneys General, ...
cicerone imposter
 
  0  
Reply Thu 25 Sep, 2008 09:01 pm
@JTT,
What's in play here? Come on, Cyclo; it's staring you in the face. It's called "diversion from the issues." McCain doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to the issues, because he flip-flopped so often.

When he saw his numbers dropping, he had an emergency to act upon, and he did it by saying he's going to Washington to help resolve this bailout problem when he's missed most of the congress' and committee meetings to arrive as some compromise that was almost ready for a vote.

Instead, McCain destroyed what was almost a done deal. In the mean time, Palin goes on tv, and makes a fool of herself about her "foreign experience" by being neighbors to Russia and Canada. Why? Because Russians fly their planes in their air space.

We got more problems than just this economic problem if McCain wins in November.
0 Replies
 
DontTreadOnMe
 
  2  
Reply Fri 26 Sep, 2008 01:16 am
i just heard on FOX that mcain is rushing to the bedside of terry schiavo.
Butrflynet
 
  2  
Reply Fri 26 Sep, 2008 06:11 am
Observing McCain over the last couple of months is eerily reminiscent of the last 3 or 4 years of my dad's life prior to when he slipped into a severe dementia, could no longer live alone and had to be hospitalized. McCain is displaying a lot of the same early characteristics of my dad's dementia and the same ability to disguse much of it with his outgoing personality. I find it difficult to watch.
Cycloptichorn
 
  2  
Reply Fri 26 Sep, 2008 11:07 am
@Butrflynet,
Yup.

Jonathan Chait has the same confusion as I do about where McCain is going with this:

Quote:
Method to McCain's Madness?

I've been writing a series of blog posts trying to figure out exactly what John McCain was after with this campaign-suspension gambit. My premise is that McCain is a savvy operator who knows how to protect his own political interests. I figured he was looking for some way to shuffle the debate schedule, to move the foreign policy debate until later (when it could have more impact) or to bury/cancel the veep debate. Another theory was that he was trying to claim credit for a bailout bill that appeared on track to be done this week.

But instead, McCain seems to have made no effort whatsoever to bring the bailout legislation to closure. Indeed, he may possibly have sunk the whole thing. On the radio this morning, I heard David Corn of Mother Jones speculate that McCain may be settign himself up to rail against the bailout onm populist grounds. But McCain and his running mate have already stated publicly that a bailout is needed to avoid a depression!

And now, after insisting it would be unpatriotic to campaign and debate before bailout legislation had been completed, is debating anyway, even though a deal is further away than it was when he suspended his campaign.

So I'm abandoning my assumption that McCain had some grand method behind his campaign suspension gambit. I don't see any method at all.


--Jonathan Chait


http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/09/26/method-to-mccain-s-madness.aspx

Cycloptichorn
kickycan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Sep, 2008 12:03 pm
@DontTreadOnMe,
DontTreadOnMe wrote:

i just heard on FOX that mcain is rushing to the bedside of terry schiavo.


Ha!
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sozobe
 
  2  
Reply Fri 26 Sep, 2008 12:32 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
What I posited to E.G. last night was a combination of:

- Getting the Palin interview out of the headlines (bolstered by the fact that the first thing he DID after suspending was go talk to Katie Couric -- the teases for the Palin interview were therefore mostly pushed off in favor of teases of McCain's announcement)

- Just trying to take control of the cycle in a meta way, didn't matter what he did. Get Obama reacting again rather than allowing him to make hay with the economy thing

- An attempt to paint Obama as a do-nothing

- An attempt to get a buffer for the debate -- he hasn't prepared, he's been charging around Getting Things Done, so if he messes up, well, that's to be expected. More important things than talk. Yadda yadda. (That seems reinforced by several things his campaign has said.)


Note -- I don't think this stuff will WORK. But I think that was what was being attempted.
cicerone imposter
 
  0  
Reply Fri 26 Sep, 2008 12:34 pm
@sozobe,
Not to worry, McCain can't work on one issue and chew at the same time.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  0  
Reply Sat 27 Sep, 2008 06:00 pm
@Butrflynet,
Why there are such few of us that sees McCain's dementia/senility really surprises me.
0 Replies
 
 

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