May 19, 2008

5/19: The Mac's Back In The Spotlight

We observed on Friday that it feels like the general election is already upon us. That trend continues today, as lefty bloggers (excepting certain Hillary Clinton supporters) direct most of their fire at John McCain and righty bloggers direct most of their fire at Barack Obama. Liberal bloggers are buzzing about McCain's recent lobbyist purge and are calling on McCain to fire his senior adviser Charlie Black due to his past lobbying work for controversial foreign leaders. Liberal bloggers are also repeating their call for Cindy McCain to release her tax returns.

Now that the Obama-Clinton race is receding into the background, McCain is receiving more scrutiny and conservative bloggers are playing more defense. For instance, several righty bloggers are currently trying to rebut ex-State Dept. official James Rubin's charge that McCain changed his position on Hamas. However, conservative bloggers continue to play aggressive offense when it comes to Obama's foreign policy views, which Hugh Hewitt describes as "full-throated appeasement."

MCCAIN: A Growing Lobbyist Problem?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the news that ex-TX Rep. Tom Loeffler stepped down from his position as McCain's nat'l finance co-chair due to his lobbying ties. The Washington Post's Michael D. Shear reports that Loeffler "is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee."

• Firedoglake's Cliff Schecter: "Another McCain lobbyist bites the dust...This is going to be a huge vulnerability for the 'reformer,' as his campaign is swimming with lobbyists with all sorts of sordid ties."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "For a guy who prides himself on straight talk and not being swayed by the evils of money or lobbyists, John McCain sure seems to have a whole bunch of lobbyist friends and a lot of lobbyists working for him."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "The McCain campaign is trying to minimize the damage of these dismissals by instituting a new 'conflict-of-interest' policy. However, I think that this policy will probably hurt McCain more than it will help it. This is because the policy was clearly only instituted as a political move since, if McCain really cared about these lobbying connections, then it would be the sort of policy the campaign put in place when it started. Unlike [John] Edwards and Obama, who put far more restrictive policies in place at the start of their campaigns, the McCain camp only put their policy in place once they realized these repeated dismissals would make a laughingstock out of McCain's image as a maverick reformer. As such, not only will this policy be seen for what it is, a transparent political move, it will force McCain to keep firing many more aides as these lobbyist connections keep appearing."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen wonders why McCain didn't investigate his staff's lobbying ties earlier: "That the McCain campaign thought it would be wise to bring in high-priced Washington lobbyists to run the entire operation is bizarre. It's considerably worse, however, that neither McCain nor anyone around him thought about checking to see who these lobbyists worked for before they took over the campaign operation. For a candidate running as a less incompetent version of [George W.] Bush, these stories really aren't helping."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum thinks McCain knew that these staffers were lobbyists: "The press is reporting this as if it's just one embarrassment for McCain after another that he keeps finding out he's got lobbyists working for him, but that's not the story here. The real story is that McCain obviously knew these guys were lobbyists long before anyone pointed it out to him. You don't hire the CEO of the DCI group without knowing that the guy is a lobbyist. Only a child would believe that McCain didn't know who these guys were when he hired them."

MCCAIN II: Fade To Black

Liberal bloggers are pressuring McCain to fire his senior adviser Charlie Black due to Black's lobbying work for various controversial foreign leaders, including ex-dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko and ex-Iraqi oil minister Ahmed Chalabi:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "When is McCain going to fire Charlie Black? Or is Black's work for brutal regimes okay?"
• MyDD's J Ro: "Black made millions burnishing the images of these evil men, selling them as worthy allies for Washington politicians to befriend. John McCain has repeatedly said to judge him by the company he keeps. This is the company he keeps. McCain needs to fire the men who take money from dictators. Sign the petition and tell him so (and cause his campaign more than a little bit of trouble in the process). Six lobbyists down...dozens more to go?"
• Benen: "The irony [is] that ol' Charlie was on Fox News this week blasting Obama for his willingness to meet with unsavory characters who run rival nations. Black hasn't just met with a motley international crew; he's represented them as their lobbyists and cashed quite a few of their checks. [...] If McCain is serious about cleaning up his house, and getting his internal lobbying mess straightened out, Black is going to have to go."

Liberal bloggers aren't buying Black's defense of his lobbying work for these unsavory characters, which he justifies by asserting that he never took on any work "without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy":

• The New Republic's Christopher Orr: "Claiming that you only worked for dictators the U.S. government liked is not much of a defense when a central part of your job was convincing the U.S. government to like them. It's a little like saying, yes, I made a ton of money defending a series of murderous mafiosi -- but remember, I always quit working for them once they were convicted."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "The fact that Black ran his contracts by the federal government does not answer the moral questions they raise. It does show that he did not sell out US interests, as those interests were defined by whoever held power. It does not show that there was nothing wrong with trying to win US government support for a possible Iranian agent who was trying to lead us into war (Chalabi); two of the greatest kleptocrats in recent history, who robbed their countries blind and immiserated their people (Mobutu and [ex-Philippine President Ferdinand] Marcos); or a sociopath ([ex-Angolan rebel Jonas] Savimbi) who plunged his country into civil war, scattered millions of land mines across the country, targeted food supplies, health clinics, and schools, and was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. 'I ran it by the White House first' doesn't begin to cover that one."

MCCAIN III: Cindy McRich

As the focus on McCain's lobbyist connections grows, liberal bloggers are increasingly discussing Cindy McCain's wealth and calling on her to release her tax returns:

• Daily Kos' smintheus: "Cindy McCain, who still refuses to release her tax returns, is operating at a whole different level than most of us. [...] As the NY Times revealed last month, Cindy McCain has donated the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars to her husband's campaign by giving him her corporate jet to use at cut-rate prices. [...] Funny thing about that, it's McCain's own legislation that permits his wife to donate to his campaign the corporate jet service worth about $1 million. [...] Clearly John McCain is unashamed to have had his hypocrisy on campaign-finance 'reform' exposed so starkly. The McCains are well beyond the ordinary ethics that the rest of us bring to civic life."
• Sudbay: "Yesterday, McCain made a big deal out of stopping at a gun shop in West Virginia to show that he's just a regular guy -- a man of the people. He even bought some fishing gear. [...But] real people who fish don't have private artificial lakes on their 10-acre estates. Real people don't have lakes built for them on their estates. [...] McCain and Cindy are very, very, very rich people. Very rich. When you own nine homes (or is it ten?), you're among the elite, no matter how you cut it. Really makes you wonder what is Cindy McCain hiding in her tax returns."
• Oliver Willis: "John and Cindy McCain have a ten acre estate with their own private lake. Those are the spoils of a quarter century in Washington and why McCain hides his wealth behind Cindy McCain's skirt."

MCCAIN IV: Righty Bloggers Fight Back

Conservative bloggers are criticizing ex-State Dept. official James Rubin's Washington Post op-ed, in which Rubin argues that "McCain Was for Talking [To Hamas] Before He Was Against It":

• RedState's absentee: "As Soren Dayton noted earlier the story is a lot of hogwash, which the editors of the Washington Post let squeak right onto the page, either with no oversight, or worse, with oversight. Obviously Senator McCain's position remains now as it was then, no unconditional meetings with Hamas. Well now the full video is available and Rubin's creative editing exposed. [...] The editors have failed in their job. They've allowed this deliberate, lying hack job onto the page and demeaned the paper. Write to them now, and demand a retraction. Public, and with lots of mea culpa goodness."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "It turns out that [Rubin's] quote wasn't exactly the whole story. In fact, it seems to have been, shall we say, selectively quoted. As I noted earlier, the McCain campaign said that pre-conditions must be met before McCain would meet with Hamas. The video the liberals put out only showed part of McCain's response. The video below shows that McCain has always contended he would negotiate with Hamas only after they ['renounce(d) this commitment to the extinction of the state of Israel']."

Meanwhile, Rubin defends himself on the Huffington Post: "The question and answer I released yesterday was a full question and a full answer. Nothing was left out of the question or the answer. Nothing is taken out of context. But in order to avoid further controversy and distraction, I have dug out what I believe to be all of the discussion on Hamas during our interview. [...] As you can see, there is no conditionality in any of his answers. Nowhere does he say what Senator Clinton and Senator Obama say: that is, Hamas has to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel and accept the previous agreements of the Palestinian authority before we could deal with them. Instead, Senator McCain is talking about engagement with Hamas and how it could come about. [...] So I say to the McCain campaign, just admit the truth, either he made a mistake or he changed his mind, then let us return to debating the issues as Americans."

MCCAIN V: Righty Bloggers Fight Back (Again)

Conservative bloggers are criticizing IA Sen. Tom Harkin for comments he recently made about McCain:

"...McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, 'and he has a hard time thinking beyond that,' Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.

'I think he's trapped in that,' Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. 'Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.'

Harkin said that 'it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up.'"

• Glenn Reynolds: "It seems like every election cycle, fake war hero Tom Harkin reappears with this stuff."
• RedState's Jeff Emanuel: "As demonstrated by the choreographed spectacle of John Kerry's 'Reporting for Duty!' at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, military service is something that is valued by those currently opposing it when it appears to be advantage, as many on the Left saw John Kerry's four years in the Navy when running against Air National Guard veteran George W. Bush. When it all comes down to it, this is about the Democrats testing the waters on this particular line of attack against a man with over thirty years of service in the Navy who is running to be a wartime President. As with the reverse attempt four years ago, when prior wartime service was portrayed as one of the most valuable attributes a potential president could possess, this line will most likely be a loser as well."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "According to Tom Harkin, a man who served his country for decades in the military and follows a family tradition of service must be feared rather than respected. [...] This comes, of course, from the same party whose Senate Intelligence chair suggested that military pilots have little human feeling. It precedes an effort by the New York Times tomorrow, along with some of McCain's oh-so-courageous unnamed Senate colleagues, to suggest that McCain didn't really experience Vietnam because his five-plus years as a POW kept him from learning all of the lessons John Kerry experienced in his three months in a Swift Boat. [...] If the Democrats want to party like it's 1968, that's their choice. The rest of America grew up. People stopped drinking the New Left Kool-aid a long time ago and quit treating veterans like baby-killers and Dr. Strangelove."

MCCAIN VI: So Much For That Veep Spot, Huck!

Conservative bloggers have never liked Mike Huckabee, and many think that his joke about an NRA conference attendee pointing a gun at Obama will disqualify him from VP consideration:

• Michelle Malkin: "Confirmed: Huckabee is an idiot. Textbook case of shooting yourself in the foot. Bye-bye, VP slot."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Mike Huckabee had the brain fart to end all brain farts when he made a joke about someone pointing a gun at Obama at the NRA convention. [...] A momentary lapse of the tongue shouldn't be enough to keep someone off the ticket, but it probably will be enough. A McCain selection of Huckabee in a race against Obama would get this joke played and replayed about as often as 'macaca.'"
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I don't think there was any malice on Huckabee's part when he made his Obama gaffe. But I do think it shows spectactularly poor judgment and the potential for some [Dan] Quayle-ian moments should he get the vice presidential nod."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Yes, it was a joke. Yes, it seemed unscripted. But one never, ever, ever jokes about the possibility of a rival (or anyone, for that matter) being assassinated. Especially when many genuinely fear for that candidate's safety because of his race. Such a remark isn't just wrong and graceless. It's downright dumb. Huckabee owes Barack, his supporters -- and, for that matter -- John McCain an apology. Geez. With friends like Huckabee, neither Republicans nor gun owners need adversaries."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "[Huckabee's joke was] stupid, and doubtless [will] receive plenty of attention since it's useful to so many groups. The left will use it as a Larger Truth about the NRA; the media will use it to find some racial subtext that isn't actually there; and righteous conservative bloggers will use it to gently suggest that perhaps Huck isn't VP material. Way to help gun owners shed those stereotypes of being reckless and/or deranged, though."

OBAMA: You're Not Scared Of Iran? Well, You Should Be!

Conservative bloggers are slamming Obama for making the following statement at an OR rally:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us...Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "[Obama] seems not much concerned about Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to eradicate Israel, its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and its role in eroding Lebanon's sovereignty through its client Hezbollah. And then there is is unbridled faith in diplomacy, unaffected by the lessons of history. Was it presidential visits with the Soviet Union that brought down the Berlin Wall?"
• Townhall's Hewitt: "Has Obama read even one book on the mullahs and their record of terror and their ambitions for the region and their plans for Israel? Is he aware that Iran is killing American soldiers and Marines? Obama expects people to take his support for Israel's security seriously, and then declares that Iran isn't a serious threat? This is indeed full-throated appeasement, the refusal to face facts about malign forces in the world and the repeated attempt to negotiate with powers that do not want anything except additional domination and which cannot be satisfied with other than conflict."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Barack Obama is stupid or willfully ignorant. Iran will never attack us directly. They cannot. But they will attack us with a thousand cuts through many shadowy surrogates hoping we bleed to death. And if Obama is our President, we probably will."
• Morrissey: "This speech reveals Obama to have no grasp of history, no grasp of strategic implications of a nuclear Iran, and no clue how to secure the nation and handle foreign policy."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "Can it be that the presumptive Democratic nominee missed all that talk about asymmetrical forces and the threats they pose earlier in the decade? If so, perhaps he still noticed 9/11. Al Qaeda spent a lot less than '1/100th of what we spend' on what could be called military operations, and yet most people concluded after the World Trade Center Towers crumbled that even with a relatively lean budget, Al Qaeda did in fact pose a 'serious threat' to us."

CLINTON: Why's She Losing? It's The War, Stupid!

Several liberal bloggers are arguing that Clinton's support of the Iraq War was a major (and underappreciated) reason that she now finds herself on the brink of defeat:

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "Lots of interesting material in Michelle Cottle's notebook dump on what various Clintonistas think the campaign did wrong. [...] It's fascinating to me that nobody mentioned the war. Clinton supported the war. In retrospect, the war was a terrible idea. Her support for it was a mistake. What's more, it's inconceivable to me that Obama's campaign could have gotten off the ground had Clinton spent 2002 and 2003 as a lonely liberal voice speaking out against the war, then spent 2005 and 2006 being completely vindicated in her judgment. It's not just that Obama wouldn't have beaten her, he wouldn't have run at all -- it would have been preposterous. [...] But Clinton's error on the war opened up serious doubts about her substantive and political judgment about one of the highest-profile issues of the moment. In many ways it's a testament to how brilliant her campaign was all throughout 2007 and 2008 that they never allowed the war issue to bury her, considering that an overwhelming majority of Democratic primary voters think she made a mistake."
• Atrios: "As Yglesias says, the lack of any mention of Iraq in the Clinton campaign post-mortem is a bit odd. More than that, I think the general dismissive tone of the campaign regarding Obama simply 'giving speeches' against the war suggests a tremendous misreading of the Democratic primary population. One power politicians have is to persuade, and it would have been nice if more of them had been giving speeches opposing the Iraq war back in the day instead of voting to give the president the authority to go destroy a country. 2002-03 was a very bad time for this country. It was a nation gone mad, and politicians directed that madness towards Iraq. For the most part our elites completely failed us. Dismissing those who in some small ways opposed this war while you, in a position of power, enabled it to happen is a slap in the face to a group of people who have been slapped quite a bit lately."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Holding His Ground?

Yglesias thinks Obama is winning the national security debate:

"Mike Tomasky has a good column about how Barack Obama's changing the game in the U.S. foreign policy debate, holding his ground and fighting and it seems to be working. One thing I'll note about this is that while it may not be true that 99 percent of life is just showing up, Obama's been showing us that showing up is a lot of it. There's nothing really shockingly novel about what he's been saying, it's just that as someone who's genuinely untainted by the failures of the past seven years he stands up and labels attacks on him continuities with the failures of the past seven years.

It's not that clever, but it doesn't need to be any more clever than that. George Bush has already handed the other side a huge dump of ammunition. And now there's a candidate who's ready to pick it up off the floor and shoot back. Shoot back, I might add, on point without shifting targets to the economy or veterans' benefits or whatever else."

LEST WE FORGET: McCain's Advice To Dems

During his Saturday Night Live appearance, McCain joined Seth Myers and Amy Poehler on "Weekend Update" (h/t Nicole Belle, who also has video):

McCain: I'd like to begin tonight by thanking Republican voters. We're gearing up for one of the most pivotal elections in this nation's history. And I'm honored to be part of it. But I also want to speak to Democrats. I know we don't see eye to eye on every issue, but I also believe we respect one another. That's why I want to give to you this piece of advice: Democrats, I have to urge you -- do not, under any circumstances, pick a candidate too soon.
Myers: Oh, so you don't think Hillary should drop out.
McCain: Absolutely not.
Poehler: I told you.
Myers: Cool it.
Poehler: You cool it.
McCain: That's right, fight amongst yourselves.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at May 19, 2008 01:02 PM