At this point, as Robert McCain has pointed out quite amply, John McCain is just about cooked. he’s managed to run a worse campaign than John Kerry did in 2004, which I thought was impossible.
However, I don’t think he’s done. I think there is one thing he can do right now that will not only prevent him from being the most disgraceful Republican presidential nominee in my lifetime, but may well put him in the Oval Office in January.
He needs to go on the attack. Now, James Pethokoukis says that’s the one thing he won’t do, but there’s a way he can do it simply and easily without seeming to be an ogre. This line also has the benefit of letting him still be the Wall Street-bashing maverick he so loves to be as well. And the cool thing about it is that his running mate set him up for the attack last night.
Here’s what Sarah Palin said last night:
IFILL: …Now, let’s talk about — the next question is to talk about the subprime lending meltdown.
Who do you think was at fault? I start with you, Governor Palin. Was it the greedy lenders? Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn’t have been buying a home in the first place? And what should you be doing about it?
PALIN: Darn right it was the predatory lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that.
Again, John McCain and I, that commitment that we have made, and we’re going to follow through on that, getting rid of that corruption.
Here’s where McCain goes from there.
Predatory lending has led us into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and both campaigns have gleefully blamed Wall Street for its greed and the pressure it put on people to take out mortgages they couldn’t afford. But there was a bigger reason than greed for what Wall Street did.
That reason is Congress, specifically, Democrats in Congress. For fifteen years, Congressional Democrats ordered two groups called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do everything it could to push mortgage companies into offering subprime mortgages to people who simply could not afford them. Right now, Fannie Mae and FReddie Mac own half of all the subprime mortgages in the country. They own them because Congress ordered them to.
Now, neither group gives mortgage loans by themselves. But they make billions of dollars available to mortgage companies to give loans by buying the loans that mortgage companies have already given out. And they are backed by the Federal government, which gave mortgage companies and banks the impression that what they were selling were quality goods, fully regulated just like the banks are regulated. They were wrong. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as regulated much less than banks and mortgage companies. I tried to change that. The President tried to change that.
Democrats in Congress blocked us so that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could keep on pushing subprime mortgages.
While all that was going on, those companies were giving back hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to the Democrats in Congress to make sure they could keep on doing what they were doing. And Democrats agreed. Gladly.
This bailout is a direct result of the predatory lending that Congress demanded for well over a decade. So you darned right that predatory lending was the real problem. And the biggest predatory lenders in the country were Democratic members of Congress.
Now I’m sure he could clear that up a bit, but the salient points he needs to get across are;
1) Predatory lending was a real problem.
2) Congressional Democrats were the ones pushing all the predatory lending through Fannie mae and Freddie Mac.
3) John McCain tried to stop it on more than one occasion, but was blocked by Democrats who were getting lots of cash from both companies.
If he can do that, it lets him seem like the guy on the outside who was trying to stop the whole enterprise before it became a real problem and, if he wants, he can even throw in a few Republicans for good measure. He explains the but of the problem simply, so that people can easily understand it, and he leaves the issue right in Sarah Palin’s wheelhouse for her to really run with the attack.
Oh, and he can name Barack Obama by name as one of the people doing the pushing and have the benefit of being completely accurate.
If he can use this one line of attack for the next month, he has a shot of winning. If he lets it lie, it’s going to bury him.
Tags: Barack Obama, Corruption, Democrats, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Government Bailouts, James Pethokoukis, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Stacy McCain
“John McCain is just about cooked. he’s managed to run a worse campaign than John Kerry did in 2004, which I thought was impossible.”
Oh, give me a break, Walter Mondale’s was much worse and you should remember that. Interestingly, Mondale tried the same gimmick. Except that Ferraro had a brain (but she was less pretty). Obama was the first candidate with a chance to pick a real woman for the the job. He didn’t do it for a simple reason: he’d have to deal with the Clintons after he won. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. John McCain knows he’s losing (like Mondale), so he’s got nothing to lose. The problem is simple: when things aren’t going well, doing the same thing doesn’t sell. And trying to reverse your positions after the convention doesn’t sell well either. The scary thing is I’m not sure which thing the campaign is doing. McCain and Palin will say any words to win, but do they even care about what those words are anymore? Granted, Palin’s only reading the cue cards, but what’s McCain doing?
“2) Congressional Democrats were the ones pushing all the predatory lending through Fannie mae and Freddie Mac.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were prevented from predatory lending until the Bush administration relaxed the rules for them (through intentional non-enforcement). The unregulated entities were in the business years before that. The FMs weren’t the ones doing predatory loans. Those were the unregulated private businesses that Phil Gramm created through deregulation. Granted, Clinton should have vetoed that Republican proposal. But, really, should we Democrats be blamed for not blocking Republican proposals? Well, yes we should. We should know that the Republicans are idiots, and we shouldn’t listen to them anymore.
I dunno, my dear. I think Michael Dukakis’ campaign was pretty dang terrible. But you may not remember that as well as geezerly me.
Anyway, you offer provocative ideas that can be served as serious food for thought for the undecideds and independents. That’s what they want and need to hear if the McCain campaign wants to get some points back in the polls and votes in the ballot box (or mailbox). He cannot go negative – the undecideds in my circle of friends, acquaintances and online folks hate it when either Obama or McCain get nasty. McCain, and Palin for that matter, must present coherent facts without hysteria or obfuscation. But, so far the McCain ticket can’t get make their points clear.
Is it the McCain persona? Is it that Palin won’t answer some questions directly? It was frustrating for one undecided pal of mine that she did not respond to the point of McCain taxing health benefits. That would have been easy to explain but Biden ended up explaining it his way and made a compelling case against that aspect of the McCain health care plan. That should not have happened.
It’s my take that Romney and Huckabee would have been a vastly greater force against the Demos. Talk about teeth – Romney’s considerable executive talent and Huckabee’s appeal to the evangelicals could have taken a pretty big bite out of the Demos slice of the electorate pie. Also, Mitt and Mike are governors and America is fond of electing governors.
Finally, if McCain loses, I cordially invite you to hang out at Chez State of Grace where you will not be subjected to schadenfreude but rather be treated to a lovely weekend of sitting on the deck and drinking bourbon and branch water. We’ll lean on the deck rail, watch the golden hawks wheel about in the sky and tell war stories, like the two old Confederate/Union soldiers we are.
Always with respect and the highest of regard,
General Grace (ret)
Grace, as a retired vet first of all thank you for your service. I am no expert in military protocal but I do know a couple things and some things are just common sense. Lets start w/ the facts if you go to jail and nasty things happen there (not from experiance). When
you are released you are going to be a changed person and have different views of life in a whole. your life will never be the same in so many aspects. It is hard to get a job, hard to earn peoples trust, etc. The point is your judgments will be totaly different and having to fight for your life and your meals every day will take a toll on anyone no matter who you are or once were. This just brings up my whole reason to writing this. The man running for office is a POW of five years, and is very proud of it as he should be as he went through things none of us can imagine or even fathem going through them. Point being he is a changed man from when he went to war. Five years of torture and near death will cloud anyones judgement on life, WAR (don’t forget we are in one now and will be when the next Guy is elected) politics, and any crutial decision he may make. The only defense McCain has is he was for the surge, and the surge worked. PEOPLE OPEN YOUR EYES how about the war in general there is no justification all they can talk about is the surge working and all that is, is the media telling us this. If that is the case why do we have more troops there now than before this great surge. It is the only so called positive thing they can say and its not even positive, just media hype. And the sad part about it most of these Americans can’t read through the crap or just DO NOT have a brain of there own to make decisions for themselves and rely on media to report their one sided views on either side. Since that is the case for so many of you and need someone to make your decisions for you and to lazy to do your own research and find the FACTS we will all have to deal with another eight years of Bushshit. Sorry got off track, the point is after a POW is released he/she does NOT have access to clasified documents and critical material.FACT. Why? They are now damaged and CANNOT be TRUSTED. FACT. These are not rules set by me but the fact is they are in place. please help me understand how a man that has been tortured for five years, barely alive for most of the time, is in any physical or mental state to run this country. And God forbid he wins and something goes wrong with his health and we have a lipstick wearing, pitbull hocky mom
running this country, we will really be F@&*#D.
When that phone rings a three O’clock in the morning an McCain answers, we all may wake up the next morning with the news informing us of a small country missing, due to handing the ball to McCain. All in all he seems like a pleasent guy, but needs to spend his retirement days at home (one of them). WKAE UP PEOPLE.