So now that the McCain campaign has clearly signaled their intentions for the next month, it appears that things are going to get really ugly sooner rather than later. The only problem for McCain is that their gambit is doomed to fail, because the economy just isn’t going to listen and will not let him “turn the page.” As I write this, the Dow is down 300 and about to go below 10,000. Bill Kristol can drool all he wants about a miraculous Rev. Wright barrage that turns around the campaign, but it just is not going to happen.
At any rate, while the McCain campaign is dusting off their Ayers/Rezko/Wright nukes, the Obama campaign responds in kind with a website devoted to the Keating Five and John McCain’s role:
As Ben Smith notes, this is particularly problematic for McCain:
Second, Keating is a story both more and less damaging for McCain than the Ayers story for Obama.
More damaging because the story of McCain and Keating is not guilt by association; it’s guilt by guilt. McCain’s problem isn’t that he knew Keating in activities unconnected to his wrongdoing; it’s that Keating, in the course of his wrondoing, gave McCain money and tried, with a bit of success, to use him to influence regulators. It’s also part of the case Obama’s making that McCain has opposed necessarily financial regulations.
In other news, McCain might have to start answering some questions about his good buddy G. Gordon Liddy:
Given Liddy’s record, it’s hard to see why McCain would touch him with a 10-foot pole. On the contrary, he should be returning his donations and shunning his show. Yet the senator shows no qualms about associating with Liddy — or celebrating his service to their common cause.
How does McCain explain his howling hypocrisy on the subject? He doesn’t. I made repeated inquiries to his campaign aides, which they refused to acknowledge, much less answer. On this topic, the pilot of the Straight Talk Express would rather stay parked in the garage.
That’s an odd policy for someone who is so forthright about his rival’s responsibility. McCain thinks Obama should apologize for associating with a criminal extremist. To which Obama might reply: After you.
Enjoy the ride. For me, the thing that amazes me is how bad of a candidate McCain has turned out to be, and how awful a person he has become. I really can not square the current McCain with the McCain from 2000, other than to say it appears I was a fool about any number of things. I know that my partisan leanings towards Obama are coloring my views, but that can not account for all of my feelings towards McCain.
*** Update ***
Then again, this recently found “Whitey” tape could be a game changer:
Andrei
Don’t forget the companion website:
http://www.johnmccainrecord.com/
cleek
the DJIA is currently hovering around 9950. so, yay.
the key to this Keating stuff is: will the press care, or will they take to heart Palin’s message about not pointing fingers backwards (except to look at a Democrat) …
NonyNony
Hey John, I was right there with you in 2000. It’s difficult to see the man who called the Religious Right "agents of intolerance" as the same guy who picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.
But I don’t think that McCain was a better man in 2000 than he is now – he was just better at hiding it. John McCain in the GOP primary was actually the last Republican vote I ever cast – and it’s a vote that I regret now (though I’m still not certain that he would have been any worse than W has been for the last 8 years, maybe).
The thing that amazes me is that he didn’t have to bring it to this level at all. The press was ready to go along with a "run to the center" makeover for McCain after the primary was over. They were excusing his partisan talk during the primary as something he "needed to do" to win the primary. He could have run a decent run-to-the-center campaign and probably made this a really tight race by playing up his experience, his bi-partisan outreach, and by selecting a running mate that the establishment considered "serious". But he’s blown every single choice he’s had to make in this election season. Just so weird.
Tom65
Larry Johnson better find that "Whitey Tape" soon.
Maybe he can put TechDude on the case.
John Cole
@Tom65: Just added that to the bottom of the post. I wonder how many RR virgins we will catch this time.
donovong
I was eight sceconds into the video before I pushed the "stop" button. I KNEW it was spiked, but I had to find out for sure.
dammit…..
Punchy
This may be a bad mix of words.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
OT: If today’s market opening is any indication (flirting with sub-9900 within an hour of opening), no one may care about Wright or Keating or Rezko in a few days. This is very, very serious. This weekend, "This American Life" had a riveting, frightening show about the financial crisis. Listen at your own risk, but if you want to understand the cancer that are credit default swaps, this is your ticket.
Obama should be asking the same question that I am: where the fuck was our leadership during the run-up to this? Credit default swaps were manageable until 2003 or so, when their growth became geometric. Yes, they were unregulated, but that doesn’t mean they were unknown. Where was Bush, or his Fed chairman, or his SEC chairman, or his Secretary of the Treasury? Of all the examples of incompetence during the BushCo nightmare, this one will dwarf all others. It is asleep-at-the-wheel leadership at an unbelievable level.
If low information voters could be made to truly understand this mess (not an easy task), Republicans would be a 10% minority for the next generation.
Sour Kraut
It’s difficult to see the man who called the Religious Right "agents of intolerance" as the same guy who picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Difficult indeed, but he has no choice. The Religious Right controls too much of the GOParty’s machine for McCain to piss them off during a national campaign; they’d ’86 him out of spite in an instant.
But McCain doesn’t want to be Their Man and everyone knows it, and one of Palin’s main functions is to attempt to span that gap. Write your own Bridge to Nowhere joke in the space below:
Joshua
That Kristol column is hilariously awful. Especially the part where he offered to moderate a Biden-Palin debate. Why did the New York Times hire him again? I didn’t know far-left drooling Marxists love to pay people to spout hackish right wing drivel.
Anyway. Rev. Wright is old news. If McCain wants to bring it out, maybe a bunch of left-wing groups can bring out the Alaska secessionist party stuff. Or the witch hunter stuff. Or Charles Keating. Or the army of lobbyists working on McCain’s campaign.
These guys don’t get it. One, nobody cares about this stuff when our economy is tanking. Two, McCain’s poll numbers has nose-dived since the economy started tanking because Americans know Republicans are a major part of this mess and McCain’s buddies are all part of the problem. Three, Obama can throw out five times the dirt McCain can on him if he has to. And, unlike Kerry or Gore, he’s not afraid to do it.
Stuck in the Fun House
Feeling feisty this morning are we Senor Cole. Rick Rolled indeed.
gbear
Billy Kristol has a chat with Sarah Palin and writes a column called The Wright Stuff. You know it’s bilge, but a look at the comments will brighten your day.
Edit: Ah, Joshua beat me to it.
jcricket
From what I’ve read Obama and the Dems are doing all the right things in responding:
1) Take a page from GOP playbook and warn "dire consequences and severe retaliation" for these lines of attack. This sows fear into some and also gives you the mantle of someone who won’t be cowed.
2) Hit back with the high road. The ads hammering McCain about his attempt to divert from the real issues are awesome. Hit back on Palin and so on as out of touch and talking about drivel and useless fluff while the world needs serious leaders.
3) Hit back with the "low road". What’s equally awesome are attacks on his Keating 5 association and all the lobbyists hiding in plain sight within his campaign. McCain is guilty, and the ads are especially prescient given the financial crisis. No one has heard of Ayers or Rezko, and with the maintstream media clearly not carrying as much water for the GOP this cycle it’ll be hard for those to gain traction. Angry black paster Wright is about all they have, but I think there’s a pretty thin line before they turn off more moderates as they go all racist, all the time.
4) Synchronize. All the Dems should be talking about McCain being desperate and erratic (which they are), and Palin being unqualified. Pound on her every mistake (this should not be done by Obama or Biden, but by every other Dem on TV) and how out of touch she is with what matters to people. Don’t let anything get traction except how miserably desperate they are and how McCain has sold his soul to the agents of intolerance.
You can’t eliminate all of the negative impact of attack ads, but you can blunt their impact, invigorate your side by proving you can fight back and potentially woo moderate/independents who don’t know how sleazy McCain is.
jcricket
Dance with the devil and the devil don’t change, the devil changes you.
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Jay
The Liddy connection, I think, needs to be pushed harder than the Keating thing right now because, you know, Liddy blew shit up.
Trinity
Rick-rolled in the morning.
Good times.
Conservatively Liberal
No Rick Roll for me this am, nah gonna do it.
Dow is at $9,856 right now, and the overseas markets are running in red ink. Iceland store owners can’t afford the banking credit fees and they don’t know when they are going to be able to import more food so the people are hoarding it. Their currency is virtually worthless now.
This is just getting started. Remember what brought us here people. Greed. Pure, unadulterated American greed.
Charity
I was as big a lefty librul communist in 2000 as I am now. But at the time I thought, "If McCain gets in, maybe that won’t be so bad. He’s a lot more conservative than I am, but at least he seems like someone who would at least listen to an argument for the other side."
Where the frak did I get that idea?
cleek
you got it at the same place the rest of us did. after years and years of being the most-frequent guest on many of the Sunday morning political talk shows, McCain convinced the beltway elites that he was an honorable man, and they spread that notion far and wide.
The Grand Panjandrum
Doesn’t it seem like almost every time McCain and the Republicans believe they have a shred of hope something doesn’t quite go there way. Aw shucks! Why does Jesus hate them?
BTW if this Whitey tape is the one I think it is then I’ll wait until someone else comments before I open it up. Getting Rick Rolled is just more than a person should have to endure before lunch.
Edmund Dantes
I think the rolling stone piece clearly shows that McCain hasn’t changed. He’s always been like this. It’s just that he covered up and was helped by others to cover up how bad he really was and is.
Link
Charity
@Joshua: It’s all about "balance", don’t you know. Lefty librul paper must have fascists on editorial board.
Or in the words of Campbell Brown from the other day:
Cris v.3.1
That’s really hard to say, isn’t it? I realize you’ve been saying it a lot lately, so maybe you’re used to it. But I still find myself trying to defend the mistakes I made in 2000. I might have been a little bit right, but I was also a lot wrong.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
McCain has never been a moderate man, he’s always done what is politically expedient… until he got senile and chose Sarah Palin for his running mate, I mean.
I also fell for his schtick a few short years ago, and I realize now, it was all just words. He never meant any of it. He is as variable as the wind, and as predictable as a tornado.
gbear
@gbear:
Man, I need to get better at speed reading John’s postings at work. I missed that link to Kristol. Teh comments to his column are still a great read though. Even the ones that support Kristol are hilarious.
Svensker
Late for coffee this morning. Rick rolled. Damn you.
Scott H
I think we’d find a lot of McCain 2000 fans among the BJ visitors. Me, I looked at Bush’s CV and realized he had broken every toy he had ever been given. I still don’t get how anyone ever considered him a "winner," but that’s water through the busted dam right now.
I was all for a (unlikely) McCain/Bradley independent run.
A McCain surrogate was on Sunday CNN teevee claiming that McCain was "completely exonerated" in the Keating scandal, which is baldly false, and nobody called her on it.
Palin is getting applause and laughter criticizing Obama’s "plan" to grow government when the government exploded (both in size and lack of ability to function) under Bush.
Rightists deride Democrats with the old "tax and spend" label as if that is something worse than the borrow and spend extravagence of the Bush/Cheney régime.
Would I be wrong in expecting that no one will be hating on the Republican Party like ex-Republicans?
Apsaras
I think the reason the McCain of 2000 seems so different from the McCain of today is that yesterday’s McCain never really had to fight for anything, politically that is. It’s really easy to call the right-wing religious bigots out for what they are when you aren’t depending on their blessing for your GOTV effort. It’s also easy to talk about staying strictly on the high-road with regards to campaigning when you don’t have to fight hard for your safe Arizona senate seat that’s funded largely by your second wife’s beer money.
For a long time, that made John McCain a pretty likeable guy from my side of the political fence. He didn’t knowtow to the religious right as much as your average Republican, and his stances on things like Immigration and Global Warming made me think that even though I’d probably never vote for him, he was the sort of guy I could live with in public office.
But now that he’s going up against someone with real political chops, John McCain’s found he’s had to throw out much of what made independents like him just to survive. The truth of the matter is, McCain abandoned his principles the moment they became a bit too inconvenient for him to bear. That says a lot about a man’s character.
At the start of this campaign, in front of that god-awful green screen, McCain said that he wasn’t running for president because he felt it was something he was owed. I think it’s pretty clear, right now, that was some serious bullshit.
flyerhawk
Well the folks over at RedState are about ready to scuttle the SS McCain to avoid having the rest of the Republican Party go down with him.
I think it is a little too late for that. Al Franken has a 9 point lead on his opponent. If Franken has a big lead that suggests this could be 1932 bad for the Republicans.
jnfr
Does it count as a rick roll if you know perfectly well what’s there, and you watch it on purpose so you can hear That Song again?
Liz
I can’t believe I fell for that. :P
As for McDickwit, I really, really hope all of that info makes it off the internet and into "Joe Six-Pack’s" homes. It’s great that it’s circulating the blogs and all, and it’s great that it’s made it to NPR, but it really needs to get to some TV screens for the Great Unthinking Masses.
cjenk
Consider yourself on notice. No more rick-rolls!
SGEW
I, too, am ashamed at having considered John McCain to have been "honorable" and "respectable" back in 2000 (especially after he lost the primary). We fell for his canned schtick, which he had so masterfully exploited on talk shows, in debates, and on the stump. One of my biggest mistakes (in hindsight) is giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Guess it goes to show that even us Dirty Fucking Hippies can get it wrong sometimes.
Comrade Incertus
I don’t know what’s funnier about that Kristol column–that Kristol thinks it would be a good idea to go after Obama on Wright given that Palin has an even wackier set of pastors, or that Palin herself is so oblivious to that very fact. It’s like two massive planetoids of stupid smashing into each other at near light speed.
bayville
The sage of Press Criticism says Palin has gotten a rougher go of it from the MSM than Barrack Hussein Obama (i.e. friend of William Ayers, Rev. Wright and Osama Bin Laden).
TomMil
Jeez, I got Rick Rolled twice by the same bait. I’m gonna go back to bed for a while.
My purely anecdotal observations are that a significant portion of the population of Republican voters vote the way they do because they wanna be on "the winning team". I expect they will not even show up on the 4th if Obama maintains his lead or expands it. This might be a landslide.
Legalize
The great think about the Keating story, is precisely that it is a "story," with a laundry list of scum-bags all of whom directly appealed to McCain for cover. It’s a text book Hollywood narrative with clear villains and the corrupt politicians who prop them up. The story its self directly ties McCain and his corruption to the economic problems we now face.
The Moar You Know
The wailing and gnashing of teeth over there at RedHate is hilarious. What is perhaps not so hilarious is that some of them are truly out of touch with reality. We’re talking "Baghdad Bob" out of touch with reality, and that’s a dangerous place to be in.
But yeah, the groundwork is being laid to throw John McCain under the bus for the good of the Party.
LarryJohnson
Damn you, damn you to hell.
b. hussein canuckistani (comrade)
I learned my lesson the last time I clicked on a whitey tape.
As an aside, a conservative friend of mine sent me a viral email joke with – something I had never seen before from him – a pro-Obama slant. It carries an undercurrent of misogyny that marks it as authentic viral email, but it’s interesting that even right-wing jerks are laughing at McCain now.
The Dangerman
@Conservatively Liberal:
Well, shit, scratch one more place off the list for Dubya to vacation after he leaves office.
Before this is over, there are going to be some fuckers swinging from lightposts for their roles in this mess (I’m picturing one of the opening scenes of Pirate’s of the Caribbean here; I just hope we get the right MF’s and can afford the rope).
LA Confidential Pantload
I work down the street from Citizens Bank Park, and was walking to the subway the other day when I saw "2-hour Whitey DVD" being advertised. My first thought was: jeez, Flowbee was right? Then I realized it was a tribute to Richie Ashburn…..
SGEW
Another excellent reason to legalize hemp.
Brachiator
McCain appears to be fueled by enormous ambition and anger that an upstart like Obama would dare challenge him. Unfortunately, McCain appears to be incapable of self-reflection and thinks that he can do no wrong because he is a war hero and former POW. The ancient Greeks nailed it: another potentially great man undone by his own hubris.
The double tragedy is that McCain’s giggley VP choice is equally lacking in humility and self-reflection and doesn’t understand the degree to which she is imploding while trying to act as McCain’s hatchet gal.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
The Keating documentary is up on YouTube (the same video is embedded in the Keating site), but it’s getting hammered. The truly curious may want to wait a few more hours.
Carlos
Some people expressed surprise at McCain’s "transformation" into today’s openly unbalanced attack dog persona. The fact is one can explain everything he ever did (including the mavericky positions) as simply positioning himself to win at all costs.
He obviously went against the Republicans because there was no space for him as a straight up party hack like George W. Bush. So he set out to build this image as a maverick. It has always been a show.
Original Lee
LJohnson @ 39: Hurray! A LadyHawke reference!
TenguPhule
We will soon discover the most basic atomic particle of stupidity from this collision, the moron.
SGEW
Tsk tsk. It’s spelled "moran." Unleash The Higgs-Hawkings Moran particle!
Beej
The "transformation" of John McCain from decent, thoughtful 2000 candidate to angry, lying 2008 scumbag should and could be an excellent line for Obama during the debate tomorrow night. If McCain does, indeed, attack on subjects like Ayers, Rev. Wright, and Rezko, Obama should sadly lament the transformation of an honorable man into this angry, mudslinging lowlife who is desparate because he can’t win on the issues and has now decided to descend into the swamp of character assassination.
Tom Hilton
I saw Nick Lowe at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this weekend, and he did All Men Are Liars–from which this line seems especially apropos:
bago
You know what would be pure awesome? If Rick Astley performed at the inaugural ball.
SGEW
For those who have not seen it (and it must be seen by all, in order to be aware of all internet traditions), I present to you:
John McCain gets Barack Rolled.
t4toby
Rick Roll?
Don’t you know that the Moose Roll is all the rage these days?
qkslvrwolf
Dude…I’ve never been successfully rick-rolled before. I feel like I’ve finally come of age…
Poicephalus
Bizet,
I been rolled.
C
mclaren
Watching John McCain destroy himself has had all the hallmarks of epochal tragedy. First he hires the very people who smeared him in 2000 and destroyed his candidacy, then he crawls obsequiously to the far right to take on an airheaded VP nominee he despises, then he accepts Karl Rove as his advisor — the very man who directed the destruction of his character 8 years ago — and now, finally, McCain has sunk to screaming hysterical lies against a far better man than he.
The most trageic part? He’s going to lose anyway. No matter how grotesquely McCain degrades himself, it’s all for nothing.
What will be left of John McCain after his monumental self-immolation? He’ll be a shell of a man, mocked, derided, shunned, treated with disgust by the press and ostracized by his own party as a loser, he’ll be loathed by the Democrats and detested by decent people everywhere.
McCain should take poison right now and get it over with.
CWD
Damn you Cole.
As one who is aware of all internet traditions I am humiliated to have been rickrolled.