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In Land of Enchantment, McCain Asks 'Who is the Real Barack Obama?'
October 06, 2008 5:33 PM
In Albuquerque, NM, this afternoon, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, delivered his harshest attacks yet against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., painting his Democratic rival as a mysterious, risky unknown.
"Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain asked.
“Even at this late hour in the campaign there are things we don’t know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign,” McCain said. “We have all heard what he has said, but it is less clear what he has done or what he will do."
Speaking to a relatively small crowd of maybe 750 people, McCain said, "My opponent's touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book….What has this man ever actually accomplished in government?"
“Nothing!” the crowd shouted.
"What does he plan for America?" McCain asked. "In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another angry barrage of insults."
"Who is the real Senator Obama?" McCain asked. "Is he the candidate who promises to cut middle class taxes, or the politician who voted to raise middle class taxes? Is he the candidate who talks about regulation or the politician who took money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and turned a blind eye as they ran our economy into a ditch? Which one is it? Is he the candidate who promises change, or is he the politician who has bought into everything that is wrong with Washington? And he’s bought into it big time."
Unlike the allegedly mysterious Mr. Obama, McCain said, "I didn't just show up out of nowhere, after all -- America knows me. You know my strengths and my faults. You know my story and my convictions. And though familiarity in politics can be both helpful to a candidate, or not so helpful, it does at least fill out the picture and answer the essential questions. You need to know who you're putting in the White House -- where the candidate came from and what he or she believes. And you need to know now, before it is time to choose."
The attack comes just two days after McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, started saying that Obama doesn't see America the same way most Americans do, and is "palling around with terrorists."
A new McCain-Palin TV ad asks the "Who is Barack Obama?" question and also calls Obama "dishonorable."
In April, McCain told Fox News, "Americans want a respectful campaign. Now, people say negative ads move numbers. They may. But do we have to go to the lowest common denominator? I don't think so."
In May, Cindy McCain said that "none of this negative stuff though you won't see come out of our side...My husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all....We'd rather not win than have to do that. That's not worth winning for."
-- Jake Tapper and Bret Hovell
October 6, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (129)
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You know the unkindest cut of all by the media in our nation is to not do their job in relation to only one candidate and to take a proctoscope to his opponents, then snip negative when the other candidate has to ask the questions that the media should be asking, and then when the results come in panning them as negative campaigning.
Posted by: L Elion | Oct 6, 2008 7:42:38 PM
I'm confused. The economy goes bad and that INCREASES Obama's chances to win??? Why - during such critical changes - would we vote for an inexperienced, JUNIOR senator who has voted "present" most of his career and gives new meaning to "flip-flop"? Give me the older, stable, decisive, wiser guy anyday (and I'm a lifelong gay Democrat)!
Posted by: gaypastor | Oct 6, 2008 7:31:29 PM
Jupiter
I was just surfing and found that update of the birth certificate issue. If that site can be trusted it looks like Obama has only 3 days to come up with a vault copy. I'll try to get more sources to verify.
Posted by: Karl | Oct 6, 2008 7:31:25 PM
karl marx can you please provide a link/source for your information.
Posted by: jupiter | Oct 6, 2008 7:22:21 PM
obviously most of McCain supporters don't know the "real" mccain
do you understand what his relationship was in the middle of the s&l crisis with Keating
the last bail out which eventually cost us a trillion the first time.
Do you understand what his role was with the Comm for the Liberation of Iraq...you know the lobbyist PR arm organized by the Bush administration to get us into the war. the one Scheunneman was president of and Mccain one of the chairs...the same committee that saw the largest and first financial gains and contracts as soon as we invaded.
Do you understand how he spoke about reigning in fannie once... by shrinking who they gave those loans to...yet never asked the wall street greed that had supercharged the slime....to be reigned in...ever.
Because that is who John mcCain is...
loyal to the wealthiest of wealthy.
not the rest of us.
Posted by: dl | Oct 6, 2008 7:18:25 PM
This out-of-ideas McCain/Palin ticket is getting more desperate and dingy by the day! I guess while our country is facing the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression there motto is: If we can't win on the issues, we'll smear em! Smearing and mudslinging are the last resort of a desperate out-of-gas campaign. Instead of constructive dialog the McCain/Palin ticket now offers up 'red herring' smear propaganda. The only purpose of which is to confuse the real issues and to somehow deceive the American people into thinking Obama has done something wrong. BUT, Obama has done nothing wrong! No more smears, No more distractions and No more Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin!
Posted by: Johnson | Oct 6, 2008 7:18:05 PM
the truth is the polls look very favorable for obama right now. previously i supported hillary. i just really believe that we have some very difficult times ahead financially. as we lose our status as a world power we will become vulnerable at a national security level. many of obama supporters believe that 'we can just sit down with our enemies' and they will love us and we will all live happily ever after. i don't buy that the world is full of wackos that hate us and i want a president who understands the risks and the vulnerabilities. for me that is john mccain. mccain sees the connection between economic security and national security as do i. for me obama is a big unknown and big risk at that level.
Posted by: jupiter | Oct 6, 2008 7:16:59 PM
ahhhh....... DO YOU?
Who's not the open book?
Paige
Posted by: realitysbest | Oct 6, 2008 7:11:25 PM
Chairman Maubama | Oct 6, 2008 7:02:34 PM
10 Trillion in debt
1 Trillion Dollar Bail-out and counting (correction)
10 Billion going to Iraq each month when they have an 80 Billion surplus
If you don't think Mccain will raise your taxes, you are living in Fantasyland or you were Palin's economic tutor.
Posted by: Paige | Oct 6, 2008 7:08:07 PM
If nothing else, we get to see how the next President might respond to a terrorist attack.
Posted by: Gil Gamesh | Oct 6, 2008 7:07:23 PM
Chairman Maubama | Oct 6, 2008 7:02:34 PM
10 Trillion in debt
10 Trillion Dollar Bail-out and counting
10 Billion going to Iraq each month when they have an 80 Billion surplus
If you don't think Mccain will raise your taxes, you are living in Fantasyland or you were Palin's economic tutor.
Posted by: Paige | Oct 6, 2008 7:07:14 PM
If nothing else, we get to see how the next Presidnt might respond to a terrorist attack.
Posted by: Gil Gamesh | Oct 6, 2008 7:06:52 PM
Get past Obamas glossy cover and you can see he as a community organizer shook the federal money tree as hard and often as anyone else ,votes along strick party lines, must be deaf as sitting in a church for 20 years didn't realize the rants of a racist preacher and doesn't know history at all as he didn't realize that Ayres was a cowardly bomb thrower on par with any thug terrorist.
Having said that, all memebers of the Senate and House should be fired and sent home on the first bus (Mccain and Obama included)for theirs and their associatespitiful jobs as our representatives .
Posted by: david | Oct 6, 2008 7:04:58 PM
.Do their hearts bled so profusely that they no longer know the difference in right and wrong? .
ahhhh....... DO YOU?
____________________________________________
McCain was on the Board with this fellow:
John Singlaub. He was a member of the World Anti Communist League which is described as "largely a collection of Nazis, Fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers." John Singlaub.
Posted by: Paige | Oct 6, 2008 7:04:30 PM
Heavy Kool-Aid Drinker!!
I wish I can sit with you show you the light. Don't you see the turmoil around you. The crashing of the market, high gas prices, wars and famine.
It's punishment.
This is the chance for us to be delivered from this turmoil.
OBAMA is the answer and the fulfillment of the Profecy.
Leader of the oppressed.
OBAMA..OBAMA,..WE CAN HARDLY WAIT .
Try to FAST my brother. This may help you see the light.
Posted by: Muslims4Obama | Oct 6, 2008 7:00:45 PM
Down Mexico Way
Considering that most of what you "predicted" has not even been suggested, and some of it is not legally possible, I would say it was a fairly safe bet that you are talking nonsense.
Posted by: jock59801 | Oct 6, 2008 7:00:27 PM
Sometimes I wonder if I've fallen into the twilight zone....have the liberals totally lost their minds.....Do their hearts bled so profusely that they no longer know the difference in right and wrong? ...This could turn into a problem of such magnitude that no liberal or conservative will be able to lead the other home.....
Posted by: realitysbest | Oct 6, 2008 6:58:21 PM
Mack...our anti American terriorists (friends of Obama's) are all sitting tight for the next four weeks....they want a WEAKLING in office. There will be a lull in terriorism like you've never seen, in the upcoming weeks. If something happened the tide would shift to McCain.
Posted by: hanna | Oct 6, 2008 6:52:10 PM
McCain: Cut Medicare
Paul Krugman doesn’t like John McCain’s health care plans very much:
Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.
So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.
It seems his deadline must have been too early to catch the latest twist from the McCain campaign. Faced with the accusation that swapping the tax deductible status of employer-provided health care for a $2,500 per person ($5,000 per family) CPI-indexed tax credit would constitute a net tax increase on the middle class, McCain’s people proclaimed that employer-provided plans would be subject to income tax, but not to payroll tax. No more net tax increase. But where’s the money going to come from? Well, it looks like $1.3 trillion over ten years in Medicare cuts is the answer. Igor Volsky observes that this is hardly the first time McCain has taken a stand against Medicare beneficiaries. One might have thought, as Krugman evidently did, that McCain would be too averse to the political risks to take up the mantle of Medicare slasher amidst a presidential campaign, but evidently he was just hoping that amidst his campaign’s oft-shifting story about the details of his health care plans nobody would notice.
Posted by: flop sweat express | Oct 6, 2008 6:50:34 PM
"Mack....Papa Obama had four wives."
At the same time?
Posted by: Mack | Oct 6, 2008 6:49:05 PM
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