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McCain Campaign Shake-Up
July 02, 2008 2:19 PM
ABC News’ Rick Klein and Teddy Davis Report: Veteran Republican operative Steve Schmidt has been put in charge of day-today operations of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, with campaign manager Rick Davis keeping his title but focusing more on general strategy and long-term strategic planning, according to campaign officials and other Republicans familiar with the move.
Schmidt, a veteran of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, R-Calif., 2006 reelection effort, is expected to bring a harder edge to a McCain operation that been criticized by Republicans and Democrats for muddled messaging and an overall lack of focus.
Though Schmidt has had a major role with the McCain campaign since December, the shake-up will leave an experienced and respected operative with a wider swath of responsibility over scheduling, agenda-setting, and efforts to define both McCain and his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.
“Organized, focused, and strategic -- what’s not to love?” one Republican with close ties to the McCain campaign told ABC News. “I think it will help.”
Davis, who will still be above Schmidt in the campaign hierarchy, will focus on general strategy, convention planning, managing relationships with major donors, and the search for a running mate, a McCain campaign official told ABC.
The new role for Schmidt was announced at McCain campaign headquarters Wednesday in Arlington, Va.
One McCain insider said the move is designed in part to provide a psychological lift to McCain among Republican insiders and political reporters. Among McCain’s obstacles has been a growing perception that the Arizona Republican failed to capitalize on his head start in the general election, and his campaign has seemed halting and disorganized in its daily messaging.
Schmidt has a reputation for a hard-charging, hard-working approach. He ran the Bush campaign’s rapid-response messaging “war room” in 2004, and also served as a top adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney before managing Schwarzenegger’s re-election.
Davis was installed as campaign manager last July, as part of a total revamping of the McCain operations that coincided with the campaign’s near-bankruptcy.
July 2, 2008 in Hunter, Duncan, Thompson, Fred | Permalink | User Comments (38)
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Guess you didn't hear, bhrandon. McCain went in there and grabbed the bad guys by the collar and they let the hostages go. Or at least that will be the way they report it on Fox. So it must be true.
Posted by: loovill | Jul 2, 2008 5:42:01 PM
JC in Iraq - Wow - but somehow I am not surprised. In America Obama is the media darling. Sorry - I guess that tells you a lot abot our democratic s-election process.
Posted by: Olga Ma | Jul 2, 2008 5:54:39 PM
You people are a sad bunch!! You think McCain/ McBush/McSame or whaever you name you use makes McCain less than what he is. What do you know about Obama that makes you think he is able to better lead this country than McCain? Maybe you like marxism, maybe you agree with rev Wrigt, maybe you like Obama's friends who all hate America; maybe you fell under the 'change' speeches spell. Maybe you like empty rhetoric speeces that convinced you Obama is man of God and a patriot and no he is not a racists either. Common people tell me someting about Obama that would show me he would be able to lead this contry out of the position we are now in..
Posted by: ex-democrat | Jul 2, 2008 6:02:28 PM
Geevil -- have you ever HEARD the Black National Anthem? It's a gorgeous piece of lyrics and music, and very patriotic. My guess is that the claim that the soprano substituted it for the national anthem is just one more piece of trash from the Swiftboat crowd.
Get with the program, Geevil. People are onto that nonsense this time.
Posted by: Follitics | Jul 2, 2008 6:26:29 PM
What's wrong with the McCain campaign? Why can't McCain keep his staff together? Why so disorganized and lack of focus? Is this how McCain would run the WH. No thanks!
Posted by: HonestAbe | Jul 2, 2008 6:36:51 PM
Yet another McCain anger management story surfaces:
One of John McCain's Republican colleagues, Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran, says he saw the presumed GOP presidential nominee roughly grab an associate of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and lift him out of his chair during a diplomatic mission to the Central American nation in 1987. Cochran said he saw McCain, who has a reputation for being hot tempered, rough up an Ortega associate during a trip to Nicaragua led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan. "McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention," Cochran said in an interview with the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. "But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever ... I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, 'Good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission.' I don't know what had happened to provoke John, but he obviously got mad at the guy ... and he just reached over there and snatched ... him.'
=======
Very bizarre incident and speaks to the instability of John McCain. The man is unfit to be POTUS.
Posted by: HonestAbe | Jul 2, 2008 6:43:56 PM
JC - re military vote in Iraq. Do you really believe posts like this? It came through my mail box weeks ago. The media didn't ignore 54 solders lined up to support McCain - they ignored 540 pro-McCain solders. Get it right.
Posted by: darklight46 | Jul 2, 2008 7:36:53 PM
Maybe the guy deserved to be ruffed up or McCain and the guy were horseplaying. Can't you come up something more revelent and with more details instead of I don't know happened but I say McCain grab another guy's shirt?
Posted by: chattyway | Jul 2, 2008 8:53:49 PM
Welcome Mr. Smith ! You give us George W. Bush for EIGHT YEARS ! How many years are you promising McSame? Or is this George W's. contribution to McCain for another EIGHT YEARS of the same- $10.00 oil, $4.00 bread ++++? Sincerely, Lake Hart, a Native American Writer.
Posted by: Lake Hart - A Native American Writer | Jul 2, 2008 9:53:22 PM
Ok Walter
Time to put your straight jacket back on.
Impressive.
Although you have the IQ of a brick you have excellent computing skills.
Cutting and pasting from the right wing nutjob talking points.
kudos to you
Posted by: Omentum | Jul 2, 2008 10:49:49 PM
Polls are often skewd with the poll takers own bias and ineptness. Just how many polls were wrong last time? Most if not all?
Posted by: chattyway | Jul 2, 2008 11:01:40 PM
It is not the numbers in the polls that are important - it is the trends they reflect.
Posted by: sandy | Jul 3, 2008 12:04:54 AM
What would he stand to gain?
Posted by: Jason | Jul 3, 2008 5:08:06 AM
By the time election time rolls around, McCain will have morphed another 50 times, and be a war hating leftist looking like a beatnik from the 60s and 70s wearing a T-shirt with the peace sign and claim he was raised poor and on food stamps. Yeah, he'll fire this other bozo and hire another bozo.
Posted by: Jake | Jul 3, 2008 6:52:01 AM
I am a life long Democrat who wasn;t sure what to do when Obama got the nomination. I was hoping against hope that Hillary would run as an Independent and can't believe she has thrown her support to Obama simply because of her campaign debt. I'm sorry but that action is a little too much like prostitution for my liking. While I have not found a new party, I feel I have found a new candidate in McCain. More and more I am starting to see that he is really the only choice for those of us who feel that Obama, his friends, family and church are too radical for us. I suppose I would have to really consider any future support for the Clintons.
Posted by: Lois Shankwiler | Jul 3, 2008 7:07:01 AM
only Senator Clinton is capable of being the best President that our children, our troops and our country desperately needs right now.....its on your conscience if you support lesser candidates (mccain/obama)....
Posted by: chris | Jul 3, 2008 10:56:33 AM
if you love your children, truly want to support our troops and want America to be the great nation it once was, then you already know that Senator Clinton is your best hope for a greater future
Posted by: chris | Jul 3, 2008 10:59:35 AM
chris - maybe so, but she's not in the running anymore. i supported Clinton, too and now I support Obama, since he at least shares her ideals and policies. i don't love it, but that's the way the ball bounces... would you rather give the GOP four more years to enact their horrible, failed policies?
Posted by: kelly schirmer | Jul 3, 2008 11:57:24 AM
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