For more than a decade John McCain has been a darling of the national political press, even up through his victory in the Republican primary. Much of that has changed, in part because the media has somewhat moved on from the McCain narrative and at least equally because of the McCain campaign's animosity toward the press corp. Townhall's Matt Lewis says the following passage describes the evolution quite well:

"He loved the Senate, he loved Arizona, he loved his wife, and he hated being told what to do ... He may have also sensed that his popularity, which was considerable, would change once he became a candidate for president.  As many people have discovered, a politician can go to long way in Washington until he becomes a serious presidential candidate.  At that precise moment the Washington press corps digs in, and reputations are destroyed in no time."

However, Lewis points out:

The author goes on to write that prior to running for president, this person wrote a popular book, was subject of numerous positive  magazine articles, and was a fixture on national television.

... I should probably point out that this quote is not in reference to John McCain.  It actually comes from Alfred Regnery's book, "Upstream," and refers to Barry Goldwater's 1964 race. 

The only difference here I'd point out is that the media's positive treatment of Obama actually accelerated when he announced his run for president. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy aside, a "digging in" by the press corps didn't really begin until after Obama had defeated Hillary Clinton for the nomination.
 

To read the blogs today, you'd be led to believe that Barack Obama is either a malignant sexist, or an endearing saint who would never use language to attack his political opponents. Why is it so hard to grasp what most likely happened?

1. Sarah Palin's "What's the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? One wears lipstick," joke was one of the more memorable from the Republican convention.

2. Barack Obama and his advisers wanted to answer that joke with a pun arguing that while Palin may be a new figure on the political scene, she still represents the unpopular/failed policies of the Bush administration.

Yes, others have used the phrase, including McCain. But it's hard to believe Obama just randomly decided to use the phrase for the first time, unaware of what would be a perceived proximity to Palin's convention joke. The Obama audience certainly seemed to get the joke.

Obama cannot be simultaneously heraled as the greatest political orator since JFK, while also not having to take responsibility when he says something unartful. In other words, he tried to say something witty and has now had his own joke flipped against him.

Of course, he wasn't calling her a pig. But I do think it's fair to ask if he was making a subtle jab at John McCain's age when he followed up the lipstick remark with, "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."

Again, I think Obama was only talking about the McCain/Palin policies, but to deny he was making any kind of verbal jab is the kind of blind allegiance that calls into question the intellectual honesty of Obama supporters. Instead, they should own it. He made a fair point, even a strong point. This should, and so easily could, be a day in which Obama was putting McCain on the defensive for this unethical ad.

John McCain's acceptance speech got off to a rough start tonight. Bloggers from the left and right were in shock as McCain began speaking before a giant, lime green backdrop, reminiscent of the awful stage backing during his universally panned speech after securing the nomination a few months ago.

But as the speech reached its conclusion, McCain found his comfort zone and delivered. He'll never give a speech with the oratory skills of Barack Obama, or even Sarah Palin, but he delivered specific policy proposals and crossover talking points that neither of his more vocally gifted counterparts offered. Like many of McCain's speeches, there was much to like here, but it comes filtered through his awkward delivery and a not always receptive audience.

1. Daily Kos diarist BarbinMD:


3. The increasingly-excitable Andrew Sullivan is feeling more reserved:

It made me realize how much I am still fond of this guy. And also clearer about why this is not his moment. The specifics were very vague, and the entire presentation based on biography, nostalgia and a kind of strained, exhausted mildness. His performance at Saddleback was much, much better. He seemed very tired to me.

4. Reason's Tim Cavanaugh has probably the kindest words you'll hear for McCain coming from the apparently Obama-leaning, but certainly anti-McCain publication:

I think. McCain's speech was good, very gracious, moving in parts, and generally serviceable. The roof was blown off the dump last night, I guess. Maybe this was good enough.

5. And finally, from the conventional in convention wisdom, Swampland's Jay Carney:

A mixed performance. The ending worked, though in the hall I doubt anyone could hear him very well as he spoke through the crowd's applause. The final peroration -- "We're Americans. We don't hide from history. We make history" -- was strong stuff.

Here's a link to my feature over on the CQ Politics main site today about how John McCain and conservative talk radio have begun to heal their often tumultuous relationship. It almost goes without saying: Sarah Palin was a silver bullet:

McCain's recent moves to the right also appear to be making inroads with evangelical Christian talk show hosts. Lee Michaels and Jeff Shell, co-hosts of the KKMS Live! With Jeff & Lee show, based out of Eagan, Minn., say their listeners have been responding more positively to McCain than in recent months.

"We're an arena of ideas. It's our job to put information out there so our listeners can make up their own minds," Michaels said. "But we come at this with a conservative perspective and a Christian world view. Sarah Palin is a huge asset. I think it was a turning point for [Focus on the Family President] James Dobson and many others."

BlogPAC, founded by leading progressive blogger Matt Stoller, has released a new ad going after John McCain's two marriages. Stoller, a Harvard educated, talented political strategist, usually makes his mark by engaging in personal attacks against his ideological adversaries. So, it's not a big surprise BlogPAC would go there. But the reasoning in their press release seems a bit odd, considering how the traditional media has gone after Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol this week:

While John McCain's surrogates make specious assertions regarding Barack Obama's character, patriotism and associations, the legacy media has simply shrugged. Suckling the saccharin nectar of false bipartisan civility, the mass-media consensus seems to be that such attacks are okay, as long as they are made by a conservative Republican.

From the new ad's text:

"Which presidential candidate married a beautiful swimsuit model? Who left his swimsuit model wife after she was disfigured in a tragic car accident? Who dated a woman almost 18 years his junior, while still married to his first wife? John McCain, that's who. Ask the media why they don't tell you these things."

Here in St. Paul, conservative talk show radio hosts occupy a long hallway leading into the Excel Center. Much like the conservative blogosphere, the conservative and evangelical airwaves have not always been the warmest enclave for John McCain. But in talking with some of them today, I have found a sea change in their outlook towards the soon-to-be anointed Republican nominee, and much of that has to do with Sarah Palin.

Even Rush Limbaugh seems to have come around.

"He's always been a strong pro-life candidate," said Jeff Shell, co-host of KKMS Live! with Jeff & Lee, based in Eagan, Minnesota. "But [Palin] energized the evangelical base and sucked the air out of Obama's nomination."

"It's been a huge boost," added his co-host Lee Michaels. "Defense and national security have always been strengths for him with our listeners. And the Rick Warren Saddleback Forum helped a lot. Warren is an example of how important evangelicals still are and it really increased the enthusiasm for the Republican ticket."

"Maybe one in twenty have been disappointed with the Palin pick," said Lars Larson of KXL in Portland, Oregon and his Westwood One national affiliate. "Sarah Palin has far more executive experience than Obama."

I'll have more on the influence of talk radio at the Republican National Convention later this week. But the message here is that conservative talk radio was not able to derail McCain's drive for the Republican nomination and they aren't likely to be a drag on his general election effort either.

If there's any lingering doubt about the initial wave of enthusiasm following Sarah Palin's additional to the Republican vice presidential ticket, check out this post from Patrick Ruffini over at The Next Right:

A source inside the McCain campaign confirms a massive online fundraising haul since Sarah Palin was named as the VP -- $4.5 million in the first 24 hours, part of a $7 million overall fundraising burst.

There's other good post-Palin news for McCain as well. I don't put much stock in Zogby polls anymore, but today's shows McCain taking a two-point lead over Obama. the much more reliable Gallup daily tracking poll on our Poll Tracker site shows Obama with a six point edge.

Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy joined the ranks of Democrats and pundits who are trying to frame John McCain's age as a liability, implying that he is either suffering from mental decline, or simply out of touch. While others, myself included, have challenged some of those assertions, I have yet to see one fairly obvious point made: The majority of those casting votes in each election are "older" voters. If they hear too many snide remarks about McCain's age, doesn't that run the strong risk of actually making McCain more endearing towards them?

Leahy's remarks:

"It was the same way with Ronald Reagan in the last few years he was president," Leahy said, referring to the belief that Reagan experienced early signs of Alzheimer's disease late in his presidency.

The press "let Ronald Regan get away with" slips, Leahy said, though he denied he was suggesting that McCain was experiencing mental decline.

"No, I'm just saying he gets a free ride," Leahy said.

Yeah, no joke. The Republican National Committee is here in Denver, site of the Democratic National Convention. And as part of their ongoing effort to court Hillary Clinton supporters, they will be throwing a happy hour this evening in her honor. From the press release:

***MEDIA ADVISORY***
RNC HOSTS HAPPY HOUR FOR HILLARY IN DENVER


DENVER - As the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Denver, Colo., the Republican National Committee (RNC) will host a Happy Hour for Hillary today. From Republicans to independents to open-minded Democrats, John McCain is gathering support from voters nationwide who believe that he is the most qualified candidate to lead our country as Commander in Chief.

John McCain's campaign released a new add "Passed Over" at 3am. The significance? The ad is another clear pitch for Hillary Clinton supporters who have still not crossed over to support Barack Obama.

"She won millions of votes. But isn't on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth," says the ad's female voiceover. The ad uses footage of several interviews with Clinton in which she questions Obama's specifics on policy proposals and says his campaign "has become increasingly negative."

The ad ends with this zinger, "The truth hurt, and Obama didn't like it." The ad already has over 100,000 views:

Liberal blogs are worked up this morning over a Politico item claiming that John McCain doesn't know how many homes his family owns. The offending quote reads as follows:

"I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you."

So, does that mean McCain is an out-of-touch, senile, aristocratic pol unfit for the presidency? That's been the general response from the lefty sphere today. But there are some deficiencies in their assumptions. First, look no further than the next graph in the Politico story:

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

Actually, I believe that means the "correct answer" is that Politico and Newsweek don't know how many homes the McCains own either. Where McCain appeared confused was whether a merged pair of condos he and his wife own count as one or two properties. Matthew Yglesias has been mocking McCain over the story, but his own findings actually add credibility to the point that determining the number of properties McCain "owns" may in fact be a complicated answer. AMERICAblog's John Aravosis also piles on, accusing McCain of being "cognitively impaired" with "an inconsistent mental state," saying it's "just scary" that he couldn't answer the question off the top of his head.

Well, Mr. Aravosis, what then do you make of this Las Vegas Review-Journal story about  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in which he confuses Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman. In addition, reporter Molly Ball writes:

During the hourlong colloquy, Reid also forgot the name of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democratic Senate candidate, and the Title IX legislation giving women access to school sports programs.

By Aravosis' own standards, shouldn't that qualify Democrat Harry Reid as being "cognitively impaired" and unfit to lead the U.S. Senate?

Does John McCain risk losing the conservative base if he picks Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman to be his vice presidential running mate? Rich Lowry thinks the Ridge trial balloon last week may have been more than coincidence:

NR has learned that the McCain campaign has been calling key state GOP officials around the country the last couple of days and sounding them out about the consequences of a pro-choice VP pick.

While others have speculated that McCain would benefit with independent and women voters by choosing a pro-choice running mate. John Hawkins says Lieberman is too liberal, but Ridge might make sense if it appears he could put Pennsylvania into play.

I do think the dire warnings of a pro-choice VP selection are somewhat off. While there would almost certainly be backlash from conservative figures over a Ridge selection, those same figures didn't have much of an impact opposing McCain in the Republican primaries. What will matter more to evangelical voters is what sort of abortion policies McCain would have as president, and he forcefully addressed those questions over the weekend. Also, you'd have to assume Ridge would make a point of noting that his job as VP is to implement the policies of the president, not oppose them. And even though it's already been stated before, I do not think you can underestimate the value of Ridge as someone McCain has a personal connection to, and how important that is to maintaining McCain's authenticity on the stump.

There's a lot of good information to take from the God-o-Meter's interview with Saddleback pastor Rick Warren. Specifically, Warren gave his thoughts on how John McCain and Barack Obama performed in this weekend's Compassion Forum.

On whether Obama can win over evangelicals and if abortion is a "make or break issue" for religious voters:

It all depends on the hierarchy of their worldview of what matters most to them. My gut reaction when it was over was that Obama will pick up probably some younger votes and McCain will probably pick up some older votes and it might come down to which group winds up showing up that the polls.

On whether Obama's "above my paygrade" response was "acceptable ambivalence," in Warren's view:

No. I think he needed to be more specific on that. I happen to disagree with Barack on that.

And finally, on whether McCain was tipped off in advance to Warren's questions:

They're dead wrong. That's just sour grapes. They both did fantastically well.

There's a lot more to the interview, all worth a read.

It seems that expectations are so low for John McCain that his above-average showing at this weekend's Compassion Forum with pastor Rick Warren has set off conspiracy theories speculating that McCain knew the questions in advance.

McCain was presumed to have been in a "cone of silence" while Obama appeared before him. That way, even know McCain was being asked mostly the same questions, he wouldn't have the advantage of knowing what those questions were in advance. As it turns out, McCain was traveling to the event in his campaign motorcade while Obama was speaking. Warren himself told CNN last night that McCain did not violate the embargo:

Warren said, "I trust the integrity of both" candidates, and said he "knew they would abide by the rules." He joked McCain may not have been in the cone of silence, but "he was in the cone of a Secret Service motorcade".

AMERICAblog author John Aravosis calls Warren a "liar," and declares that McCain cheated:

That means that McCain and his staff were listening to Obama in order to prepare. McCain denies it. Well, then McCain really has lost his senses if he thinks that any politician running for office, if given the chance, wouldn't tune into the other guy answering the same questions he's about to get.

This sort of conspiracy mongering from the self-described "reality based community" reminds me of similar speculation in 2004 that President Bush had answers to debate answers fed to him through a mysterious "bulge" in the back of his suit.

The ads on CNN for this weekend's Compassion Forum with both John McCain and Barack Obama get you thinking about their upcoming debates, but it's more likely that character issues and leadership questions will be the theme when each candidate has their appearance with the pastor. Warren himself has already said:

I'm going to deal with their personal life - because character matters. Their personal life does matter as a leader. God says so.

Warren also recently commented on the John Edwards affair, saying he'd have difficulty voting for a candidate who has committed adultery. Those comments have lead some progressive bloggers to believe that Warren was making a subtle reference to McCain's affair with-then-girlfriend Cindy. AMERICAblog's John Aravosis says Warren's comments were "clearly aimed" at McCain and asks:

[W]ill the corporate media again choose to ignore McCain's adultery, even now that a top evangelical leader has said he'd have a problem voting for someone like McCain, i.e., an adulterer?

We don't know if Warren was talking about McCain, because he gave his answer to a question about John Edwards. But for the sake of argument, let's say he was talking about McCain. In his answer, Warren talks about the differences between "forgiveness" and "trust," with the latter taking greater time to be earned. In other words, even if he did hold McCain's earlier adultery against him, it would seem the more than two decades of marriage would go some ways towards the "trust," column, versus the very current status of the Edwards adultery story.

John McCain has earned some points in the media and conservative circles this week for his strong and timely response to the crisis in Georgia. But now, Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili has called on McCain to move his rhetoric from "words to deeds." Of course, there's very little McCain can actually do, unless you believe President Bush would make a major foreign policy decision to benefit his party's presumptive nominee.

Jane Hamsher argues McCain is unfairly being treated more favorably than Democratic lawmakers like Nancy Pelosi, who have previously made efforts and statements on international affairs. Josh Marshall also wonders why McCain is acting like he's president when he's only a candidate, and says McCain's statements may actually be making the problem worse:

It seems like John McCain's foreign policy freelancing may be further complicating the situation in Georgia.

Matthew Yglesias agrees, adding:

The McCain campaign put something out yesterday about crowds cheering in Tblisi when President Shakashvili quoted McCain's statement. I can't read their minds, but it seems very plausible to me that they were cheering because they read this as a call for the United States to take practical steps to help Georgia not as a piece of hollow political sloganeering.

Sure, the latest McCain "celeb" web ad against Obama isn't as well-produced as its predecessors, but does that make it racist? The "Fan Club" ad, posted to You Tube yesterday, sticks with the theme that Obama is popular around the world, but isn't ready to lead at home. The ad itself contains only one substantive attack against Obama, accusing him of voting to raise taxes on anyone making more than $42,000/year. The rest of the ad is more effective as media criticism, showing how local and national media often swoon over the candidate.





But Talking Points Memo's Erik Kleefeld sees a more sinister message in the ad:

"We know he doesn't have much experience, and isn't ready to lead, but that doesn't mean he isn't dreamy," says the announcer, followed by footage of two women at rallies -- both of whom are white, mind you -- complimenting Obama's looks. How long until "Barack, call me" ends up in a McCain paid TV ad?

So, what would happen if the McCain campaign had only used video of black men and women voicing their support for Obama? Would that also be "evidence" that Republicans are trying to scare the electorate by portraying Obama as a purveyor of racial identity politics? This seems like another sad case of some Obama supporters taking any opposition to his candidacy as de facto racism.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first or only time TPM readers and authors have overreached in recent weeks to accuse McCain of fanning the racist flames. More recent examples here, here, here, here and here.

Jake Tapper also sees racial implications in the McCain ad.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder resists the racist clarion calls as well, both from factual and strategic points of origin:

Well, the view that McCain hasn't gone there is shared by Barack Obama, for one. And those who see racial imagery in these web ads (black woman, white man, older white woman, younger white woman, white woman, white woman, white man, Wayne and Garth)  are racializing the web ads and drawing attention to them.

Both conservative and liberal bloggers seem to accept that the McCain campaign is taking better advantage of the crisis in Georgia than Obama is. But much as with McCain's "celeb" ad attack, when he's getting a lot of attention, plenty of it will be negative.

CQ Politics' Taegan Goddard analyzes McCain's comments today on the crisis and finds that at least three of McCain's comments about Georgia appear to be sourced from Wikipedia without attribution. As Taegan notes, Wikipedia is free information, but a citation is required for material taken verbatim. However, Open Left's Chris Bowers brings up what is arguable the larger point: McCain's campaign may have been cribbing notes on a global crisis from Wikipedia:

If McCain becomes President, we all need to make sure that wikipedia is carefully updated, since it will apparently inform our government on how to handle an international crisis. A properly updated wikipedia could end up determining the fate of the world. 

Meanwhile, other influential progressive blogs are convinced that neoconservative voices, whom they see as playing an increasingly influential role within the McCain campaign, are using the crisis to push for a more aggressive stance towards Russia.

John McCain leads in most polls asking which candidate the voters trust most to be an effective commander-in-chief. So, the conventional wisdom would lead one to believe that McCain would benefit from an international crisis involving Russia. In fact, McCain got a lot of free airtime on the cable news networks this morning, when they cut to his press conference on the conflict.

But is the conflict coincidence or part of a more sinister strategy? The Huffington Post's Blake Fleetwood, a former correspondent for The New York Times, takes the conspiracy theory route, noting that McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann has also served as an adviser to Georgia's government:

Can't your just imagine what happened. Randy lets it be known to the Georgian President that this would be a good time for Georgian troops to invade South Ossetia, which had been an autonomous territory for more than a decade. The Georgians didn't take much persuading, as they had been wanting to crack down with their troops for a long time. And with American/Republican support, what a better time to act?

Meanwhile Bush is conveniently meeting with Putin at the Olympics in Beijing and lets it be known that if Georgia attacks Ossetia, the US will not "mind" -- Wink Wink -- an aggressive response from Russia. Oh, we will talk tough, but we are not going to do anything..... And this mini crisis will be good for the Republicans in the 08 Presidential Election. Classic Machiavellian maneuvers as adapted by Cheney and Rove.

The McCain and Obama campaigns have traded allegations of "playing the race card," but we may be seeing an entirely new dimension of political attacks. One of McCain's recent ads, "The One," seeks to highlight what conservatives see as arrogant comments from Obama. When the ad first came out, some critics questioned the effectiveness of using a side-by-side comparison of Obama and Moses to attack Obama. But now that the ad has become quite popular, with more than a million You Tube views, new allegations are falling from the sky.

First, the video:





Steve Waldman highlights on a memo from the Democratic Eleison Group, alleging that the McCain ad compares Obama to the Antichrist:

This is the use of religion at its very worst in politics because it is an attempt to subtly and perhaps even subconsciously play on some of the deepest fears of millions of evangelical Americans.

Amy Sullivan, who covers religious issues, writes in Time that there are parallels between the ad and the Left Behind series:

It's not hard to see how some Obama-haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech.

Over at National Review, Mark Hemingway writes:

That's right, after the racist charges didn't stick and then their ridiculous Nazi accusations  were ignored, there was only one other place they could go. Obama's defenders are now accusing McCain of using his campaign ads to call Obama theanti-Christ. Marvel for a second at the absurdity of that.

John McCain has added another entry to his ever-improving staple of web-only campaign videos. This latest ad features praise of the presumptive Republican nominee from a number of high-profile Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Tom Daschle and Russ Feingold.



Meanwhile, my CQ Politics colleague Jonathan Allen has an excellent story today detailing the response from some of those same Democrats to the McCain ad. As Allen notes, Kerry considered having McCain on his ticket in 2004, but was the first to attack McCain's new ad. But strangest of all is the reasoning from Biden:

"He has embraced President Bush's failed policies and will continue them. It's unfortunate he's changed so much in just eight years."

The Biden clip in the McCain ad was from 2005.

John McCain and Barack Obama sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss their pop culture favorites. They don't seem to have a whole lot in common (both love HBO's "The Wire). But both received the same question near the end of their respective interviews:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: If you could be any superhero, which one would you be?

JOHN McCAIN: Batman. He does justice sometimes against insurmountable odds. And he doesn't make his good works known to a lot of people, so a lot of people think he's just a rich playboy.

Last question, and the fate of the Republic hangs on your answer: If you could be any superhero, which superhero would you be?

BARACK OBAMA: I was always into the Spider-Man/Batman model. The guys who have too many powers, like Superman, that always made me think they weren't really earning their superhero status. It's a little too easy. Whereas Spider-Man and Batman, they have some inner turmoil. They get knocked around a little bit.

On a related note, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has a cameo in the new Batman movie, disputes the popular theory that The Dark Knight endorses the Bush administration's approach to the war on terror. Leahy tells Think Progress:

Sorry Glenn but that's not just a stretch, it's a hoot. But I do grant the parallels between Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor and the Vice President.

Progressive bloggers and their readers sometimes use the term "concern troll," to describe someone who is feigning concern for a person or cause when they actually mean to undermine said person or cause.

In this case, Andrew Sullivan goes after John McCain's age by pointing to a study which suggests that about one-fifth of adults over the age of 71 may suffer from symptoms of dementia but do not rise to the level of a full diagnosis. Sullivan, who regularly takes umbrage at character attacks on Obama, suggests a particularly coarse method for testing how the McCain "age issue" plays with voters:

Here's an opening challege: craft an ad that legitimately and fairly raises the issue of whether he is too old to lead; and one less high-minded one that strings clips of gaffes, stumbles, mental blocks in public, and mistakes to make the guy seem like Abraham Simpson on a bad day. put "YouTube ad contest" in the contents line.

Conversely, here's Sullivan on McCain's last two weeks of campaigning, including his "Celeb" ad:

So McCain's main moves these past two weeks have been either childish or disgusting, and both times he has signaled he didn't really believe his own message. He doesn't seem like a serious president to me.

That's definitely not a headline I'd ever imagine writing. Berlin may love Obama, but Paris hates McCain. As in Paris Hilton, who just released a "response" ad to John McCain's "Celeb" ad, which uses Hilton's image to mock Obama. It's sort of like the Hilton/Nicole Ritchie feud, but with campaign finance restrictions.

Anyway, the video starts out with Hilton talking about McCain's age:

"He's the oldest celebrity in the world. Like, super old. Old enough to remember when dancing was a sin and beer was served in a bucket."

After that, Hilton sets out to shock us all by proving she can read a couple of lines about a proposed energy reform compromise. And perhaps more importantly, the Obama campaign is probably relieved to know she doesn't offer her endorsement.

Several House GOP leaders met with conservative bloggers this afternoon in John Boehner's office to discuss their floor protest over energy legislation. Near the end of the hour long meeting, Arizona Rep. John Shadegg discussed the possibility of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain joining the Republicans on the House floor.

'I would welcome him here," Shadegg said, noting that the only way McCain can be prevented from crossing over to the other chamber is if Nancy Pelosi returns to Washington and declares the House to be in session.

Shadegg was joined by RSC Chairman Jeb Hensarling, former presidential candidate and retiring California Rep. Duncan Hunter, Mike Pence, Marilyn Musgrave and Louie Gohmert.

John McCain's "Celeb" ad deriding Barack Obama as the "biggest celebrity in the world," has racked up 1.24 million hits in just over two days, thanks largely to nearly non-stop attention from the media. But unlike many other high-profile political videos, this one only earns two stars out of a possible five from the users who vote on You Tube's content. In short, that shows the video is likely being viewed more from Obama supporters than McCain's base.

But as the saying goes, any press is good press. The McCain campaign is now bragging about owning this week's media narrative, even as much of that narrative has seen a negative turn in the coverage of McCain, as liberals and McCain's old media allies disingenuously wonder why he's so angry all of a sudden. As further evidence to bolster their claim, the Gallup Daily tracking poll now shows McCain and Obama tied at 44 percent. McCain has claimed about 1.3 points in the poll each day since the "Celeb" ad premiered.

CQ Politics' Craig Crawford looks at the unprecedented level of ads, and ad spending, flooding our nation's airwaves.

And USA Today's Mark Memmott has a blog poll asking who went negative first? I took the least popular option, "they're equally to blame," which is taking in all of seven percent! "Republicans/McCain" are winning with 76 percent of the vote in the "who stole my electoral innocence?" sweepstakes.

John McCain has yet another new web video going after Barack Obama. This one compares Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and includes footage from Obama's Berlin speech. From the ad text:

"He's the biggest celebrity in the world ... but is he ready to lead?

The indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens presents a number of opportunities and challenges to both national Republicans and those in his home state of Alaska. Stevens is already facing a steady stream of challengers in his Republican primary, but the bench of viable replacements for him is somewhat thin. MyDD's Josh Orton notes that Stevens can be replaced on the ballot if he resigns before September 17th.

Stevens has become infamous amongst younger voters for his comments describing the Internet as a "series of tubes."

While Stevens and Rep. Don Young remain scapegoats of wayward Republicanism, Gov. Sarah Palin is a transcendent political figure right now, with approval ratings hovering around 80 percent and a vice presidential draft movement afoot. But Next Right's Patrick Ruffini says:

But who to replace him? Sarah Palin? I suspect it's too soon to bury this rising star in the Senate.

Stevens has been a punching bag for John McCain when the presumptive Republican nominee discusses spending and government corruption. National Review editor Rich Lowry blogs that the indictment allows McCain a chance to do what he does best, without suffering fallout from the party faithful:

McCain should absolutely unload on Stevens, and frame it as the sort of dysfunction and corruption in Congress that he has long railed against. A good way to get some indie cred without upsetting any conservatives.

Meanwhile, Swampland's Michael Scherer says Stevens' possible exit from politics could change the way no-bid government contracts are awarded.

John McCain's campaign has released another hard-hitting ad today, this time going after Barack Obama for not visiting with American troops during last week's overseas trip. The ad is an improvement over previous McCain efforts because it plays into themes about Obama that the Republican base wants to hear, i.e. that he's not a strong commander-in-chief type like McCain. The ad has also reached more than 300,000 views on You Tube in less than two days - very impressive for a McCain ad. The one downside for McCain: Even his own successes are still all about Obama and not about what McCain would do as president.



Conversely, this new MoveOn.org sponsored ad "Hope: It Could Happen to You" for Barack Obama lacks the serious tone of McCain's effort. That can be mostly explained by the fact that it's targeted for a MTV audience. But the insanely popular Will.i.am video demonstrated that Obama supporters don't need poor man's Daily Show fodder to connect with young voters. Of course, Jon Stewart himself has noted that MoveOn has an uncanny ability to make even winning issues for liberals look bad.

Last week, John McCain's campaign launched what I described as another example of their improving media outreach with a pair of videos lampooning the media's "love affair" with Barack Obama. The videos have been a big success for the McCain campaign on You Tube, with more than 200,000 hits. The videos were also forwarded to McCain supporters via email, where they were encouraged to vote on their favorite version and further encouraged to donate to the campaign.

However, Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland reports that the McCain campaign has been forced to remove the videos because Warner Bros. music said the use of Frankie Valli's old hit, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."

The campaign has reposted the video, without the original tune. It's picked up about 10,000 views since posting this weekend, but isn't the same...

 

Elisabeth Bumiller has a solid article in The New York Times today on John McCain's rough week, as he struggles for attention while the media is largely focused on Barack Obama's overseas trip:

Senator John McCain's presidential campaign recovered from a near-death experience almost exactly a year ago, and political candidates stumble in and out of troughs all the time. But it is safe to say that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is not having a spectacular week.

Most of the attention on McCain this week from the media has concerned whether he was being "ignored" by the press in favor of more Obama coverage. But a number of progressive bloggers have read the Bumiller piece and come away with a different take: The media's own "love affair" with McCain is over. At least for now,.

Firedoglake's Scarecrow:

Sure, it's tough to follow President 27%. But the fact is, whatever John McCain once was, campaigning against Obama has revealed McCain as an angry, resentful, often befuddled old man.

BarbinMD adds in her Daily Kos diary that McCain may have a point about focusing on domestic votes, but that our image abroad should not be ignored:

Does John McCain have a valid point? Or, could it be argued that while there aren't any electoral votes to be won in Germany, we do have many shared interests that need our attention? And given that Germany is a friend to our country, wasn't Obama's speech both necessary and appropriate?

This is something I've been thinking about this week. McCain is essentially hoping for a tortoise vs. hare campaign. While Obama gets the center stage and big crowds, McCain is slowly massaging the Republican base while connecting with real voters in his more intimate town hall settings. As McCain aide Mark Salter put it:

"I think he's getting his message out -- go look at some of the local press and the local TV packages," Mr. Salter said. "It's John McCain on energy and the economy."

(On Thursday in Pennsylvania, The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre prominently featured Mr. McCain's comments in the state on Social Security; The Morning Call in Allentown covered Mr. McCain's stop at the grocery store, including his remarks that $4-a-gallon milk was putting a strain on American families.)

It's not too often that a presidential election features a contest between two media darlings. Nonetheless, John McCain's campaign is still pretty upset about the press advantage that appears to be swinging Barack Obama's way. I'll be discussing this unusual argument on MSNBC today from 12:-12:30pm EST.

With rumors circulating that a McCain vice presidential pick could come as early as this week, The Ethics Guy, aka Bruce Weinstein, outlines some of the ethical considerations of picking a VP. Weinstein argues that the pick should go beyond simple electoral vote calculations:

With so many critical issues before us, including a flagging economy, rising food and energy prices, a housing crisis, almost 50 million citizens without health-care insurance, and the ever-present danger of terrorism, it's reasonable to think that the next President may continue in the tradition of having a Vice-President who plays a significant role in determining the direction of our country.

I still think Novak's story was a distraction from the McCain campaign to put a dent in Obama's overwhelming, and overwhelmingly positive, blanket news coverage from overseas this week. But if the news is accurate, this would be a foolish decision on team McCain's part.

Unless, of course, you buy into my theory that McCain has already resigned himself to losing the election and is going to select Mitt Romney as his running mate because his dislikes Romney so much that he wants to critically damage his chances of being the 2012 nominee by putting him on a losing ticket this year. Zing.

Get all the latest on VP chatter by checking out CQ Politics' VP Watch.

The McCain campaign sent an email to supporters this morning asking them to vote on their favorite song to exemplify how "the media is in love" with Barack Obama. The accompanying You Tube video shows clips of the news media, particularly MSNBC, either making positive comments about Obama, or commenting on how other members of the media favor his campaign.

From the McCain campaign email:

It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair.

The video is pretty funny, even if it uses examples like Chris Matthews that has already been hashed out by media critics for some time. Still, it's another good example of the McCain campaign's increasing media sophistication. When the progressive blogger reaction does hit, expect them to point out the hypocrisy of a man who has joked, "the media is my base," now complaining about positive press coverage of his opponent.

National Review endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican primary and hasn't been a big fan of John McCain since his 2000 primary run against then-Gov. Bush. Nonetheless, editors Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru offer some strategic vision to the main campaign. The main lesson: Copy the Hillary Clinton from the second half of the Democratic primaries and go after Obama hard. To Some extent, I think the McCain campaign has already warmed up to this message and is incorporating it into their strategy. Nonetheless, Lowry/Ponnuru say the hard-hitting strategy might work better for McCain than it did for Clinton:

McCain is in a better position to use this strategy against Obama than Clinton was. She was never wholly convincing in her adopted role as a working-class warrior. McCain, on the other hand, has the warrior part of the persona in his genes. Nor does McCain face the constraints Clinton did. Going negative in a primary makes party loyalists deeply nervous, and explicitly attacking cultural liberalism in a Democratic primary is unthinkable. Obama has more evident weaknesses than he did when the Democratic primaries started and he was freshly on the scene. His core audience, finally, is a smaller proportion of the general than of the Democratic-primary electorate.

Over at Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat actually agrees with Lowry/Ponnuru's advice, but still isn't shaken:

The good news is that McCain is an inept campaigner and his campaign is also inept. The other good news is that the Media does not want to play along. ... It is because McCain is so weak a campaigner that Obama seems a shoo in to me. A better Republican candidate could have a chance. McCain is not that candidate.

UPDATE: I'll be on Sirius Satellite Radio at 5:30pm EST tonight on "Make it Plain with Mark Thompson," discussing Obama's overseas trip.

John McCain has been deservedly mocked online for his mediocre awful campaign advertisements and speeches. But there's been a slow evolution evident at Team McCain, first witnessed a few weeks ago with the campaign ad "Love," which mirrored the Summer of Love with McCain's POW experience. That ad still had its share of problems, but it ended with the catchy line, "Don't hope for a better future, vote for one."

Today, the McCain campaign has released a new web video ad entitled, "Pump," which addressing energy prices. "Pump" corrects many of the "Love" video's shortcomings: It replaced the grave sounding Fred Thompson knockoff narrator with a mature, female voice. It also drops the 60's negative nostalgia in favor of relevancy. It also shows a continued wit and attention to creative detail.




In the ad's text, the narrator asks, "Who can we thank for rising prices at the pump?"  and is answered by audio of crowd chanting, "Obama! Obama! Obama!" It also evolves the "don't hope for a better future," line into, "Don't hope for more energy, vote for it." Still not up to the levels of the Obama media venture, but overall a vastly improved effort from the McCain campaign.

I have spoken with a number of Republican operatives today concerning political attacks on Michelle Obama. While all stressed that they believe Michelle is "fair game" because of her regular appearances on the campaign trail and engagement in political debate, an interesting tidbit emerged concerning John McCain's views on the subject.

According the operatives, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the topic, McCain has been very clear in asking the national party apparatus and the state parties to not attack family members or spouses.

While I have no doubt that's true, it does conflict somewhat with how a few of the state Republican parties have handled Michelle Obama. First, there was the Tennessee GOP going after her, and then there's this new video from the Washington State GOP:

Josh Marshall says John McCain is "adopting Obama's position" on Afghanistan. That's about as intellectually honest as conservatives saying over the past two weeks that Obama was shifting his Iraq position to match McCain's. Which is to say, it's not true.

Hilzoy joins in on calling "gotcha!" by compiling past McCain statements on Afghanistan, and finds:

Until yesterday, McCain has only advocated sending NATO troops. This may be because as long as we stay in Iraq, we have no additional troops to send. 

I think this demonstrates one of the many failures of looking at national security (or any other long term national interest) through the prism of a blogger's mentality. Just because McCain is now more open to sending additional troops to Afghanistan does not mean he is "adopting" the opposing candidate's strategy. If so, Hilzoy and Marshall should have been calling Obama a hypocrite for saying he would "refine" his Iraq strategy after meeting with U.S. military leaders and for his softer criticism of the surge in recent weeks. Both of these movements by the respective candidates represent pragmatic leadership over the course of an 18 month campaign. At the end of the day, what matters most is who has the best judgment and the best plans to succeed, not who comes up with each specific policy proposal first.

My CQ Politics colleague Jonathan Allen discusses the fallout from McCain economic surrogate Phil Gramm's comments that the nation's economic woes are largely imagined by a "nation of whiners."

Yesterday, I looked at Obama's efforts to win over pro-life evangelical voters without alienating his pro-choice constituencies. Today, I'd like to shift that focus to John McCain, who faces his own delicate balancing act on the abortion question. McCain faces a somewhat similar dilemma but with the constituency balance basically reversed: He must do enough to drive pro-life voters to the polls without alienating pro-choice independent and Republican women.

During a breakfast roundtable with reporters moderated by the Christian Science Monitor, McCain surrogate and possible vice presidential nominee, Carly Fiorina described:

"a real, live example which I've been hearing a lot about from women: There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice."

Earlier today I spoke with NARAL Pro-Choice America's Ted Miller who pointed out that McCain actually voted against a bill that would provide just such a choice that Fiorina described. NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan added the following in a statement:

"Unlike McCain, who has voted against family planning 22 times, Sen. Obama supports legislation that would ensure fairness in insurance coverage for birth control, which represents one of the best ways to prevent unintended pregnancy and thus reduce the need for abortion. That's a clear difference between these candidates."

Last month, Keenan's group also released a survey (PDF) of 12 battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The survey found that when Independent and GOP leaning women are informed on McCain pro-life record, his support amongst them dips significantly. The survey says choice becomes the "top issue for moving pro-choice Republican and Independent women to Obama, trumping other traditional Democratic issues and attacks on McCain." From those key demographics:

GOP Women1: Obama 18%, McCain 76%

GOP Women2: Obama 27%, McCain 67%

Liberal to Moderate GOP Women1: Obama 18%, McCain 76%

Liberal to Moderate GOP Women2: Obama 30%, McCain 63%

Independent Women1: Obama 43%, McCain 43%

Independent Women2: Obama 52%, McCain 38%

While there's still much focus on the narrative that John McCain's campaign lacks focus and discipline, there are some early favorable reviews and further signs that his message is getting back on track. Bill Kristol will surely add to the McCain discussion today with his column breaking the news that revered strategist Mike Murphy will be officially taking over strategy for McCain's campaign.

Townhall.com's Matt Lewis has a smart take on the move, saying:

McCain needs advisers who think outside the Bush world paradigm, and Murphy fits the bill.  In a best-case scenario, Murphy's presence might rekindle some of the 2000 magic, and allow McCain to be McCain.  But I also have to think that in a worst-case scenario, McCain has to believe that if he has to go down, he should at least have the peace of mind in knowing that he went down doing things his way.

We may be using a fairly low bar here, but consider McCain's event today in Denver on the economy. While some are questioning whether McCain can hit the right empathetic notes on the economy, he's made a very smart geographic landing point to relaunch his campaign. Denver is full of upwardly mobile voters like Hispanics and tech savvy younger voters. McCain's environmental platform also could find a receptive audience here. And, of course, he's making the appearance on the same day that the Obama campaign announced their candidate will be making his convention acceptance speech at Denver's Invesco Field in front of an estimated 75,000 supporters.

At the very least, McCain is making appearances in the country he running to lead, and in states that are highly contested like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Wisconsin. That's a big improvement over his economic news making trips of the past few weeks in Canada and Columbia.

John McCain's decision to turn his campaign operation over to Steve Schmidt is being treated as a sign of weakness by the media today. Although some have noted that McCain made a similar move during the Republican primaries; one that signaled his campaign's turnaround from disaster to eventual winner.

What matters more right now is how Republicans respond to the change in leadership and their initial reaction seems to be a positive one. Schmidt is known for his discipline and he was mentored by Karl Rove and worked on the Bush re-election campaign, which is definitely comforting to Republicans who see a lack of direction coming from McCain HQ. But Schmidt also helped salvage Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election when he too seemed in a helpless state. That should be reassuring to more moderate Republicans who worry about McCain running a race that's too conventional.

Patrick Ruffini, who initially supported Rudy Giuliani in the primaries, is happy with the Schmidt move:

I'm not completely impartial here, but this is the guy who took Arnold from less than a sure thing to a 20-point winner in 2006, who ran the confirmation processes for Justices Roberts and Alito, and and who was the Bush operative most responsible for defining John Kerry. So this is a big deal.

Liberal bloggers are going after Schmidt today for his ties to Karl Rove. But the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder says a direct comparison isn't accurate:

And what about Schmidt's relationship with Karl Rove? The two men do talk, but Republicans who know them both say that Schmidt is an independent operator -- not a Rove acolyte.

But even with the largely positive reception from conservative circles, not everyone is happy. Hot Air's Allahpundit worries that McCain's campaign may have already made too many major errors to bounce back:

What's the political strategy when you allow your opponent, who has just had a grueling four months, time to catch their breath, regroup, fundraise and start to define himself?

There are no perfect election simulators or predictions. Otherwise, we wouldn't be burdened by such minor afflictions as voting. But that hasn't stopped many from trying. The pollsters are most infamous for gaming election match-ups, with varying degrees of success this cycle.

Combining the latest polling data, Election-Projection.net does its best to forecast how the contest between John McCain and Barack Obama will play out. Based on the polls, both state and national, the site says Obama has a 95.8% chance of winning. I suppose that's fair to say, as they say, if the election were held today. The site has some great features and I'll definitely add it to my bookmarks, though a few of the state probability meters did catch my attention (not in a good way). For instance:

McCain has less than a 10% chance of winning Pennsylvania and Colorado? And less than a 25% chance of taking New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Ohio? These are zero sum estimates, so I can't fault them too much. After all, McCain could win 49% of the vote in Pennsylvania, but that's still a "loss."

Of course, if you disagree with the site's rankings, you can enter your own probability numbers with their interactive feature.

One campaign theme I've reiterated several times here is that John McCain and Barack Obama will be attacked on grounds that are perceived to be their greatest strengths.

The Democratic attacks on John McCain's military service has now become too frequent and well-chronicled to be brushed off as coincidence. Yesterday, Wesley Clark drew the ire of the McCain campaign (and likely many supporters) for questioning whether McCain's service qualified him to be president. As National Review's Jim Geraghty writes:

After statements by a half-dozen high-profile Democrats and Obama surrogates, you cannot persuade me that there is not a concerted effort on the part of Obama Democrats to criticize McCain on his war record. George McGovern, Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin, Democratic congressional candidate Bill Gillespie, Ed Schultz, Tony McPeak, and now Clark. Way too many to be coincidence.

And the attack umbrella extends beyond Democratic politicians. Highly influential AMERICAblog's John Aravosis says McCain accomplished nothing while serving in the military, other than being tortured and throws this low-blow in for good measure:

A lot of people don't know, however, that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity. Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain's military experience that prepares him for being commander in chief?

On one hand, these attacks come from partisans not to be confused with objective observers. On the other hand, these are many of the same people who have loudly complained about John Kerry being "swiftboated" in the last campaign.

I'll be on the Fox News Channel today at 1:20pmEST discussing John McCain and the judiciary. Are conservative judicial activists warming up to McCain after his opposition to recent Supreme Court rulings on prisoner rights at Guantanamo Bay and new restrictions on the death penalty?

Those two SCOTUS decisions, along with the recent second amendment ruling, allowed McCain an opportunity to reassure conservative judicial activists and he largely succeeded.  The "Gang of 14" is still unpopular with conservatives who focus on judicial matters, but his role in supporting the group actually enhances McCain's crossover appeal with moderate and independent voters. In reality, it's also now good for Republicans in general, because of Democratic congressional majorities.

Unfortunately for McCain, he has the same problem on the bench as he does with the gun rights question; both issues are and have been ascendant for conservatives the past several years, diluting their potency as wedge issues.  His challenge here is simply to hold voters who are motivated by judicial issues, rather than having them sit this election out.

The MoveOn sponsored ad, "Not Alex," has to be my least favorite of the campaign season so far. First, it uses an underage child to score political points, which is bad enough. But it's also loaded with logical fallacies.







From the script:

"Hi, John McCain; this is Alex. He's my first. So far, his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog -- that, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. So, John McCain, when you said you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because, if you were, you can't have him."

Of course, John McCain won't be president by the time "Alex" is eligible to serve in the military, unless they start employing 9-year-old strike force teams. And I seem to remember something about the U.S. having an all-volunteer military. So, if baby Alex really wants to sign up, that's not his mom's decision.

Anyway, Ania Egland, wife of Eric Egland, who is running for the 4th congressional district in California, has recorded her own response to the "Not Alex" video. In the script she says:

"Hello Senator McCain, these are my precious boys Noah and Daniel. Their daddy served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I grew up under communism. So, when you say we have to protect freedom in Iraq, I understand. And, someday, I would be proud if they volunteered to serve this great country. Senator, thank you for your leadership."





At least she's acknowledging it would be her children's decision whether or not to volunteer. But using children to make an emotional argument, children who are not old enough to make up their own minds about politics, is still very bad form in my book.

Is John McCain's $300 million prize for car battery innovation a stunt? The proposal would give the prize money to whoever can come up with a viable car battery that is produced at 30 percent of the current of the costs. Critics say McCain's "energy prize" is a gimmick, but it's probably the first such plan that offers a high enough dollar total to match the innovation required to make such a proposal work. After all, the U.S. government is only offering $25 million for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden.

Nation's like Europe have been offering prizes for innovation for years and with some success.  And as Jonathan H. Adler writes in National Review:

Another virtue of government prizes is that tax-payer dollars only get spent if the prize goals are met. Traditional subsidies, on the other hand, are paid out up front. Doled out in accord with politically determined criteria, and often awarded to the most politically connected firms, traditional subsidies often fail to generate anything approaching a positive economic return.

Today's biggest political story is Newsweek's new poll showing Barack Obama with a 15-point-lead over John McCain. Given that we're also mourning the death of legendary comedian George Carlin today, it's only appropriate that we call out this poll, and the treatment it has received in the press today, for its absurdity.

Progressive blogs like Daily Kos have been blogging about the Newsweek poll findings today, but it's conservative blogs who have been digging through the poll's methodology. After all, nearly every other poll has Obama up between 2 and 5 points. As Outside the Beltway's James Joyner writes:

Newsweek has huge swings from month-to-month that just aren't showing up in the other polls. Simply put, there's either something serious wrong with their methodology or that of all the other major polls.

The problem with Newsweek's methodology is that they vastly oversampled Democrats in the poll compared to Republicans. Granted, there should be some degree weighted sampling in favor of Democrats, considering national poll numbers. But most of that shift will already be represented in independent sampling, where Obama has a measured advantage. Conservatives have often complained about Republicans being unfairly undersampled in national media polls. Newsbusters says this is no exception:

As the reader should suspect, the poll questioned more Democrats than Republicans: 231 Republicans to 324 Democrats, plus 307 independents

So, if the poll was so poorly conducted, why no outcries from the McCain campaign? Well, McCain does relish the "underdog" role, so maybe that's part of it. The other major political story of the day is about how McCain's monthly fundraising for May was on par with Obama's. Maybe the McCain campaign wants to use the underdog status to further prod those sometimes reluctant Republican fundraisers who seem to be coming on board?

I have a story on the CQ Politics main site today about how Democrats are working to make Arizona a swing state even with John McCain headlining the Republican ticket. Dems are so confident they believe they will have the advantage this fall if their popular governor, Janet Napolitano is selected as Barack Obama's running mate.

The Huffington Post talks to a few anonymous GOP "insiders" and pulls public quotes from a few other disgruntled movement conservatives about John McCain's chances in the fall. The post has generated more than 700 diggs, but there's really not much there. Why should it be news that McCain is viewed as both unpredictable and vulnerable in a general election against Obama? That unpredictability is what has been McCain's biggest liability with fellow Republicans for nearly a decade. And those same Republicans who dislike McCain have created the conditions which made his election all the more of an uphill climb.

The most accurate assessment in the piece comes not from author Thomas Edsall, but from conservative columnist Bay Buchanan who is quoted in this piece. Buchanan makes a point that is starting to gain traction in conservative circles: for whatever strengths and/or weaknesses McCain possesses, this election is about Barack Obama. That worked well for President Bush in 2004 when his strategists succeeding in making the election about John Kerry. But there's no guarantee that past success equals a winning formula for Republican candidates. Buchanan:

[I]n reality there is only one candidate.  Barack Obama.  In November he will win or he will lose.  John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama.

During a conference call with bloggers today, John McCain announced that he has sent an invitation to Barack Obama to participate in 10 townhall debates between now and the Democratic National Convention in August.

McCain said he suggested the first debate take place at Federal Hall in New York City on June 12th, describing the format as, "something that really changes the debate in America."

McCain also suggested that the townhall participants could be selected by a respected third party. Asked if he was suggesting the townhall format because that appears to be one of his strengths, McCain noted he's conducted 102 townhall events so far this campaign, saying, "I think it's the best format." And of the American people, "I think they want to participate, they want a great debate."

He was also asked about his speaking style compared to Obama's, after initial reviews of the two speeches last night heavily favored Obama. "I intend to address the substance of issues," McCain said.

more from the conference call after the jump...

UPDATE: McCain's full letter to Obama here.

In an email just sent to supporters, John McCain says what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are unwilling to:

Tonight, we can say with confidence the primary season is over, and the general election campaign has begun.

And in a nod to his opponent, the email makes use of the word "change" 11 times, though it is primarily used in the context of the "right change."

Via Drudge, we have excerpts from the speech John McCain will give tonight signaling the launch of the general election campaign against Barack Obama. What's interesting is that McCain will deliver the remarks in New Orleans, site of the biggest domestic failing of the Bush administration. In the leaked remarks leaked to Drudge, McCain spends as much time distancing himself from President Bush as he does going after Obama:

You will hear from my opponent's campaign in every speech, every interview, every press release that I'm running for President Bush's third term. You will hear every policy of the President described as the Bush-McCain policy. Why does Senator Obama believe it's so important to repeat that idea over and over again? Because he knows it's very difficult to get Americans to believe something they know is false.

The Politico is also reporting that McCain will actively court Hillary Clinton supporters.

In a fundraising email sent to supporters yesterday afternoon, John McCain's campaign included a photo of the Arizona senator shaking hands with Gen. David Petraeus. Clicking on the photo takes you directly to a campaign contribution form on McCain's campaign website. In the email, McCain writes:

Senator Obama speaks openly about his willingness to sit down with our enemies and engage in open talks, but he hasn't gone to Iraq in over two years to meet with our leaders and see that progress is being made on the ground. Something is wrong with your judgment when you want to sit down unconditionally with Raul Castro and Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but you don't take the opportunity to sit down with General Petraeus and learn about the situation in Iraq firsthand.

The Obama campaign has since complained about the use of Petraeus in the campaign email. McCain addressed the issue today, promising that his campaign wouldn't use Petraeus in future campaign literature.

The Democratic National Committee has released a new ad using footage from Scott McClellan's recent tv interviews. The ad also includes separate clips of John McCain and Dick Cheney from 2002 discussing their belief that the Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The ad concludes with a picture of McCain and a crowd changing "four more years," in reference to the Democrats' meme that a McCain presidency would equal a "third term" for President Bush.

In both my recent interviews and private discussions with political insiders and "average citizens," there was a consensus view that a general election between John McCain and Barack Obama would be a respectable and mature campaign that would be good for America regardless of who won. Both have been viewed as transcendent figures who are above the divisive and shallow politics that have dominated Washington since the early 90's.

The most hopeful of such views was probably espoused in Andrew Sullivan's widely read "Goodbye to All That," Atlantic Monthly feature on Obama. Well, so much for that notion. Instead, get ready for another nasty, juvenile and mostly shallow campaign in what remains the most important* election at least since 1980.

Today, we have liberal bloggers accusing McCain of temper problems for his reaction to Obama's criticism of McCain voting against a bill on veterans benefits. And that comes after weeks of ugly displays from both candidates and their campaigns.

Obama's prior shallow moves: Accusing McCain of wanting to be in Iraq for 100 years and of being the heir to a third Bush term. When Sidney Blumenthal calls it a low blow, that's harsh.

McCain's prior shallow moves: Accusing Obama of being endorsed by Hamas and diminishing the threat posed by Iran. If McCain truly is a foreign policy expert, he should know better.

Is this the "hopeful" and "honorable" campaign we have to look forward to?

* Most important without hindsight, of course. After all, the 2000 election was widely considered inconsequential and we see how accurate that assessment was.

John McCain faces an electoral trade-off as the presumptive Republican nominee for president. His preferred stance on immigration, "comprehensive reform," is one that is popular with a majority of Americans but loathed by large swaths of the self-appointed conservative movement. During his party's primaries, McCain made a respectable compromise in promising to secure the nation's borders before pursuing a path to legalization for the millions of undocumented workers and illegal immigrants already in the country. It's a fine example of the kind of compromise McCain touts on a regular basis. And like any good compromise, it has those with purist/extreme views on immigration very upset.

Right Wing News' John Hawkins is topping the conservative blogosphere's discussion this morning with his post entitled, "Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President." Hawkins has withdrawn his already tepid endorsement of McCain, saying the Arizona senator has flip-flopped on his earlier immigration policy reversal. It's a quintessential blog post: well-written, a little over-the-top and loose with the facts. Case in point:

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He's a man without honor, without integrity

Even McCain's fiercest critics on the left, who also occasionally play loose with the facts, i.e. "100 years in Iraq," rarely employ such dramatic language. But the truth is, McCain has not changed his position. Ed Morrissey, who is every bit as much a legitimate conservative as Hawkins, says it best:

McCain never pledged to give up comprehensive immigration reform. He pledged to secure the borders first, but even in the extensive quotes that John has in his post, he never promised to stop seeking a comprehensive solution for illegal immigration afterwards. Even in this sequence, he talks about border security first. I don't see this as "breaking his security pledge", as John puts it.

So, back to that electoral trade-off. Is McCain best served by appeasing die hards like Hawkins and Michelle Malkin? They're support has been weak already and there's little evidence their influence as blog writers equates to movement at the ballot box. After all, both were big fans of Duncan Hunter's presidential run. Nonetheless, McCain is dealing with some tricky math. At what point does he maximize his potential support from the far right and begin jeopardizing some of that support to appeal to a larger section of the centrist voting public?

Conservative and liberal bloggers are sparring over McCain and Obama's recent comments about Iran. Obama sparked the ire of McCain and Republicans in general by saying of Iran:

"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. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.'"

McCain responded by saying that Obama's comments show a lack of foreign policy knowledge and experience needed in a president. Michelle Malkin called Obama the "epitome of a 9/10 Democrat," declaring:

Barack Obama complains that no one wants to talk about the 'issues.' Well, his abject ignorance of warfare in the 21st century is an issue that can't be emphasized enough. And the right side of the blogosphere has been all over it.

So, who's right here? Obama is certainly guilty of downplaying the Iranian threat and has even taken some mild criticism from liberal bloggers. But he's also factually accurate in what should be a fairly obvious statement that the Soviet Union was a vastly larger threat to the United States than Iran, as TPM's Josh Marshall explained:

This point is implicit in much of the current paranoid saber-rattling over the Middle East. But does John McCain really think that the threat posed by Iran is equal to that the United States faced from the Soviet Union -- the world's greatest land military power, with a massive strategic nuclear capacity that carried on a multi-decade ideological struggle with the US? 

A week ago, the buzz was that Mike Huckabee sat atop the list of potential vice presidential running mates for John McCain. Seven days later that seems a distant memory, after Huckabee's joke at the NRA's annual meeting about Obama having a gun pointed at him. Despite his strong showing with evangelical voters in the Republican primary, Huckabee has never been a favorite amongst conservative bloggers. And many of those same bloggers see the NRA joke as taking Huckabee out of the VP race:

AmSpec'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 Quayle-ian moments should he get the vice presidential nod.

NRO's Jim Geraghty:

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."

Hot Air's Allahpundit:

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.

Liberal bloggers are striking out against John McCain on two fronts today, pointing out contradictions in his own words and attacking the Republican establishment voices that are promoting his candidacy. In today's New York Times Bill Kristol writes of McCain's "exceptionalism," i.e. his potential to succeed despite the Republican dirge taking place nationally. Close followers of Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine may note the dual meaning of "exceptionalism" here. Along with having the potential to be an electorally viable candidate this fall, McCain has long been a symbolic supporter of neo-conservative "American greatness," i.e. "exceptionalism," that Kristol and his magazine have long promoted.

The second line of attack comes from Glen Greenwald, who has unveiled the "Real McCain 2," a video montage of apparent policy contradictions from McCain that Greenwald says the "corporate media" refuses to report on. MyDD's Todd Beeton agrees:

Doesn't it sometimes seem as though John McCain is his own worst enemy? I mean, the guy says stuff and you gotta think, does he realize a camera's on? Does he realize he'll be held accountable for saying that? Unfortunately, however, many in the media (aka, McCain's base) don't feel terribly compelled to question McCain's inconsistencies and hypocrisies -- doing their job is hard!

One problem with that assertion: he uses NBC DC Bureau Chief Tim Russert calling out McCain on a contradiction as one of his strongest points of evidence in the video. But you can judge the rest of the video's value here:

Liberal bloggers have been very aggressive promotion this op-ed, and the accompanying video, from former Clinton administration spokesman James P. Rubin. In his op-ed, Rubin claims John McCain previously endorsed holding negotiations with Hamas. If true, that would make McCain look hypocritical, after his campaign has recently attacked Barack Obama for what they say is his willingness to do the same.  

However, watching the actual video and reading the transcript reveals that McCain made no such promise to negotiation with Hamas. The key quote, "sooner or later we're going to have to deal with them," is more accurately interpreted as a potential military threat to the organization if they do not comport to the traditional standards of a governing entity:

"They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

The McCain campaign has fired back with a CNN clip from the same day where McCain more clearly outlines the preconditions for engaging with a Hamas-lead government.



McCain's surrogates certainly are justified in crying foul over the characterization of their candidate's views. But they should also be mindful that they have essentially done the same thing to Obama with the focus on him being "endorsed" by the terrorist organization. Negotiations and the question of appeasement have been hot topics in the news lately, and with good reason. Another popular clip making the rounds on the blogosphere this morning is of MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews eviscerating right-wing radio host Kevin James, who fails to understand the historical differences between negotiating with hostile regimes and "appeasing" them.

John McCain has earned some accolades from conservatives for holding weekly conference calls for righty bloggers. I've participated in a few of these and always found the back-and-forth discussion to be open, and often, more forward-thinking than many traditional press conference calls. McCain, and his online outreach guru Patrick Hynes, have flipped things this week by inviting liberal and "non-political" bloggers to join in on a conference call. It's certainly debatable as to whether this sort of outreach is worth McCain's time. He's not likely to sway their opinions, but it does earn him praise and attention from media outlets like this one for showing a bipartisan touch. It also fits well with his campaign themes of the past week, both in outlining what his first time would look like, and his proposals for combating climate change.

The downside is how those still very touchy conservatives will feel about such outreach. Michelle Malkin, one of the leading voices in the conservative blogosphere clearly feels betrayed by McCain's outreach efforts:

If he's willing to take questions from hostile liberal bloggers, why not take some from conservative bloggers who represent substantial readerships with dissenting views on how best to make this country "safe, prosperous, and proud?"

In other words, reaching across the aisle is a worthy effort, but it often places between each aisle with both sides pointing attacks in your direction.

John McCain has certainly been the most-popular Republican with the media over the past decade. He's been supplanted in recent years by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Bloomberg (before he left the party). But in a race against Barack Obama, McCain will face the unusual prospect of being the non-media candidate. One advantage of McCain's extended "resting period" before facing a Democratic opponent is that he's had plenty of time to brace for this likely pivot in coverage.

As an early example of how they will respond to what they perceive as unfavorable media coverage, McCain adviser Mark Salter goes over Newsweek for this story on Obama that Salter say unfairly portrays McCain's criticism of Obama as unjustified attacks while not applying a similar standard to Obama's missives. Of course, it's unclear what kind of response Salter's response would get if it was simply sent out to campaign reporters as a press release. Instead, the response was forwardly directly via email to McCain supporters through a campaign surrogate. That serves two purposes: it gets the message to the online grassroots and shows those base conservatives, many who have displayed skepticism about McCain, that he is fighting the same "battles" against the media that many in the Republican Party have for fought for decades. From the email:

Without a trace of skepticism, your reporters embraced the primary communications strategy the Obama campaign intends to follow: any criticism of their candidate is a below the belt, Republican attack machine distortion that should discredit the authors. And any attempt by our campaign to counter that suggestion will be dismissed as a rant. The other day, Senator Obama noted that Representative DeFazio’s accusation that Senator McCain was up to his neck in the Keating 5 scandal was a legitimate line of attack, despite the fact the Senator was largely exonerated by the Senate Ethics Committee, whose special counsel declared he had been kept in the investigation only because of his party affiliation. Were we to raise the Rezko matter, their campaign would accuse us of distracting voters with a low blow by making more of a “flimsy relationship” than the facts warranted. Evan and Richard, I feel certain, would agree.

John McCain's moderate stance on immigration has caused him some serious grief within GOP circles, but pairs up nicely with the views of a strong majority of the overall electorate. That's why McCain's new outreach video to Hispanic voters is winning accolades from even lefty partisans like Matthew Yglesias, who calls the ad "shrewd":

McCain's mission is to communicate "I'm not a racist" to his most likely Hispanic supporters, and given the tendency of small business owners everywhere to love the GOP a specific focus on small business seems smart.

The Drudge Report provides two links this morning to Republican primary results in North Carolina and Indiana. In headlines meant to convey intra-party dissatisfaction with John McCain, Drudge declares:

27% OF REPUBLICAN VOTERS AGAINST MCCAIN IN NORTH CAROLINA...

23% GO AGAINST MCCAIN IN INDIANA...

A similarly gleeful tone was taken against McCain by liberal bloggers and some in the media after the Pennsylvania primary, in which McCain received 73 percent of the vote, compared to 16 percent for Ron Paul and 11 percent for Mike Huckabee.

Even though Huckabee has technically withdrawn from the race, his name remains on the ballot and allows evangelical voters to state their preference for a candidate running on "Christian convictions," whether they specifically support Huckabee or not. And Ron Paul has not stopped running, despite acknowledging he can't become president.

Even though McCain has wrapped up his party's nomination, he's still facing two "opponents" on each primary ballot. And Mitt Romney made a return appearance on Indiana's primary last night, taking home 5 percent.

But the question is, are his primary results really that different compared to what George W. Bush received after effectively wrapping up the nomination against McCain in 2000? Bush was considered extremely well-liked by the party's base, and was the frontrunner going back at least till 1999, up through when McCain officially withdrew on March 9, 2000.

So, what happened in the primaries after that? Results from the Associated Press show that Bush's numbers in 2000 are largely comparable to McCain's in 2008. For example, even in the June 6th South Dakota primary, Bush fails to cross the 80 percent threshold. In fact, Bush rarely crossed the 80 percent threshold despite having effectively wrapped up the nomination after Super Tuesday. Some highlights:

Colorado: March 10, 2000
Bush: 64.71
McCain: 27.12
Keyes: 6.57
33.69 percent vote against Bush

Illinois: March 21, 2000
Bush: 67.40
McCain: 21.45
Keyes: 8.96
30.41 percent vote against Bush

Pennsylvania: April 4, 2000
Bush: 72.47
McCain: 22.36
Forbes/Bauer/Keyes: 4.92
27.28 vote against Bush

District of Columbia: May 2, 2000
Bush: 72.79
McCain: 24.37

North Carolina: May 2, 2000
Bush: 78.60
McCain: 10.86
Keyes: 7.85

Nebraska: May 9, 2000
Bush: 78.15
McCain: 15.11

Arkansas: May 23, 2000
Bush: 80.22
Keyes: 19.77

Idaho: May 23, 2000
Bush: 73.45
Keyes: 19.10
None of the Above: 7.45
26.55 vote against Bush

Montana: June 6, 2000
Bush: 77.59
Keyes: 18.32

New Jersey: June 6, 2000
Bush: 83.56
Keyes: 16.44

South Dakota: June 6, 2000
Bush: 78.22
McCain: 13.75
Keyes: 7.68

John McCain gave a speech this morning outlining his judicial philosophy. The speech didn't contain much of anything new to those who have followed Republican approaches to the judiciary: avoid "judicial activism," nominate Supreme Court justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, etc. But for McCain, it's a speech he needed to give, and may need to give again, to assure movement conservative voters that he is of their ilk when it comes to future judicial appointments. The one interesting point was McCain cited the Gang of 14, which in his view, led to the successful nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Even if there's a lot of truth in his rationale, it's highly unlikely to be warmly received by self-described conservatives who see any degree of compromise on judges as an abject failure.

Marc Ambinder notes the press doesn't understand why McCain wanted to talk about his philosophy rather than debating the merits of significant past cases.

Writing that McCain's audience is "grasping it perfectly," Mary Kathering Ham writes:

I suppose it's natural that the press would assume McCain would spend an entire speech about the judicial system talking about policy instead of principles. The beauty of conservatives, however, is that they understand judicial philosophy is not about enacting preferred policies.

In his New York Times column today, Bill Kristol makes his case why Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, 36, would make a good vice presidential pick for John McCain:

They’re tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak. It might also be a way to confront the issue of McCain’s age (71), which private polls and focus groups suggest could be a real problem. A Jindal pick would implicitly acknowledge the questions and raise the ante. The message would be: “You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief.”

However, that assumes implicitly acknowledging McCain age "questions" is the best route for the presumptive Republican nominee. He seems to have had more success defying expectations about his age by running a vigorous campaign scheduling and regularly having his 96-year-old mother appear at campaign stops.
There are plenty of very good reasons to pick Jindal: his accomplishments, proven ability to win in a toss-up state in a bad electoral time for Republicans, solid conservative record and appeal to a growing minority segment of the population. But picking him primarily because his age stands in stark contrast to McCain's may not be a good choice at all.

The reaction from conservative bloggers to Kristol's column can be described as lukewarm at best. Blogger reactions after the jump...

The Badlands Blue blog has video of George McGovern speaking at the "McGovern Day Dinner" in Sioux Falls last night. McGovern centered some of his remarks on presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, sharing an anecdote about having once appeared on television with McCain and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to discuss whether the Vietnam Was was a mistake. McGovern says McCain insulted him by saying, "We all know that George McGovern knows little about national defense." Unless that actual video can be found, it's impossible to know whether this account is accurate, but it sounds plausible. However, while decrying McCain's attack on his service record, McGovern launches into one of his own, belittling McCain's service by noting he spent "most of the war" in a POW camp. The greater question is whether attacking McCain's time as a POW will actually be used by Democrats in an attempt to diminish McCain's stature as a war hero. McGovern's self-described "dig" at McCain may have been fair game in context, but the enthusiastic ovation he receives may not play well in a general election if other Democrats try a similar line of attack:

Let me tell you what I would say to John McCain: neither of us is an expert on national defense.  It's true that you went to one of the service academies but you were in the bottom of the class. It's true that you were a pilot in Vietnam, that you were shot down and spent most of the war in prison and we all sympathize with that and honor you for your courage.  But you and I both had these battle experiences, you as a Navy fighter plane, I as an army bomber. I am not going to criticize your war record and your knowledge of national security but I don't want you criticizing mine either.  

If I'd be allowed just one little dig at Senator McCain, since he gave me. I would say, 'John, you were shot down early in the war and spent most of the time in prison. I flew 35 combat missions with a 10-man crew and brought them home safely every time.'

Yesterday's Washington Post's Michael Leahy had a lengthy, page 1 story on the history of John McCain's temperament, chronicling both alleged and confirmed events. The story is well-balanced and serves its role of seeking to inform the electorate by containing interviews with McCain detractors and supporters. It even has follow-up interviews with alleged victims of McCain's temper who nonetheless support his presidential campaign. But the piece is generating outrage from several conservative bloggers who view it as another attack on the presumptive Republican nominee from an increasingly adversarial press.

The story's fallout is likely a win-win situation for McCain. There isn't much, if any, evidence to suggest that voters will turn against McCain because of past stories about his temper. It would almost certainly take a current example during the campaign of McCain losing his temper in an unseemly fashion for true fallout to occur. It's also likely to make "base" conservatives more comfortable defending him, even as many of them are still going through an adjustment period of sorts with McCain.

I don't agree with Hugh Hewitt's view that the story is an example of "liberal media bias," but he's correct here:

McCain ought to send a thank-you to Leahy. There's nothing like a wave of agenda journalism attacks on the GOP nominee to rally conservatives to him.

More blogger reactions after the jump...

George Will writes in his Newsweek column on how former Bob Barr could be to John McCain what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore in 2000 if the former Georgia congressman wins the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. The notion of a Barr presidential run has been picking up steam in libertarian circles and some blogs, but I think the estimation of his potential impact is greatly exaggerated.

First, Will cites the past presidential runs of George Wallace and Nader, and notes the highly successful fundraising efforts of Ron Paul in this year's Republican primary. The comparison is flawed at best. As Will himself notes, Wallace had three things going for him that Barr does not:

Wallace had the three traits that, when combined, make a third-party candidate formidable. He had a burning issue (national disorder that he blamed on the civil-rights revolution), a regional base (the South) and a vivid personality.

When Nader ran in 2000 he was a nationally recognized figure with more than 30 years of public service, best-selling books, and had the benefit of competing against an Al Gore campaign that many viewed as subpar in an election many also thought didn't matter.

Ron Paul did in fact raise a lot of money over the past year, but he didn't win enough votes to affect the Republican primaries in meaningful way, like Mike Huckabee did. Also, it wasn't Paul's libertarian views that drew his large swaths of supporters and "money bombs," it was his anti-war sentiment. Barr may also oppose the war, but he won't appeal to liberal and anti-war constituencies in the same way Paul did and continues to do so. Paul also manged to fend off a recent challenge to his Texas congressional seat, while Barr lost his in 2002.

I think most libertarians know if they really wanted to run a strong Libertarian Party candidate this year, that candidate would be Ron Paul. And even then, his true electoral impact would be minimal. But the money he could raise for building up the LP, would be very significant. But Paul has already ruled out a second run on the Libertarian ticket (he was their nominee in 1988).

Reason's Dave Weigel looks more at what Barr's candidacy might mean for the Libertarian Party and Stacy McCain interviews Barr over at the American Spectator website.

On the same day Democrats and bloggers are accusing the McCain campaign of violating campaign finance laws, John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has sent out an email to supporters focusing on Barack Obama's comments over the weekend about "bitter" voters in small town America. The email at first appears to simply contrast McCain's views with Obama's, but near the end goes into the online fundraising pitch:

If Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee in the general election, the American people will have a clear choice between two different visions - Senator Obama's liberal, elitist philosophy and John McCain's faith in the small town values that continue to make America great. John McCain will not forget them or write them off. Neither should Barack Obama.

We are up against a large fundraising hurdle if Barack Obama is the nominee and we need your help now. Even before the general election begins, the differences are clear, we must do everything we can to make sure these beliefs don't make it into the White House.

CNN has a slightly misleading headline, which claims a new poll shows a John McCain/Condoleezza Rice ticket "could win big." The actual poll cited is of New York only. It's certainly interesting, after all, it shows such a ticket even beating a Clinton/Obama, or Obama Clinton ticket in the state. But it doesn't carry the national implications the headline suggests. Nonetheless, it has stirred some renewed discussion about the possibility of Secretary Rice becoming McCain's vice presidential running mate. Most criticisms center on Rice's lack of campaign experience and her close ties to the Bush administration.

The JustOneMinute blog earlier tried to knock down Rice speculation and again argues:

[B]asically, a Rice nomination re-opens the entire pre-war intelligence and planning can of worms and keeps alive topics such as the Yoo memo on torture.

And some anti-McCain bloggers using the opportunity to go after the presumptive GOP nominee as well.

John McCain's new web ad, featuring several African-Americans and calling for a civil campaign, isn't winning praise from what should be supportive voices, like Ross Douthat and Mickey Kaus. Kaus says:

A 10 on the Condescendometer. Also endless. After 30 seconds you are yelling at it "Get to the F-----g Point!" It never does. It's Barney the purple dinosaur's speech at the next Bloomberg Nonpartisanship Symposium. Repeat playing would be an excellent enhanced interrogation technique.

But Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan has kind words for both the ad and the candidate:

It's an encouraging sign that McCain is not going to pull a Rove this fall; it's a deft way of dealing with racial difference - check out the number of African-Americans in the ad - and it co-opts the "Goodbye To All That" appeal of Obama. A bit syrupy - and McCain doesn't always live up to its message. But it suggests to me that McCain has figured out the public mood. And sees himself as a unifying father-figure.

In his column today, the Washington Post's David Ignatius reviews yesterday's testimony from Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, with particular focus on Iran. The following passage from Ignatius' piece was brought to my attention as it states in fact a covert Iranian influence on Sunni Muslims in Iraq:

Iran's covert campaign to reshape Iraq has been clear since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Iranian intelligence officers prepared lists of Iraqis for assassination in the weeks and months after the war began; they sent Iranian-trained mullahs to take over the Shiite mosques of central and southern Iraq that had been smashed by Saddam Hussein; they pumped an estimated $12 million a week in covert financial support to their allies as the January 2005 election approached; they infiltrated all the major Shiite political parties, and many of the Sunni ones, too.

John McCain has taken much criticism in recent weeks for first saying Iran was training al Qaeda operatives in Iraq, and later implying Iranians were training Sunni extremists. Assuming Ignatius' point is true, John McCain's pressj people may want to consider distributing the op-ed. It doesn't necessarily fully vindicate his past statements, but it also shows he wasn't completely off the mark, either.

Liberal bloggers are again going after John McCain for describing al Qaeda in Iraq as an organization comprised of Shiite Muslims. Their reaction illustrates two points: How a candidate's perceived strengths often become their greatest vulnerabilities, and the diminishing marginal returns of focusing on one area of criticism. Here's the actual exchange from today's testimony:

MCCAIN: Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?

PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago.

MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi’ites overall?

PETREAUS: No.

MCCAIN: Or Sunnis or anybody else.

Democrats, and their liberal blogger allies, clearly see an opening to attack McCain on what they consider a lack of sophistication on national security knowledge; the very area he has based nearly his entire campaign on. However, in today's exchange between McCain and Gen. David Petraeus, McCain almost immediately corrected himself. If Democrats will look to these gaffes as evidence that McCain is unfit to be commander-in-chief they may be expending energy that could be better spent going after larger, and more politically vulnerable, aspects of McCain's platform. It's in some ways comparable to conservatives still focusing on Barack Obma's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While the initial critique revealed the first measurable "dents" in Obama's public persona, the shelf left on that issue, at least in the Democratic primary, seems greatly diminished. Too much focus on this singular point makes it seem like Republicans are desperate for an attack line, and the media will eventually tire of covering it (if they aren't already), therefore limiting the narrative's ability to reach voters not already familiar with it. 

Blogger reactions after the jump...

All three remaining presidential candidates will be appearing at today's testimony from Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker. Via Talking Points Memo, we first have John McCain's opening remarks:

The liberal website Raw Story previews an upcoming anti-John McCain biography by highlighting an alleged personal insult McCain issued towards his wife while running for the Senate in 1992. The book's author, Cliff Schecter uses the incident to suggest McCain could not control his temper during diplomatic relations should he be elected president. Of course, that's a bit of a stretch. But if the incident is true, it could turn off some socially conservative and independent voters.

Several liberal blogs are having fun with the allegation, while AMERICAblog asks its readers to buy the book and help boost Schecter's Amazon rankings, where it's currently ranked # 8,691 in books.

Air America radio host, and Barack Obama supporter Ed Schultz drew some unwanted attention last Friday when he referred to John McCain as a "warmonger" while providing the opening remarks before an Obama speech.

The Obama campaign distanced itself from the comments and the McCain camp accepted their rebuttal, but Schultz stood by his comments in an interview with CNN:

"Labeling a candidate is not being disrespectful," Schultz told CNN host John Roberts. McCain's policies, Schultz said, "fit the description, there's no question about that. ... John McCain has no end game in Iraq. ... (He) is saber rattling with Iran. ... The man is a warmonger."

It's a plus for the Obama campaign in that conservative critics cannot use this as another example of Obama preaching about a new style of politics, but practicing traditional mudslinging. At the same time, some liberal bloggers are happy to see the bare knuckles insults coming from an Obama surrogate.

TPM's Eric Kleefeld says Schultz's comments are "a sign that the rhetorical volleys have only just started for the general election campaign."

While Ed at the Say Anything blog says:

I’ve got to think that the Democrats are ticked at Schultz for allowing their big event (two Presidential candidates visiting North Dakota is no small feat) to devolve into a controversy over a petty, small-minded insult.

Liberal bloggers are going after John McCain record on race, both real and perceived. Over the weekend, Matt Stoller accused McCain of "dog whistle politics" for delivering a speech that was 40 miles from the murder of a civil rights worker in 1964. It was a stretch at best, with no real supporting evidence. In fact, Stoller later updated his post to correct himself. Matthew Yglesias had his own strangely worded post on Tuesday essentially accusing McCain of highlighting his military record as a roundabout way of highlighting his status as a white mail. Or, as Yglesias put it, an "identity politics counter-narrative steeped in nostalgia." These are the kind of baseless accusations that can devalue real problematic incidents by desensitizing the public to charges of racism in general.

Of a more substantive nature, Markos Moulitsas links to video of McCain attempting to defend his record on voting against, then for, making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a state holiday. McCain's reasoning is awkward and doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The harder truth is likely that many conservatives opposed making MLK's birthday an official holiday because he was not a traditional American icon, i.e. a war hero, politician, etc. While there is a fair limited government argument to be made here, it's also only fair to acknowledge that this reasoning was in fact likely "dog whistle" politics. At the very least, it seems insensitive and shortsighted in hindsight.



Hat Tip: James Taranto

Barack Obama was against the Iraq war before most of his Democratic colleagues. Obama opponents say it was easier for him to take such a position because he was not a national lawmaker at the time. In other words, he wasn't actively running for president, or planning a future run, ala John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Regardless of whether you believe Obama's stance showed true courage, or mere convenience, his stance and reasoning resonate with the bulk of Democratic and independent voters. So, why does he need to resort to lying about John McCain's "100 years in Iraq" comments?

My CQ Politics colleagues Craig Crawford writes:

Barack Obama is playing the old-style politics that he supposedly disdains in continuing to distort John McCain's predictions about a longtime U.S. presence in Iraq. 

McCain's actual words reflected a belief that the problem with a U.S. troop presence in Iraq is casualties. If stability is achieved, military bases won't be a problem, as is the case with our presence in Japan, Germany, Korea, etc. Now, some experts on Iraqi politics say that's a deeply flawed comparison, but it's clear McCain's intent was in discussing a peaceful presence, not endless war.

This new Rasmussen Reports poll showing McCain with a lead, albeit "statistically insignificant," over both Barack (46% to 45%) Obama and Hillary Clinton (45% to 42%) in Democratically-leaning New Jersey, should stoke sentiment that Clinton's continued presence in the race is only helping McCain.

From Blue Jersey:

One notable result is that the percentage of people who view McCain favorably is 61, Obama 58, and Clinton 50. Obama has been improving, Clinton falling, and McCain remaining the same.

TPM's Erik Kleefeld notes how the polling runs counter to Clinton's perceived strengths:

It's interesting to note that Hillary Clinton has a home-region advantage here, but is actually performing behind Barack Obama against McCain — potentially putting a dent in the Clinton camp's argument about being more electable in Democratic base states.

Red State looks at more Rasmussen polls showing positive traction for McCain.

A few problems today with an otherwise pedestrian article by the Washington Times' Stephen Dinan on how John McCain's outreach to conservative bloggers resulted in a "respectful truce" with McCain's campaign. I agree with the article's thesis, but it has at least one notable flaw: proper identification of his blogger sources.

Buried near the bottom of the piece, Dinan notes how he was unable to get a response from either the Clinton or Obama campaigns on their web outreach efforts. Dinan instead dedicates the last four graphs of his story to Jerome Armstrong, the "godfather" of liberal blogs and curator of MyDD.com. Armstrong is given space to note his views that team Clinton has done a better job of reaching out to bloggers, and Dinan chimes in with a few negative quips about Obama's relationship with bloggers:

Neither Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama's campaigns returned calls about their Web outreach, though Jerome Armstrong, a liberal blogger at MyDD.com, said Mr. McCain's regular outreach tops anything the two Democrats are doing, and he said it's an approach he would recommend to any candidate.

Mr. Armstrong said Mrs. Clinton is ahead of Mr. Obama in her outreach, inviting bloggers onto regular press briefing calls with traditional reporters. He also said her blogger, Peter Daou, pitches ideas to bloggers in the same way press secretaries pitch stories to reporters, and Mr. Daou produces blog clippings in the same way most campaigns produce clip books of newspaper articles.

As for Mr. Obama, he said the Illinois senator "didn't do enough to reach out to his potential allies in the blogosphere and integrate them into the campaign." Now, when he runs into trouble, they are slower to rally to his defense.

And last month, Mr. Obama told reporters on his campaign plane he doesn't read blogs — something they took note of.

What Dinan doesn't tell his readers is that Armstrong is a Clinton supporter and that his website recently was feuding with his co-author Markos Moulitsas' web home, DailyKos, over allegations that the Kossacks are too overtly pro-Obama. Armstrong knows his politics and certainly merits being called upon as a source. He also isn't so far biased as to be considered a Clinton mouthpiece, but his views have been called into some question by some progressive bloggers. This sort of thing can be found in a 30 second Google search and almost certainly merited a citation in the story.

Dinan also fails to identify Matt Lewis and Ed Morrissey as conservative bloggers. Armstrong, however, is identified  as "liberal." This may ultimately be a minor quibble, but I have to believe proper vetting and identification of Armstrong would have taken place if he were a political consultant or traditional media source.

Armstrong discusses his Clinton support to George Washington University students here:




* Disclaimer: I used to work at the Washington Times as a national political reporter and often wrote on the efforts of conservatives to play catch-up in the world of web 2.0.

Steve Schmidt and Jill Hazelbaker of the McCain campaign’s communications shop held a blogger conference call this morning to discuss McCain's "Service to America" tour next week that will take him to spots that were influential in forming his political philosophy, including: McCain Field in Mississippi, Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and stops in Jacksonville and Pensacola, Florida.

There wasn't a lot of news during the call, but Schmidt did announce that McCain will call for a large expansion of the Army and Marines. Hugh Hewitt followed up on that point, but Schmidt wasn't divulging any more specifics:

I asked if the Navy would be part of the call for an expanded military, and Schmidt demurred until the senator speaks next week.  It seems to me that a naval power needs more than the 280 ship Navy we are headed for. 

Schmidt also refused to directly answer a question about Barack Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his choice of Tony McPeak as a military adviser. Schmidt didn't mention Wright by name, but as Ed Morrissey notes, said some of the comments made by McPeak are "disturbing."


Jim Geraghty also has a round-up of the call's highlights.

In a video posted over at Think Progress, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer tells Fox News that John McCain's talk about being more cooperative with foreign governments is really all about a "hidden agenda" to make the United Nations irrelevant. Does that really qualify as a conspiracy theory, or simply an assumed truth? After all, the U.N. has stood against most U.S. military ventures in recent times under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with the notable exceptions being the war in Afghanistan and the first Gulf War. Combine that with the diminished authority of NATO since the end of the Cold War and it makes sense for a candidate like McCain, who is not opposed to military interventionism to propose the creation of a league of democracies.

Strange and unexpected things can happen in presidential campaigns, particularly when it comes to a candidate's perceived strengths. In the past two weeks we've seen John McCain's foreign policy knowledge challenged, Hillary Clinton's experience called into question and Barack Obama's Christian background turned into a potential liability.

And now, we have liberal bloggers bemoaning the positive treatment John McCain receives from the media. Specifically, this Neal Gabler op-ed in the New York Times today, which suggests the media is unnaturally fond of McCain because of his "postmodern" ironic detachment. Seeing a Republican candidate for president favored by the media is sort of like seeing a Democrat endorsed by the NRA. Of course, McCain is not the first Republican presidential candidate to be treated favorably by the press. George W. Bush seemed to have it easier than Al Gore in 2000, and Ronald Reagan was nothing if not a master of image control. If you're a supporter of Hillary Clinton, you may have a legitimate argument to be made that she has been treated less fairly than the other candidates. But Barack Obama has received the most favorable coverage of any candidate running. And while the press certainly seemed to be rooting for McCain to win the Republican primary, we have yet to see how he'll be viewed when running against a Democrat. What should be really interesting is watching the national press corps forced to choose sides in an Obama/McCain matchup.

Would 28% of Clinton supporters and 19% of Obama supporters defect to John McCain if their first-choice candidate doesn't win the Democratic nomination? Those are the numbers in today's Gallup poll. However, even Gallup cautions against taking their own numbers too seriously:

It is unknown how many Democrats would actually carry through and vote for a Republican next fall if their preferred candidate does not become the Democratic nominee. The Democratic campaign is in the heat of battle at the moment, but by November, there will have been several months of attempts to build party unity around the eventual nominee -- and a focus on reasons why the Republican nominee needs to be defeated.

Additionally, some threat of deserting the party always takes place as party nomination battles are waged, and this threat can dissipate.

So, what the poll seems to be actually illustrating is something anyone following the campaign is already acutely aware of: the longer the Democratic nomination fight continues, the greater the animosity between the Clinton/Obama camps. Rather than actual defections to the Republican side, Democrats are likely more concerned with eroding enthusiasm as the nomination fight becomes more contentious.

Most conservative blogs are happy with the poll numbers, but also not taking them too seriously.

Just One Minute's Tom Maguire puts it this way:

It is easier for elderly and working class whites to defect to the war hero than it is for blacks and hipsters to defect to the old white guy.

While Real Clear Politics' Heather Wilhelm notes the assumption that most conservatives are expected to vote for McCain even if he wasn't their first choice.

Ankle Biting Pundits author Patrick Hynes retains the McCain campaign as a client. So, any endorsement of his client's candidacy has to be viewed through that prism. Nonetheless, Hynes suggests that while Iraq remains an unpopular issue with much of the public, McCain is still seen as the most viable commander-in-chief because his stance is clear on the war, as opposed to his opponents:

[E]ven if they disagree with his position on Iraq: His position is clear and coherent. The Democrats’, especially Sen. Obama’s, isn’t. Americans will abide a competent leader with whom they disagree. They will not abide a politician whose position on a transcendent issue is a confused jumble at best.

From the "McCain Girls," it's "Raining McCain." Still desperately trying to figure out if the humor here is intentional or not.

Has the New York Times made John McCain its new Augusta storyline? Not long after getting into trouble with conservatives and other media outlets for a McCain story heavy on scandal but short on facts, the paper is back with a piece recounting McCain's alleged flirtations with twice leaving the Republican Party: back in 2001, and again, in 2004, when he reportedly discussed becoming John Kerry's running mate.

Again, the problem here seems to be that no new headway is made on the narrative. All of the facts and alleged maneuvers have been previously reported. But it does at least serve to create discussion on the progressive blogs, which may gin up traffic for the NYT website and generate cable news chatter.

Matthew Yglesias calls the piece a "service," but one paragraph concedes:

I think it's pretty clear that McCain's been less-than-totally honest about this stuff, but beyond that, what's the point? I'm not really sure what the point is, myself.

Most conservative bloggers are dismissing the story, or ignoring it altogether. Hugh Hewitt, who initially opposed McCain's candidacy, says:

What's amusing about this is that the New York Times thinks this matters to Republicans.  John McCain is the GOP nominee, so all that matters is that both the Democrats and their entire party are committed to defeat in Iraq and retreat in the broader war.  How much simpler can this choice be?

The Democratic National Committee is also up with a "McCain versus McCain" site focusing on perceived contradictions in McCain's record.

Soren Dayton, a member of John McCain's online communications political shop, has been suspended for circulating a fiery YouTube video on Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright through his Twitter account.

I reported earlier on Ezra Klein's Twitter mishap.

Dayton, like Klein, is a talented writer and contributor in DC's blogging scene. It's unfortunate to see any young voice in the political debate taking the fall for participating in a medium that is still in the embryonic stages of being understood by political campaigns. Bloggers, writers and independent voices shouldn't have to operate in a climate of fear. Then again, when you work for a political campaign, it's probably always best to play it as safe as possible.

Blog P.I. has more thoughts on Dayton, etc.

The criticism of John McCain's foreign policy knowledge, or lack thereof, was escalated to a new level today. Talking Points Memo curator Josh Marshall offers an editorial making the bold argument that the one remaining candidate with actual military experience is the least qualified to serve as commander-in-chief:

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

While liberals would almost certainly reject this comparison, their new attack line against McCain comes from one of Karl Rove's own strategies: attack an opposing candidate on his or her perceived greatest strength. Republicans have used that to great effect against Democratic veterans like John Kerry and Max Cleland. It's not that surprising that Democrats are getting comfortable attacking McCain on his foreign policy credentials. But it's still unclear whether the public at large will agree with that criticism. But so long as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama leave the more direct attacks to people like Marshall, there's a better chance of the attack line succeeding or at least helping to solidify Democratic voters, many of whom are not instinctively comfortable going after McCain on military issues.

In politics, one of the problems with professing an expertise in anything, is that a simple misstatement or gaffe will be flipped into a sign of incompetence by your opponents. That's the case today, where liberal bloggers are all over John McCain's misstatement during a press conference in Jordan that Iran is training al Qaeda operatives and sending them back into Iraq. As was widely reported, McCain was corrected by Joe Lieberman, who is traveling with him on a foreign policy tour of the region.

Daily Kos diarist Smintheus says:

This isn't just a minor slip. This betrays a profound lack of foreign policy expertise, a shallowness so extreme that if the remark had been made by Barack Obama, say, it would have called into question his viability as a presidential candidate.

But some conservative bloggers and publications like The Weekly Standard are saying McCain was right the first time. Pointing to the 9/11 Commission report as evidence, Powerline's John Hinderaker adds:

It is the AP (and other media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times) that fails to understand the relationship between Iran and Sunni terrorists, not John McCain. The AP's statement that there is "no evidence that al-Qaida has benefited from Iranian assistance" is flatly wrong, and shows a breathtaking level of ignorance.

President Bush's Rose Garden endorsement of John McCain today is a mixed bag for the Arizona senator. On one hand, the roughly 30 percent of voters who still support Bush are largely the same contingent that have resisted McCain's candidacy. On the other hand, most independent voters that make McCain such a viable candidate appear quite ready to move on from the Bush era.

Even those who still support the war in Iraq, or those who think McCain would be the best commander-in-chief even if they now oppose the war, Bush's assertion that McCain will not change his foreign policy was probably not the day's best-received line:

And the good news about our candidate there will be a new president, a man of character and courage, but he's not going to change when it comes to taking on the enemy.He understands this is a dangerous world.

Think Progress is up with a post on the endorsement press conference, saying that McCain is "officially" pursuing a "third Bush term."

Blue Texan at Firedoglake plays up the "third term" theme as well:

Bush proceeded to do a little soft shoe for the press. "I'm just going to tap dance," he said.

And that's exactly what St. McCain is going to have to do when Democrats keep reminding voters that voting for St. McCain is just the same as voting for a third term for Bush.

John McCain hosted another blogger conference call today. Topics included Iraq, spending, and whether McCain knows the difference between MySpace and YouTube (he does).

But the highlight of the call had to be McCain's parting shot at his staff. For at least the past three weeks in a row, McCain has joked that bloggers should start complaining to his staff if there is too long of a gap between conference calls. Today's joke encouraged bloggers to:

"Start complaining to my incompetent staff, who are composed to work-release people."

Now, to the actual highlights. McCain will probably regret this, but when asked how President Bush should best finish his term, McCain focused on Iraq and uttered what has become an essentially taboo phrase, but suggesting Bush "stay the course."

McCain was asked when the U.S. could declare victory in Iraq. "I'm not sure when that happens," he acknowledged, before describing the progress in Iraq as "astonishingly rapid." "Overall, now, I'm confident of success," he said.

On spending, McCain used his regular campaign line, "I will veto any pork that comes across my desk."

The conservative Just One Minute blog takes umbrage at criticism of conservatives who are referring to Barack Obama by including his middle name, Barack Hussein Obama:

Geez, if we can't call the Dem front runner "Barack Hussein Obama", I guess my own contribution - "Barack Hussein Il Jong Obama" - is really dead in the water.

Poster Tom Maguire goes on to ridicule Talking Points Memo for their post he believes attempts to hold McCain accountable for every campaign attack targeting Obama.

Unfortunately, I did not get to ask John McCain my question during today's blogger conference call. It concerns word choice and may sound insignificant to some, but I think says something important about McCain's strategic outlook.

During a question about last night's Democratic debate, McCain described Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's answers on Iraq to be "almost Orwellian." However, during the same answer, he referred to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Party." It's a two-letter subtraction that Democrats have described as a "smear" by Republicans who have previously used it, including President Bush, Tom DeLay and several other prominent Republicans. The obvious intended effect is to disassociate the neutral semantic use of "Democratic," which one assumes conjures positive feelings, from alignment with the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately, the questionable word choice occurred midway through the conference call, far too late for my trigger finger *1 request to reach the front of the pack before the call ended. McCain even shut-down his handlers, taking an additional question after they tried to cut things off. But again, unfortunately, I wasn't the guy picked to ask.

Still, I'm very curious if this word choice was intentional, and if so, what does McCain believe is its desired effect?

Just got off another John McCain conference call for bloggers. There weren't too many items that jump out, but a few interesting questions and answers. McCain has said he has nothing left to say about the New York Times story, but nonetheless was asked about whether it had rallied conservatives to his cause. "I don't know the answer to that," McCain said, adding, "I really have to move on in all aspects of this issue."

On Barack Obama's debate answer last night in which he offered to meet with incoming Cuba leader Raoul Castro without conditions: McCain said such a meeting, "has the effect of legitimizing him." But this did allow McCain the chance to work in a decent joke, saying of Fidel Castro, "We eagerly await his chance to meet Karl Marx."

On whether indicted Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ), who currently serves as McCain's honorary Arizona campaign co-chair, should step down: "I'm sure congressman Renzi will probably move to step down and that we would accept that."

As the McCain/NYT story develops, it's interesting to review how it is being both perceived and discussed by the traditional media and by the blogs. The two mediums often have problems with one another, but there is a convergence of sorts so far on this topic.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer editor David McCumber explained his paper's decision not to run the McCain story, calling it "pretty thin beer," (a fitting metaphor for those of us native to the micro-brewing hub that is the Northwest):

This story seems to me not to pass the smell test. It makes the innuendo of impropriety, even corruption, without backing it up. I was taught that before you run something in the newspaper that could ruin somebody's reputation, you'd better have your facts very straight indeed.

Michelle Malkin sifts through the Seattle P-I's story's "interesting" comments section.

In what Ed Morrissey calls "a rather telling denunciation," on the Los Angeles Times' blog, Andrew Malcom explains why the Boston Globe, a paper owned by the New York Times, also passed on the McCain story in favor of the latter version penned by competitors the Washington Post:

That version focused almost exclusively on the pervasive presence of lobbyists in McCain's campaign and did not mention the sexual relationship that the Times article hinted at but did not describe or document and which the senator and lobbyist have denied.

On Thursday the Globe's website, Boston.com, did provide a link to the Times story on the Times' website. But such a stark editorial decision by a major newspaper raises suspicions that even the Globe's editors, New York Times Co. employees all, had their own concerns about the content of their parent company's story.

Rainey asked the Globe's editor, Martin Baron, about that decision. His eloquent reply: "No comment."

When journalists hear such rhetorical avoidance from public figures and politicians, they usually take it as confirmation of their suspicions.

The fallout continues from yesterday's New York Times' piece on John McCain's ties to a female lobbyist. 24 hours later, the story continues to be the most-discussed item in the blogosphere, with the NYT hosting a Q&A with its readers, addressing criticism of the piece's merits and timing.

The Moderate Voice says if/when McCain and Barack Obama are held under the lights of scrutiny for their related lobbyist connections, Obama will come out looking better:

But the story, warts and all, further reveals McCain to be an idiosyncratic Washington insider who plays by the rules only when it suits him. Yes, Barack Obama rubs shoulders with lobbyists, but the contrast between he and McCain — if that is the fall line-up — inevitably hurts the elderly gentleman from Arizona and helps the whippersnapper from Illinois in this year of contrasts and change.

However, over at Commentary, Jennifer Rubin rhetorically asks, "Why is John McCain Happy?" before explaining how the story is finally uniting the conservative base. Rubin also decries the paper's self-defense:

“In all the uproar, no one has challenged what we actually reported.” That howler was part of a statement issued yestersday by New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller. It would be true, if you did not include John McCain, his lawyer, his aides, his surrogates, the woman in question, and a large percentage of the media.

Gothamist notes the McCain has already used the story in a fundraising pitch to supporters.

There's a diverse set of opinions in the liberal blogosphere today reacting to the NYT/Mcain story questioning his personal and professional conduct with a lobbyist.

The Nation's Ari Melber argues that conservative objections are focused more on their dislike of the paper, rather than the substantive questions raised:

Conservative elites do relish attacking The Times, and their default reaction to bad news is to attack the messenger, whether it's Joe Wilson or a newspaper. But The Times editorial staff endorsed McCain, and its news staff held the story for months while McCain trailed in the primaries -- when it would have done the maximum damage.

Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo goes a different route:

If these words had appeared on the front page of The New York Times, wouldn't we all be yelling and stamping our feet about "panty sniffing" and condemning the use of anonymous sources who suggest a possible affair that may or may not have happened and wasn't directly alleged by anyone?

They add:

To be clear, there very well may be much more to the story that is yet unknown. As Josh wrote last night, the story reads as if it had the meat lawyered out of it, and it's perfectly possible that The Times went with this because it knew lots more that it couldn't report. And as Mark Kleiman notes, more reporting by the AP is showing that there may be some meat to the lobbying side of the story.