McCain Can't Rally His Own Party 4 Votes

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
McCain Can't Rally His Own Party 4 Votes
86
Mon, 09-29-2008 - 4:24pm

McCain's own party doesn't listen to him. How is he supposed to "reach" across the aisle and "work" for the American people? Barack got 2/3 support. Which one has more clout? And once the American people vote out the GOP dead weight, more responsible GoP leadership should come. All McCain wants to do is point fingers, mark down names, and blame, blame, blame.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14088.html

McCain takes credit for bill before it loses

By MIKE ALLEN | 9/29/08 3:37 PM EDT

“I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now,” John McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio.
Photo: AP




Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.

Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.

“I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn't want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”
McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.

“That's not leadership. That's watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.

Wisely, in retrospect, McCain initially had been more modest. On Sunday, he said on ABC’s “This Week” that congressional negotiators deserve “great credit” for the bipartisan deal. “"It wasn’t because of me,” McCain said. “They did it themselves.”

But at almost the same time, McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt was saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “What Sen. McCain was able to do … was to help get all of the parties to the table. There had been announcements by Senate leaders saying that a deal had been reached earlier in the week. There were no votes for that deal.

“Sen. McCain knew time was short and he came back, he listened and he helped put together the framework of getting everybody to the table, which was necessary to produce a package to avoid a financial catastrophe for this country.”

On Monday morning, McCain campaign communications director Jill Hazelbaker said on Fox News that the deal would not have happened “without Sen. McCain.”

“Sen. McCain interrupted his campaign, suspended his campaign activity to come back to Washington to get Republicans around a table,” Hazelbaker said. “Without Sen. McCain, House Republicans would not have appointed a negotiator, which would not have moved this bill forward.

“It’s really Sen. McCain who got all parties around a table to hammer out a deal that hopefully is in the best interests of the American taxpayer.”

After the vote, commentators were harsh. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said: “He’s like a cavalry commander who said ‘Charge!’ and the Republicans went into retreat.”




Edited 9/29/2008 4:59 pm ET by niteowl08

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 3:11pm

Sopal

<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 3:13pm
Holy crap yes, repeal McCarran-Ferguson. It's what's allowed monsters like AIG to become what they are - that and the Phil Gramm-authored stuff from the late '90s like Gramm-Leach-Bliley.



Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy

Wherever a hungry new born baby cries

Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air

Look for me ma'

I'll be there

Wherever somebody's strugglin' for a place to stand

For a decent job or a helpin' hand

Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free

Look in their eyes ma,

You'll see me!


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 3:18pm
I'd much rather hear that the republicans voted no on principle than for partisans reasons as a response to Pelosi's inane speech.
NIU Ribbon
NIU Ribbon   Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 3:21pm

"So they're flooding the markets with money which (correct me if I'm wrong) tends to increase inflation."


I don't

NIU Ribbon   Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 3:37pm
Oh, so would I, no doubt about it.

But that isn't what ol' Boehner's first instinct was. It was to try to put a lame-a$$ partisan spin on it, like he does on everything else: party before country. At least the people who actually DID vote against the bill weren't stupid enough to act as Boehner's fall guy for that inane excuse: they objected to being portrayed as being as stupid and selfish as Boehner seriously made them out to be. GOP leadership at it finest usual abysmal level.



Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy

Wherever a hungry new born baby cries

Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air

Look for me ma'

I'll be there

Wherever somebody's strugglin' for a place to stand

For a decent job or a helpin' hand

Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free

Look in their eyes ma,

You'll see me!


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 4:05pm

So, do you believe his partisan spin or not?


Were those votes really there before the vote?

NIU Ribbon   Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2006
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 4:15pm

>>He has forgotten who suspended his campaign to "air drop" himself into the middle of it, as Barney Frank so eloquently said.


LOL!

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2008
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 4:51pm
Well, the republican leadership said they were.
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 5:25pm
Far be it from me to attempt to read John Boehner's mind (shudder).

I could make a plausible case for either scenario:

  • That the votes were NOT there (and Boehner knew it, but was saying a different thing to the press - essentially, lying - in order to pursue some strategy which he believed would benefit his party),

  • That the votes were NOT there (and Boehner DIDN'T know it, because he'd been deceived by the defectors for partisan reasons of wanting to oppose what they felt sure would be the ultimate agreement/passage of the bill),

  • That the votes WERE there, but those who voted no changed their minds literally at the last moment, after Boehner had checked with them).


Either way, though, does it really matter? The largest problem on the table yesterday was that the bill, as drafted, was a stinker, and a whole lot of people knew it. It was a tough call for many - Democrats AND Republicans - between "this sucks, but we're not likely to do any better and SOMETHING has to be done" or "this sucks, and I ain't voting for it; we can do better."



Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy

Wherever a hungry new born baby cries

Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air

Look for me ma'

I'll be there

Wherever somebody's strugglin' for a place to stand

For a decent job or a helpin' hand

Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free

Look in their eyes ma,

You'll see me!


iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Tue, 09-30-2008 - 5:32pm
LOL! That was funny. Barney Frank doesn't say anything "eloquently".


What IS it with conservatives? I swear: you nominate and then elect (twice!!) a guy who makes Barney Frank sound like frickin' Socrates, and follow that up with complaining that Obama sounds to "professorial" or "detatched" or "elitist"....and then turn around again, without apparent irony or even self-awareness, and lambaste Barney Frank or some other Democrat for sounding "uneloquent," and top it all off with shrieks of "sexism!!!!" when Sarah Palin says something so crashingly inarticulate and flat-out stoopid that even conservative columnists finally throw up their hands and say "enough, already!"

I sometimes think the strongest organs in the conservative body are the vestibular system in the inner ear -- because theirs must be made of titanium to allow them to perform all that spinning and flip-flopping without losing their balance, LOL.



Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy

Wherever a hungry new born baby cries

Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air

Look for me ma'

I'll be there

Wherever somebody's strugglin' for a place to stand

For a decent job or a helpin' hand

Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free

Look in their eyes ma,

You'll see me!


Pages