McCain: The Last Ten Days- Are they bluffing or planning?

[Sampiro]

@jtgain

It is just a WAG, but I think McCain will come out with a bold new plan for the economy.

And a decent quality older men’s line with nothing over $20 for STEVE AND BARRY’S.

[Frostillicus]

I hear that McCain is waiting until 10 days out to reveal that:

1. Obama’s middle name is Hussein

2. Obama has fathered 2 black children

3. Obama is a shitty bowler

For my country’s sake, I hope I’m wrong, because these are dynamite, baby!

[Guinastasia]

@Frostillicus

I hear that McCain is waiting until 10 days out to reveal that:

1. Obama’s middle name is Hussein

2. Obama has fathered 2 black children

3. Obama is a shitty bowler

For my country’s sake, I hope I’m wrong, because these are dynamite, baby!

And…I’ll bet he hangs the toilet paper the wrong way, too!

[Chronos]

Hey, I hadn’t heard the bowling thing yet. That changes everything!

[ZebraShaSha]

@Chronos

Hey, I hadn’t heard the bowling thing yet. That changes everything!

Bowler, not balla’.

[Sam_Stone]

Caveat: I’m not agreeing with any of these charges - just answering the OP with information that I glean from the right-leaning web sites on the web. So don’t go attacking me for them.

Tony Rezko is apparently talking to prosecutors and “singing like a bird” about corrupt politics in Chicago. The new angle is that there may be some information about ties between Rezko and Alexi Giannoulias, a person who Barack Obama apparently endorsed as State Treasurer (inexplicably, since Giannoulias had no previous political experience). According to a post on the National Review web site, Alexi Giannoulias has ties to organized crime through his family’s bank, Broadway Bank. Alexi Giannoulias has apparently been raising big money for Obama, and had a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.

From the post at The Corner:

if there’s any truth to it the odds that Rezko is singing about Giannoulias’ Broadway Bank are exceedingly high. If Giannoulias turns out to be in legal trouble again, there’s no way Obama can disatance himself like he has with Ayers. Giannoulias has been out raising lots of money for his campaign, and was even given a speaking slot at the Democratic convention in August.

So Obama chose to have him associated with his campaign. This was well after it became public that Giannoulias had loaned $11.8 million to Michael Giorango, a convicted bookmaker and prostitution promoter. Giannoulias first denied he personally approved the loan, then Chicago Tribune reported that Giannoulias personally oversaw $11.8 million in mortgage loans to Giorango in 2005. Then Giannoulias said the money had not gone to finance Casinos for organized crime. He appears to have lied again: “But newly obtained records show that $3.6 million of the recent loans were used by Giorango and another convicted felon to acquire a casino boat marina in Myrtle Beach, S.C.,” reported the Tribune.

It’s not like the Obama campaign can credibly say they didn’t know about this before he was out raising money for the campaign. But I’d like to believe major news agencies might want to pull a few reporters out of dumpsters in Wasilla (probably starting to get really cold up there anyway) and get them to Chicago to look into a potential Rezko-Giannoulias connection toot sweet. Maybe there’s nothing there, but it’s worth looking into right?

Sounds pretty damned speculative to me. But you’re looking for wildcards that could be dealt in the last 10 days, so the above is a possibility.

On the non-character assassination front, Obama has said a couple of things lately that won’t play well with independents, and which could become the basis of a new ad campaign painting him as ultra-liberal.

First, a quote from the first debate, in which Obama said the following:

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, “I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton,” which was 28 percent. It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

The notion that Obama would raise capital gains taxes even if it didn’t increase revenue, simply to punish the rich, is pretty out there for most Americans.

Follow that up with a quote of him talking to a plumber on the stump:

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream.”

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded. “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“Spreading the Wealth Around” is outright redistributionism. Now we’re not taxing the rich just to pay for needed programs - we’re just ‘spreading the wealth around’.

Then there’s another Ayers angle: This time not about terrorism, but about what Obama and Ayers did in the Annenberg Challenge. From This article on National Review’s web site:

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

The article lists all the various educational initiatives that were supported by Obama.

Taxing people just to ‘spread the wealth around’, coupled with punishing the rich just to prevent them from getting too much richer and evidence of radical education ideas, could be an effective attack if done right. They could also toss in clips of Ayers recently shouting ‘Viva la revolucion!’ beside Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. From Investor’s Business Daily:

An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America’s schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.

With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for “the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”

Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion.” It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this stuff is combined together to paint a picture of Obama as an extreme candidate with socialist views. I guess we’ll see.

[LouisB]

@elucidator

Awww, hell, I done clicked a Newsbusters link! Now I gotta shower again and scrub with Pine-Sol.

Pine-Sol ain’t enough, man, you gonna need a really sturdy wire brush.

[stolichnaya]

So nothing new, eh Sam Stone?

[dropzone]

@Sam_Stone

According to a post on the National Review web site, Alexi Giannoulias has ties to organized crime through his family’s bank, Broadway Bank. Alexi Giannoulias has apparently been raising big money for Obama, and had a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.

Giannoulias’ alleged mob ties were used in the Democratic primary and the election in 2006. The Feds looked over the loans and didn’t find anything wrong with them.

And yeah, it’s hard to find a Chicago politician who has never contact of some sort with the mob. Same with Chicago businessmen, housewives, high school students, etc. You just try not to let it rub off on you.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

I’m sure this was mentioned somewhere already up-thread, but maybe it bears repeating.

If McCain has something of substance, he’d be talking about it NOW.

The later it gets in the campaign, the more likely it is that his campaign has nothing of substance, BUT… They’re going to throw out some nasty innuendo/lies a few days before, and hope that it sticks before it can be refuted.

[Cervaise]

As I’ve said a few times over the last several weeks, the significant difference between Obama and everybody else (and the reason this election will be obsessively studied for decades) is that he has consciously structured his campaign as a long term effort, with identifiable phases, contingency plans, and action triggers. Compare Clinton in the primary: she expected Super Tuesday to be her coronation, and had no idea what to do when it didn’t happen, with a few months of painful flailing as a result.

I guarantee you that Obama’s playbook has a whole chapter on the two-week Endgame, and that it assumes that McCain’s camp will start throwing grenades as the finish line approaches. There are probably several pages for each contingency: if they come at us with this, then respond with this.

No guarantee that it’ll work, of course, one way or the other, either McCain’s attacks or Obama’s defense. The election is still theoretically tippable. The Rezko stuff mentioned by Sam has an outside, outside shot at getting some traction, depending on the particulars. If it’s second-hand-removed like the summary seems to indicate, it’ll disappear in short order. But if not, well, who knows?

The point is, McCain is dreaming if he thinks he’s going to surprise Obama with anything. The plan has been there since day one, and has served Obama extremely well; I’m having trouble thinking of more than one or maybe two occasions where he’s been caught completely flatfooted by anything, without a ready response. Instead, he’s been very agile with the parry and counterpunch, or more frequently the aikido dodge. What’s more, those little moves have been hardly more than brief distractions from the unceasing forward grind of the overall campaign.

It’s going to take something pretty major to gum up the gears of the Obama machine at this point. Whatever happens, it’ll be enormously interesting.

[Peanut_Gallery]

@stolichnaya

So nothing new, eh Sam Stone?

Hahaha. Yeah that was a lot of text to say: “Rezko! Ayers! He’ll raise your taxes!”

They’re clearly bluffing.

[Don_t_fight_the_hypothetical]

@Oakminster

I disagree.
IF he actually has something, from a purely tactical point of view, the thing to do is release it as close to the election as possible…allow enough time for it to make all the headlines, and be all over television, but not allow enough time for it to be debunked before people go to the polls. I’m thinking the timing would be…say no sooner than late Wednesday afternoon before the election the following Tuesday, but no later than that Friday morning.

How do you figure? If he has something to turn voters away from Obama what difference would it make?

It makes sense to do it as soon as possible so it can spread as far as possible.

[Jackmannii]

"But really folks, take my candidacy…please!

Hey, where’re you going? Don’t leave yet…I’m saving my best stuff for the last ten minutes of my act! Did you hear the one about the faded old terrorist and that one over there? Wait…"

[Captain_Lance_Murdoch]

It is now 10 days until the election.

I checked the ABC News website which dropped this bombshell

@ABCNews

For his part, McCain is telling voters in New Mexico that Obama is just another tax-and-spend liberal.

[Kent_Clark]

As near as I can tell, the Republican strategy is to tell voters that only by electing a Republican President can we be able to keep that incoming Democratic Congress from running wild, while simultaneously telling voters that only by electing Republicans to Congress will we be able to keep that incoming Democratic President from running wild.