In the news: The Straight Talk Express has had a busy couple of weeks - traveling to Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. In New Hampshire, John McCain agreed to attend a bipartisan forum on global warming that will be held there this December; organized by Al Gore and The Governator, McCain agrees that climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed more often, especially amongst GOP canidates. He has also put forth his stance on meeting with the leaders of Iran and North Korea: "The logic is, you don't want to do something that enhances the image and prestige of someone who is your adversary." Citing Henry Kissinger as a prime example to follow, McCain criticized his competition's (cough cough Clinton's) desire to send high ranking politicans abroad as "goodwill ambassadors," going on to say "I would have a tendency to ask people to have a specific mission, rather than just saying, 'Why don't you go over and be real nice to the folks in Yemen,' you know? 'See what you can do.' I certainly wouldn't want to do anything to embarrass the previous president of the United States."
In the polls: As of November 7th, McCain has reclaimed his place as second favorite in GOP polls, only behind Rudy Guliani. Another recent collection of polls shows that McCain is the Republican canidate most likely to beat Senator Clinton in an election, and that he has the "lowest level of core opposition" (lowest percentage of people who said they would "definitely" vote against him if he wins the presidential nomination).
Endorsements: In the past few weeks, McCain has recieved support from a number of former POWs (their captivity exceeded 6 years), as well as Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. He has also recieved the backing of Senator and former Presidential hopeful Sam Brownback, who proclaimed "John McCain is the only candidate who can rally the Reagan coalition of conservatives, Independents, and conservative Democrats needed to defeat Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat in the general election next year." In keeping with this anti-Clinton theme, McCain's campaign website now features "The John & Hillary Show," a fun and interactive jab at both McCain's Democratic and Republican opponents.
3 comments:
I heard somewhere that McCain is considering taking himself out of the race. Is that true or did i just catch the tail end of a hypothetical?
I found way McCain portrayed a second place spot very interesting—he used calculations that awarded the candidates with the fewest people who would automatically vote against them if nominated. Clearly, the suggestion is that there will be so many anti-Hillary votes that the opposition could win if she wins the Democratic nomination. I was wondering are there really enough people to counter the pro-votes resulting in a Clinton loss? Those calculations are similar to how Sam found very different information on the results of the Democratic Debate than I did; here is another example of indirect/skewed/played with numbers. Just as the other candidates, McCain's campaign wanted to find a way to make him look successful so the chose a specific aspect of popularity to calculate the current standings in the race for Presidential nominations. In addition, is McCain adopting Giuliani’s tendency to attack the Democrats rather than the Republicans to prove he is above the Republican race?-if so he must be really fighting offensively to increase his support. Also, have any news polls come out that show him in relation to the Huckabee spike in the past few weeks?
An excellent submission and some great questions from Mel (not to mention an interesting hypothetical posed by Sophie). Something you didn't mention was the stir caused by the recent CNN story in which McCain was accused of being less than professional or respectful to the junior Senator from New York--not because of something he said, but because of something someone said to him and how he reacted to it. How the McCain campaign is reacting to it is interesting because it begs the question of what are they hoping to gain from this situation.
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