Today Jack Murtha called for a draft again. Last weekend in New Hampshire, John McCain gave an articulate defense of the all volunteer force and service, but pointed out the insanity of a draft:
Tags: McCain, National Security, New Hampshire, View from the bus
Today, The Fix said this about John McCain:
These numbers suggest that McCain’s best route to winning the GOP nomination is to focus heavily on his years of on-the-job training to be president – from his military service to his years in Congress to his run for president in 2000. The importance that McCain supporters invest in his "experience" could be the antidote for those undecided voters who believe that the Arizona Senator is too old to be elected president.
Well, this weekend in New Hampshire, that was McCain’s pitch:
Tags: McCain, New Hampshire, Polls, View from the bus
I just got off a blogger conference call with John McCain. I bunch of people asked questions including Rob Bluey, Phil Klein and Jim Antle from the American Spectator, Green Mountain Politics, Doug from Granite Grok, someone from Wizbang, Ryan Sager, and others.
I don’t want to recount the conference call, but McCain talked about pork, Iraq, Iran, CFR, and the bill in the Senate.
Last weekend in NH, I recorded video on some of these. Here is links to those videos:
McCain apologized for only having half an hour for the call but committed to having more regular full-hour conference calls
Tags: Iraq, McCain, View from the bus
Yesterday, I criticized an egregious misquoting (turns out the misquoting was not original. Derrida and Searle would be proud of a bunch of conservatives arguing about the authorship of Jason quoting Human Events quoting McCain quoting the Supreme Court…) of one of the YouTubes that Matt Lewis and I took on the Straight Talk Express. Matt pushed back, saying:
In my view, Soren is being too hard on MyManMitt. Yes, technically McCain was misquoted — but not misrepresented. It is clear that McCain agrees with the courts — that’s why he is quoting them. In my view, this is a matter of semantics (and not worth flaming somebody over).
I do not think that this is "just" semantics. In putting together the final law that passed, I assume that John McCain and company went to the legal decisions. In one of the cases, the actual sentence, "money is not speech. Money is property". As Scalia pointed out in his dissent to the actual BCRA decision, McConnell v FEC, this was actually the building block for upholding BCRA. In other words, McCain is not just quoting the court, he is quoting the operative idea behind the court uphold (rightly or wrongly) the constitutionality of the law.
In other words, McCain is himself quoting the legal concept underlying what he believes to be the constitutionality of some or all of BCRA in support of his law. That’s how I understand that. Now, does McCain also believe that? Probably. But I think it is far to pithy an question.
Now, I have criticized this law too. I even called the window provision that is being challenged in FEC v Wisconsin Right to Life "noxious". So I asked McCain about this provision, and here is what he said:
Tags: Campaign Finance, McCain, View from the bus
People say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I would assume that a moving picture is worth even more. But that does not stop "My Man Mitt" Jason Bonham from dishonestly misquoting one of the YouTubes that I took of John McCain this weekend in New Hampshire.
First, the YouTube under discussion:
I’d also like to point out that the courts have said that money is not free speech. Money is property
So how does Jason quote McCain:
Money is not free speech. Money is property.
Just dishonest. Shameful. And this is not the first time. This is the way the Romney campaign — which MyManMitt (and Evangelicals for Mitt, also liars) is a talking mouth for — behaves. They lied about Sam Brownback. They misquoted McCain on abortion with YouTube. They lie about Rudy Giuliani’s position on gay marriage. They lied to Redstate about an impending staff shakeup (when Julie "In"-Teers went from National Field Director to "assistant finance director for affinity groups"). Romney’s campaign lied about their own position on stem-cell research.
Furthermore, they are throwing stones from glass houses. As NRO’s Rames Ponnuru has noted:
Romney, it turns out, has—surprise, surprise—been on both sides of campaign-finance reform. In his 1994 race, Romney came out for banning political action committees, limiting spending on federal races (something the Supreme Court has not allowed), and opposed allowing larger contributions. All told, those positions place him to the left of McCain-Feingold,
Mitt Romney surrounds himself with people like this. They should be fired and denounced.
Tags: Romney, View from the bus
John McCain has harsh words for the House Democratic Leadership on the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Bill that they just passed. This is what he said at a town hall meeting in Plymouth, NH:
Tags: Congress, Democrats, Iraq, McCain, New Hampshire, View from the bus
John McCain’s campaign invited two bloggers, me and Townhall’s Matt Lewis, to join his campaign this weekend in New Hampshire. We attended two town hall meetings, in Plymouth and Littleton. On the bus, John McCain sat between the two of us for two hours, with 5 or 6 "old media" reporters present, and handled questions from all of us. I recorded about 2.5 hours of video, limited only by my battery life and tape. Over the next week, I will be posting it all on YouTube here.
We found a vibrant, funny person who took all questions and dealt with them seriously. Matt has posted a little clip of his introduction to the Senator that captures both his sense of humor and the proximity and access we had:
Last week, after a ride on the bus, The Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote that McCain might get in trouble with the level of access that he grants. I think that it may be the opposite. McCain spent 10 hours on the record on Saturday. The "gaffes" that Jonathan mentions from the week before were all made in public forums, not on the bus. I have trouble imagining more scripted candidates like Mitt Romney — whose control of the press was described by one conservative reporter as the "velvet rope" — spending over half their waking hours on the record. (consider Romney’s gaffes in the last week, from misquoting Castro to exploding at a conservative activist who asked him questions) In fact, the time on the bus might give McCain more of a chance to fix the inevitable mistakes. (see below for a correction)
Throughout this week, I will post excerpts from the town hall meetings, including his stump speeches on Iraq, spending, and global warming. Matt and I asked questions for about 15 minutes about campaign finance reform. That will go up, as will our interviews. And anything else interesting. The campaign allowed me to record everything and publish everything. The only limitations are that I didn’t bring enough batteries or tape.
Stay tuned for our stories from the Straight Talk Express.
Update: Jonathan Martin corrects me that McCain’s "condom" "gaffe" was on the bus.
Tags: McCain, New Hampshire, View from the bus
My 2008 Ticker
