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The Perils of Pinata Politics
Have you ever been to a child's birthday party in which there's a pinata? It's a pretty straightforward exercise -- the birthday boy/girl gets blindfolded, is handed a big stick, is spun around to cause minor disorientation, and is then encouraged to swing the stick wildly in every direction, in the hopes of hitting a target and getting a prize.
John McCain's campaign has been operating under a similar framework for quite a while now. Under McCain's version of Pinata Politics, the senator and his team swing wildly in every direction, hoping to hit Barack Obama. There's no real consistency to the attacks -- and there's even less honesty and integrity backing up the attacks -- but McCain appears to be blindfolded, allowing Karl Rove's operation to spin him in circles.
Want to read something funny? I mean, genuinely hysterical? Take a look at the memo distributed by the McCain campaign in early March, immediately after the Arizona senator officially secured the Republican nomination.
"It is critical," the memo explained, "as we prepare to face off with whomever the Democrats select as their nominee, that we all follow John's lead and run a respectful campaign focused on the issues.... Throughout the primary election we saw John McCain reject the type of politics that degrade our civics, and this will not change." The memo added that "overheated rhetoric and personal attacks" only serve to "distract" us, and that it was imperative that the campaign hold itself "to the highest standards."
That was nearly five months ago, and it's hard to imagine even the most sycophantic McCain supporter agreeing that the presumptive Republican nominee is meeting the standards he set for himself in March. Indeed, since McCain brought in Karl Rove's team to run the campaign operation, the swings at the pinata have become even more reckless, occasionally hitting the target, and occasionally hitting everyone else watching the festivities.
Just this week, McCain took a swing at the race card. And towards Britney Spears. And at wounded U.S. troops. To fully appreciate just how wild McCain's swings have become, take a look at this list, which is too long to reproduce here, of McCain aiming unsuccessfully at that pinata. There's no coherent thought; just an angry man with a bat.
Since the general-election campaign began in earnest, McCain has attacked Obama's integrity, honesty, character, and patriotism. Last week, the McCain campaign even hinted that Obama is weak on genocide. Hitting that pinata is apparently pretty difficult.
"They're doing it because the candidate, and the campaign, is not happy with where they are and they're lashing out," a Republican strategist recently said.
That may be true. And who knows, maybe voters will find all of this compelling.
But at this point, most of us are pretty anxious to see McCain take the blindfold off -- his tactics are starting to make us dizzy.
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Does anyone get the feeling that while all of these shenanigans are goin on right in front of our faces that something with a much more horrible impact is happening without response? I can't help but think that while we sit at our computers reading posts and blogs about these attrocities that we might just be doing what they want us to?
I look forward to anyone willing, to give me some sort of hope or assurance that we aren't just wasting our time.
Dinglemeyer
Well stated! McCain is flapping like a fish out of the water. I have said all along that his campaign has been using strategies to take focus off this dismal economy and other areas of neglect by the current administration during the past nearly 8 years. Uninformed voters (coupled with haters) are falling for this nonsense--that's why the poll number are such as they are. The country has not been led with integrity and won't be for another 4 years if McCain is elected President. The Republicans have demonstated time and time again that they will do what ever it takes to win!
It seems to me that McCain is hitting Obama with the facts. It is Obama who doesn't know fact from fiction. What was that speech in Israel all about, the one in which Obama claimed Chairmanship of the Banking Committee, a committee of which he isn't even a member? For those of you who do not know, Chris Dodd is the Chairman of that committee. Obama is the head of another committee but it has no accomplishments because Obama has not called a meeting for it in over a year. One more "no accomplishment, no record" for Obama, the Mouthman.
The only accomplishments that Obama has claimed for his record are statements like those he made in Israel, figmants of his imagination, fictions not facts.
And what about Obama's speech in which McCain is blamed for saying racial slurs that were never uttered by McCain, at all, but are only more figments of Obama's imagination?
He who is without "sin"let him cast the first stone/he who is without a slip of the tongue, let him run for President of the United States of America. No candidates? You have a choice to accept or reject Obama's explanation for not having held a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee--even though the full Committee has, in fact, held meetings. How many lies hs McCain told during this campaign? I lost count.
All pols lie but Obama wins with the longest Pinocchio nose. I was once writing to someone, listing the reasons I would not vote for B.O. The e-mail ran to 3 pages, 2 of which were of his lies.
For every one of Obama's speeches, he specializes in telling the group what it most wants to hear. He tells a black audience about his parents meeting at the Selma march, in 1965 when he was 4 years old. He also tells them that he remembers black churches burning, no details given. He tells Jews that his grandfather, or his non-existent uncle, or his great-uncle, liberated concentration camps but the campaign people still can't get the right name of the camp or if it was in the Russian or U.S. zone. He tells voters of a nuclear bill he passed which he never resubmitted for passage after receiving huge campaign donations from Exelon, the nuclear facility he had been targeting, etc. There are lies & then there are other lies. I do not like that Obama's lies create an imaginary Obama, one that is far different from the true Obama, one I can not trust!.
Obama doesn't know fact from fiction? Obama? I think Obama knows what countries ACTUALLY border Iraq. I think Obama knows the difference between a Sunni and Shia. You know, important things to know if you're going to be PRESIDENT.
And when was the last time McCain called a meeting, as you say? When was the last time he even ATTENDED?
And I don't think I've seen an Obama speech accusing McCain of uttering a racial slur, but McCain did utter an equally grotesque word, directed at HIS WIFE, IN PUBLIC, in front of reporters.
Nice try.
Seems to be working or he wouldn't have the poll numbers they say he has.
I love it, every time MCSAME opens his mouth, his foot gets stuck in it. At least Obama can see the horizon. I'd love to see what it looks like from up there, which MCSAME can't see. But from down here on this internet, there is a ground swell of some really smart pissed off people, who are going to tell who ever wins what, We the People want done.
rove has also used it all bush long in terms of making excuses for the republican corruption and incompetence- limbaugh is a master at presenting a selection of possible reasons that his listeners can pick from and identify with- whatever works best for personal denial and hypocrisy.
the GOP has the biggest microphone in the country and with the coordinated uncontested repetition of the talk radio monopoly and it's effective management of the rest of the the trad media they decide what gets emphasized .
Excuses me, but in my opinion Carl Roves very existence…is a crime, and he should have been in jail a long time a go, along with his bosses. Come on people lets show the world that we won’t be pushed around. Not even by our own government. It’s long over do.
JC
Mccain is so low he would use the same slime ball who attacked his creditability in 2000. He let Bush and Rove demean him. Now with the pat on the head from Bush , the good dog show s why he shouldn't have been President then and why he shouldn't be President in Nov. How low can you go Mccain?
Wake up America! This is not a "Reality Show" scripted to be entertaining and having nothing to do with reality. This is your Government. This is John McCain pandering to the far Right and abandoning everything he ever stood for. This is a sad statement of how our citizenry is easily fed "news from the campaign trail" that wreaks of sleeze, lies and has zero to do with anything we should all care about. Are we all lemmings here? Virtually everyone admits opening up more offshore drilling will have NO effect for 10 years minimum and that even then will do very little to nothing to impact the price of gasoline. This is what the GOP Senate is demanding - something that will accomplish nothing (except maybe to divide the country further and induce people to vote for McCain).
Again - Wake Up. This is not WWE Live. This is our way of life slipping out of our fingers. Unless you are one of the top 2% - if you are m iddle class - your way of life is going down the toilet with the GOP doing the flushing.
I really think we will get the government we deserve - an old man with old ideas. The fact that CNN was able to find people in a Tennessee town that still believe Obama is a Muslim is just plain scary.
So Barack Obama is a celebrity.
You mean, like Ronald Reagan?
no, barak isn't amoral
or an idiot.
At this stage f the game it would not surprise me if the republicans made a commercial add claiming Obama's farts smell of jihad.
It would be wonderful to believe that McCain would pay a price for his about-face, sleazy, sloppy, mendacious "pinata-stick" attacks on Obama. Instead, McCain's reaping rewards. His popularity sppears to be climbing so that now he's in a statistical tie for voters, according to the polls.
Don't forget, that except for the 2006 Congressonal elections resulting in Democratic majorities, Karl Rove has an unblemished track record of getting mediocre Republican's into the White House and keeping them there.
Rove has found it to be all too easy to use a news media too lazy to question candidates' statements and too intimidated to say or write anything they researched on their own.
That's not to mention a gullible public ever-ready to be stampeded into voting against their own economic interest, by fear mongers like McCain, especially. So McCain now has pulled even in national polls, signifying that much fo the public can't see past McCain's phony grin and is actually buying into his pathetic lies and name-calling.
Well, H.L. Menken observed that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. To that we can add Rove's maxim that no one ever lost an election for that same reason.
Much of what McCain is doing lately smacks of Karl Rove all over again. The truth about Rove is that Rove now has a criminal citation of contempt from congress.
So McCain has a criminal advising him.
That ought to be worth something as a tool against McCain.
What! Rove's Radicals, sounds interesting. I wholeheartedly agree with DianeCee, who can see just how defensive and weak Obama is. Her comment replyers claim to be 'educated' merely because they've gone through 'college' 'earning higher degrees'. Bullshit! I'm a 'higher educated' person possessed of three degrees and I've seen massive violations of honor and betrayal of intelligence in service of blind prejudices of many weak and cowardly 'professors', few of whom could walk down 47th ave. in Sac, here w/o deeply offending the rough element and being thereby set upon.
Steve here whines about McCain's campaign, while supporting Obama's race baiting, with the connivance of the entire press corps which is clearly in bed with Obama to the point that Michelle will soon be jealous. McCain is accidentally twice the man Obama could ever (someday) hope to be, and who atrually knows the issues (even if I disagree with many of his views) far better than the constantly mis-speaking, ultimately hapless Obama.
L a u g h a b l e. You forgot to admit that, you are in bed with the R o v i a n R a d i c a l s.
S t e v e B e n e n 's contribution was on the pot, while your comment is off the track. It's that plain simple.
I've traditionally been a democrat and considered republicans my enemies. Rove has been incorrectly demonized and until that is recognized, the dems will fail to comprehend why they are so hated by so many Americans. You can't deny the press corps is in bed with Obama in their rush to hate what they can't understand, only having learned the pitifully little one can 'learn' in college 'journalism' schools. There's hardly anyone more stupid than a phd. from an American university, who knows plenty about some small area, but almost nothing from anywhere else, as they blindly 'look down' from their ivory tower upon the rest of society, which they seem to know they are smarter and better than.
Are you kidding me? The press corps has been in bed with McCain for 30 years. He was the original "political celebrity". Of course now he has a special seat on his bus for the "good" reporters, but I bet they all still want to go to the BBQ.
Constantly mis-speaking? Now this may be because the press, which you claim is in bed with Obama, never covers them, and in fact edits them out, but McCain has misspoken more times the past week and a half than Barack has the whole campaign. He actually knows the issues? Really? Even though he's not sure what countries border Iraq, what the difference between a Sunni and Shia is, eastern European politics post-1993, and he has himself ADMITTED not knowing much about the economy, you maintain that he "actually knows the issues."? Sorry, that dog don't hunt.
Your bias against professors in general seems to be a personal thing, so I won't get into it other than to say that most of the major scientific and technological discoveries of the past, say 300 years, have been made by people who were professors, became professors, or received some advanced degree from professors. Do they take themselves a bit seriously? Of course. Doesn't make them bad people.
First we must not forget that we are in America.
Now, if we using the regular education system created 200 years ago, the art like Mr. MacCane is insulting Mr. Obama seems created to produce an effect contraire in their partied as is showing for the American people.
Really so more I look to this gentleman and interested, I believe he is only a doll used by the bigger finance’s companies to put really Mr. Obama in the presidency and try to survive the terrible destruction of America by the actual president Mr. Bush and companies.
Real or not my assertion is after long seeing this catastrophic America the beautiful involved in a really world of poor people without work.
I read every day hundred of opinions and unbelieving sometimes seem only a confusing world of people without idea what was the America politic during one hundred years.
MR OBAMA HAS A CHARACTER ISSUE - HE SAYS AEYERS IS JUST A NEIGHBOR - AND HIS KIDS GO TO SCHOOL WITH AEYERS - WELL FOUND OUT AEYERS KIDS IS NOT EVEN IN SCHOOL THEY ARE GRADUATES - SO THAT A LIE AND WHAT ELSE WOULD THIS MAN LIE ABOUT - THE ONLY WAY I WOULD CONSIDERING VOTING FOR HIM IF CLINTON IS ON THE TICKET IF NOT - I WILL VOTE JOHN MCCAIN!!
channeling lmbaugh
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