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Candidate McCain rejects ‘audacity of hopelessness’ in Iraq
BY TOM RAUM The Associated Press

    DENVER — Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for “the audacity of hopelessness” in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. troops been withdrawn as his rival advocated.
    Speaking to an audience of Hispanic military veterans, McCain stepped up his criticism of Obama while the Illinois senator continued his headline-grabbing tour of the Middle East and Europe. The Arizona Republican contended that Obama’s policies — he opposed sending more troops to Iraq in the “surge” that McCain supported — would have led to defeat there and in Afghanistan.
    “We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right,” McCain said, a play on the title of Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope.”
    McCain laid out a near-apocalyptic chain of events he said could have resulted had Obama managed to stop the troop buildup ordered by President Bush: U.S. forces retreating under fire, the Iraqi army collapsing, civilian casualties increasing dramatically, al-Qaida killing cooperative Sunni sheiks and finding safe havens to train fighters and launch attacks on Americans, and civil war, genocide and a wider conflict.
    “Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened,” he said. “Terrorists would have seen our defeat as evidence America lacked the resolve to defeat them. As Iraq descended into chaos, other countries in the Middle East would have come to the aid of their favored factions, and the entire region might have erupted in war.”
    Noting that the buildup was unpopular with most Americans, McCain said: “Sen. Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.”
    Obama has called for a withdrawal over 16 months. McCain again criticized him for advocating “a politically expedient timetable” and for voting against funding for troops. McCain had raised eyebrows earlier this week by charging that Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”
    With one exception, Obama has voted for every spending bill for troops at war. In 2007, Bush vetoed a bill that provided funding on condition of troop withdrawals, and Obama joined 13 other senators who opposed the measure that took its place.
    McCain’s speech in Denver came at the conclusion of a week in which he struggled against Obama’s overseas tour de force. Yet amid the awkward moments, McCain managed to campaign busily in key battleground states and to raise millions of dollars at fundraisers.
    Polls in many swing states are close, and some are tightening. The Arizona Republican sought to turn this to his advantage in what was clearly a difficult week to be a stayat-home candidate.
    McCain repeatedly emphasized his long military and congressional background, scolded Obama from afar on foreign policy, and kept playfully fueling speculation that he was close to picking a running mate.

JOE AMON/THE DENVER POST
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., enters to address the American GI Forum Convention at the Grand Hyatt in Denver on Friday.

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Explosive issue of race hits Obama-McCain campaign
BY LIZ SIDOTI The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — John McCain accused Barack Obama of playing politics with race on Thursday, raising the explosive issue after the first black candidate with a serious chance of winning the White House claimed Republicans will try to scare voters by saying he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
    Until now, the subject of race has been almost taboo in the campaign, at least in public, with both sides fearing its destructive force.
    “I’m disappointed that Senator Obama would say the things he’s saying,” McCain told reporters in Racine, Wis. The Arizona senator said he agreed with campaign manager Rick Davis’ statement earlier that “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.” The aide was suggesting McCain had been wrongfully accused.
    In turn, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, “We weren’t suggesting in any way he’s using race as an issue” but that McCain “is using the same, old low-road politics that voters are very unhappy about to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign.”
    A day earlier and in response to a hard-hitting McCain commercial, Obama argued that President Bush and McCain have little to offer voters so Republicans will resort to a strategy of fear to keep the White House.
    “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
    He didn’t explain the comment. But it evoked images of past presidents who grace U.S. paper money, such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant. All were white men, and all but Grant were older than Obama when elected.
    Obama long has talked about his physical appearance in speeches, but McCain advisers argue he crossed a significant line by accusing the GOP of scare tactics and alluding to his own race in the same breath.
    The back-and-forth was the latest spike in a contest that’s grown increasingly negative despite pledges by both Obama and McCain to run aboveboard campaigns. The daily rhetoric has turned red-hot as both maneuver for advantage and polls show the race competitive three months before the election.
    At 46, Obama is serving his fi rst Senate term and working to overcome concerns of voters that he’s not ready to be president. McCain is trying to stoke the notion that the Democrat is too inexperienced to make the judgments necessary to lead a country in times of war and economic straits.
    Polls show a close contest nationally and in key battleground states, including electoral prizes like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. The political environment after two Bush terms tilts heavily in the Democrats’ favor, but voter skepticism about Obama has helped keep the contest within McCain’s reach.
    In recent days, McCain has been going after Obama with new fervor, painting him as not ready to lead and too liberal for the country. It’s an aggressive approach reminiscent of GOP operative Karl Rove, who orchestrated Bush’s back-to-back victories in part by tearing down Democratic opponents.

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McCain Gaffes, Volunteering Wife For Topless Contest

August 05, 2008 5:31 PM

ANC News' Gregory Wallace and Sara Just Report:
Sen. John McCain, R-Az., perhaps unknowingly, volunteered his wife for a beauty pageant on Monday that often features contestants topless -- and, occasionally, without any  decency -- at the Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally.

"I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you had a beauty pageant, so I encouraged Cindy to compete," McCain told an audience at the rally.  "I told her [that] with a little luck, she could be the only woman to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."

The audience, clearly better versed in the details of the pageant, cheered and whistled their approval.

This annual rally, now in its 62nd year, rally attracts upwards of 500,000 riders in August to the small town of 5,500.  The contest is named for the Buffalo Chip campground, home to about 25,000 riders for the nine-day rally.

The Arizona senator, according to the Buffalo Chip campground website, was participating in "the Buffalo Chip's annual Tribute to American Veterans and Active Duty Servicemen."  The site also says that many attendees are "veterans and active duty servicemen who will have a great appreciation for McCain's family history of service to our country."

McCain also promised the audience that he would only speak briefly.

"I know that we are waiting with great anticipation for Kid Rock and the other entertainment," the Arizona senator said.

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George Will
McCain might win by exploiting Russia’s invasion of Georgia
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist.

    Last August, John McCain’s campaign was a guttering candle, out of money but flush with halfbaked ideas that were unlikely to be improved by further baking. Anyway, to have many ideas is to have too many for a campaign’s concluding sprint, and McCain’s revival has not been robust enough to bring him even with Barack Obama. Now McCain’s rejuvenated hopes rest on his ability to recast this election, focusing it on who should lead America in a world suddenly darkened by Russia’s war of European conquest.
    To begin the recasting, he should weed from the unkempt garden of his political thinking the populism which often seems like mere attitudinizing redeemed by insincerity. His silliness about sinful Wall Street and exploitative corporations cannot compete with Democratic entrees in the nonsense sweepstakes. Furthermore, his populism subverts his strength — the perception that although he is an acquired taste, he is serious, hence incapable of selfcelebratory froth such as “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
    McCain’s populism, if such there must be, should be distilled into one proposal that would be popular and, unlike most populism, not economically injurious. The proposal, for which he has expressed sympathy, is: No offi - cer of any corporation receiving a federal subsidy, broadly defined, can be paid more than the highest federal civil servant ($124,010 for a GS-15). This would abruptly halt the galloping expansion of private economic entities — is GM next? — eager to become, in effect, joint ventures with Washington.
    Next, McCain should make an asset of an inevitability by promising two presidential vetoes. The inevitability is enlarged Democratic congressional majorities in 2009. Americans suffer political astigmatism. They squint at Washington, seeing an incompetent cornucopia that is too big but which should expand to give them more blessings. Their voting behavior, however, generally conforms to their professed suspicion about unchecked power in Washington: In 31 election cycles since the restoration of normal politics after the Second World War, 19 of them produced divided government — the executive and legislative branches not controlled by the same party.
    Two Democratic priorities in the next Congress would placate two factions that hold the party’s leash — organized labor and the far left. One is abolition of workers’ right to secret ballots in unionization elections. The other is restoration of the “fairness doctrine” in order to kill talk radio, on which liberals cannot compete. The doctrine would expose broadcasters to endless threats of litigation over government rules about how many views must be presented, on which issues, by whom, for how long and in what manner.
    By promising to veto both of these forthcoming assaults on fundamental freedoms, McCain would give specific content to voters’ usually unfocused fear of one-party government. Then, having delighted conservatives, who have thus far curbed their enthusiasm for him, he should make this challenge:
    He should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia’s aggression. Both candidates favor NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, perhaps Vladimir Putin’s next victim. But does Russia’s behavior cause Obama to rethink reliance on “soft power” — dialogue, disapproval, diplomacy, economic carrots and sticks — which Putin considers almost an oxymoron? Does Russia’s resort to military coercion, and its arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles, cause Obama to revise his resistance to missile defense? Obama, unlike McCain, believes Russia belongs in the G-8. Does Obama think Russia should be admitted to the World Trade Organization? Does Obama consider Putin helpful regarding Iran? Does Obama accept the description of the G-8 as an organization of the largest “industrialized democracies“? Does he think China should be admitted?
    McCain, like Republicans generally, reveres Ronald Reagan. But such reverence seems to involve an obligatory sunniness, which suits neither McCain nor this moment. A great political thinker of the last century, Raymond Aron, was right: “What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.” McCain must convince voters that Obama’s complacent confidence in the taming abilities of soft power is the effect of liberalism’s scary sentimentalism about a dangerous thing, human nature, and a fiction, “the community of nations.”
    McCain is hardly the change many people have been eagerly waiting for, but Putin is part of the change we must confront. Until Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it seemed that not even the Democratic Party could lose this election. But it might if McCain can make it turn on the question of who is ornery enough to give Putin a convincing, deterring telephone call at 3 a.m.

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And None Dare Call It Treason
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted 08/22/2008


Who is Randy Scheunemann?

He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.

But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.

He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.

From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 -- pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.

What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.

Scheunemann came close to succeeding.

Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy.

U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?

Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have sought for 45 years to stay out of a shooting war with Russia and we are not going to get into one now. President Bush assured us there will be no U.S. military response to the Russian move into Georgia.

That is a recognition of, and a bowing to, reality -- namely, that Russia's control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and occupation of a strip of Georgia cannot be a casus belli for the United States. We may deplore it, but it cannot justify war with Russia.

If that be true, and it transparently is, what are McCain, Barack Obama, Bush, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel doing committing the United States and Germany to bringing Georgia into NATO? For that would commit us to war for a cause we have already conceded, by our paralysis, does not justify a war.

Not only did Scheunemann's two-man lobbying firm receive $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded.

Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic annexed by Joseph Stalin in June 1940 during his pact with Adolf Hitler, was set free at the end of the Cold War. Yet hundreds of thousands of Russians had been moved into Latvia by Stalin, and as Riga served as a base of the Baltic Sea fleet, many Russian naval officers retired there.

The children and grandchildren of these Russians are Latvian citizens. They are a cause of constant tension with ethnic Letts and of strife with Moscow, which has assumed the role of protector of Russians left behind in the "near abroad" when the Soviet Union broke apart.

Thanks to the lobbying of Scheunemann and friends, Latvia has been brought into NATO and given a U.S. war guarantee. If Russia intervenes to halt some nasty ethnic violence in Riga, the United States is committed to come in and drive the Russians out.

This is the situation in which the interventionists have placed our country: committed to go to war for countries and causes that do not justify war, against a Russia that is re-emerging as a great power only to find NATO squatting on her doorstep.

Scheunemann's resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9-11. He signed the PNAC ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9-11, threatening him with political reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq. He was executive director of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," a propaganda front for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war.

Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain's camp.

The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.

Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?

Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George Bush?

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.

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McCain makes decision on VP running mate

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
11 minutes ago



DENVER - Republican presidential candidate John McCain decided on a running mate early Thursday, and one top prospect, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, abruptly canceled numerous public appearances.

The Arizona senator will appear with his No. 2 at an Ohio rally on Friday, aides said, though they provided no details on who McCain had picked.

Without explanation, Pawlenty called off an Associated Press interview at the last minute, as well as other media interviews in Denver, site of the Democratic National Convention.

Others believed to be in contention for the No. 2 slot on the GOP ticket included former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was meeting with donors throughout California, and Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who was vacationing on New York's Long Island.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, too, was still a possibility, as was the idea that McCain would choose a dark horse from any number of names that have circulated.

Fueling speculation that McCain would choose either Pawlenty or Romney or another conservative Republican, two GOP officials said they believed McCain had picked a traditional candidate. They based their conclusion on the fact that the campaign, which once had put the party on notice to prepare for the possibility of an unconventional candidate, does not have preparations in place to curb the fallout from a right flank that certainly would revolt if Ridge, an abortion-rights backer, or Lieberman, a former Democrat, was on the ticket.

McCain, for his part, was uncharacteristically silent.

As he and his wife, Cindy, boarded a plane in Phoenix bound for Dayton, Ohio, reporters shouted a barrage of questions at the senator about whether he'd made up his mind. McCain wasn't biting. He flashed a double thumbs-up and boarded the plane.

Earlier, he played coy.

In an interview aired Thursday morning, McCain said he still hadn't made up his mind. Far from quieting speculation, this only fueled it as he sought to siphon attention from Democrat Barack Obama's acceptance of the presidential nomination in Denver.

He told KDKA NewsRadio in Pittsburgh in an interview taped Wednesday: "I haven't decided yet so I can't tell you."

McCain, who spoke with the radio station from his home in Arizona, told people late Wednesday that he wasn't going to make a final decision until after he talked with his wife. She has been in the country of Georgia this week and returned sometime at nightfall.

With both the eventual pick and the effort to keep buzz alive beforehand, McCain's campaign hopes curb any uptick in polling that Obama might get from his convention and to create momentum heading into the gathering of GOP delegates for McCain next week in St. Paul, Minn.

Pawlenty, in Denver to criticize Democrats on McCain's behalf, canceled without explanation an afternoon roundtable interview with the AP as well as other media interviews. Questioned about the vice presidential selection earlier, Pawlenty would only say that he is to be in Minnesota on Friday for the state fair. He had cautioned during a series of morning TV interviews that while speculation might be fun, "most of it turns out to be inaccurate."

Romney, who had played the GOP attack-dog role earlier in the week at the Democratic convention, left his beachfront San Diego home Thursday morning with an overnight bag. His son, Matt, said Romney was headed to an unspecified location in the state. Asked about being vice president, the elder Romney said: "I don't have anything for you right now."

Ridge was at his suburban Washington, D.C., home. Asked by an AP photographer as he took out the trash if he had any travel plans for the day, Ridge smiled and said he didn't.

One Lieberman aide said there has been no indication he is the choice. For instance, no staff have been called to join him at his vacation site.

For months, McCain's vice presidential search process has been kept closely held by a small group of his advisers. But details have been trickling out this week.

This includes word from two Republicans that McCain met with his senior advisers in Arizona on Wednesday to discuss the pick, conflicting information about whether or not he had settled on a choice, and the campaign's announcement it would air a one-evening-only TV ad in battleground states around when Obama will be giving his prime-time acceptance speech.

Turns out the ad has nothing to do with the vice presidential choice, bearing only a simple message for Barack Obama: "Job well done."

____

Associated Press writers Glen Johnson in Boston, Mike Glover in Phoenix, and Andrew Miga and photographer Scott Applewhite in Washington contributed to this story.

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McCain Chooses Ala. Governor Palin as Running Mate

By Robert Barnes and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 29, 2008; 10:56 AM

DAYTON, Ohio -- Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain has chosen first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, according to senior Republican sources who said they were briefed by McCain's staff.

Palin, 44,would be the first woman nominated to the ticket by the Republican Party, and is a surpise choice after McCain considered more experienced politicians, including several of his former rivals for the GOP nomination. Palin was elected in 2006, and before that was mayor of tiny Wasilla (pop. 6,715).

She is a favorite of conservatives, who say she brings a reform-minded agenda and is what one called a "feminist for life.'' She is the mother of five; her youngest, born in April, has Down's syndrome.

Palin had been mentioned as a dark-horse candidate for the pick, but the choice was kept secret by the McCain campaign despite a frenzy of speculation from the 24/7 world of cable news and political blogs.

Three senior Republican sources said they had been told Palin was McCain's choice. That came after a morning in which the names on McCain's publicly talked-about short list appeared to quickly drop off.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, McCain's rival for the nomination who was long thought to be a likely veep pick, has told others that he will not be in Dayton for the noon rally at Wright State University where McCain is expected to announce his running mate.

Likewise, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty--another conventional wisdom favorite--told a Twin Cities radio station this morning that he would be at the state fair.

"You can draw your own conclusion from that," Pawlenty said.

One potential candidate who has not been heard from this morning: McCain's close friend Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a former Democratic who had been strongly opposed by GOP conservatives as a veep choice.

Even as attention turned to Palin, rumors swirled that Lieberman had arrived in Dayton from Long Island, where he had been vacationing with his family, sparking a new round of speculation that McCain might pick his buddy instead.

But Lieberman is often by McCain's side, traveling with him on foreign trips and joining him on the stump. His possible presence at the Dayton rally appeared to be nothing more than Lieberman's way of supporting his friend and colleague.

McCain's communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, playfully declined to provide any confirmation Thursday morning. Speaking on CBS' "Early Show," she provided only a vague sense of the motivation that has driven McCain's decision.

"John McCain is going to make the choice from his heart," she said.

"He's going to choose someone who can be a partner in governing. He's going to choose someone who brings character and principle to the table and who shares his priorities. And I'm confident that he's going to make a great pick."

Palin's name had been mentioned as a dark horse candidate before. And Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder noted this morning that a private plane connected to a McCain fundraiser had traveled to an airport near Dayton yesterday from Anchorage.

The plane's flight information and registration can be found using freely available flight tracking tools on the Internet. They show that the plane, a Gulfstream IV, landed at Hook Field municipal airport about a half-hour outside of Dayton at 10:07 pm last night.

Republicans struggled Thursday morning to come to grips with what appeared to be McCain's surprise pick.

Former Romney spokesman Kevin Madden called the possibility of a Palin choice "quintessential John McCain. He's trying to make a play for independent voters . . . trying to bring in energy from outside Washington to try to reform Washington."

Karl Rove, President Bush's former top political advisers, said on Fox News that picking Palin would "shake up" the traditional coalitions in both parties. He called Palin a "breath of fresh air," and said picking her would be an indication that McCain is hoping to make a direct appeal to women voters, especially those who voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton, not Sen. Barack Obama, during the Democratic primary.

"It would be a clear sign by the McCain campaign that they would be making a bid" for women voters, Rove said. "In the last 24 hours, we've seen both campaigns refocus themselves in a powerful way on the Hillary Clinton supporters."

One GOP source who said McCain had chosen Palin call it a "stunning pick" and said he was still trying to get his arms around it. The source, who did not want to be named since McCain has not commented publicly, said conservatives will be pleased since she is an anti-abortion Republican.

But he acknowledged that Palin is "not really that well known."

Aides to Obama said they are salivating at the prospect of a Palin pick, readying the talking points. With 18 months in office, little foreign policy experience -- or experience of any kind -- Palin would be, in the words of one senior Obama adviser, "a gift."

Several Democratic officials expressed surprise about Palin but predicted that she will make it more difficult for McCain to attack Obama for having a lack of experience.

"He cannot say any more that Barack Obama doesn't have the experience to be commander in chief when he chooses a woman whose signature achievement two years ago was that they won an award from the National Arbor Day Foundation," a Democratic operative said.

Democrats began quickly scouring Palin's past. They pointed out that she had once raised the sales tax to support construction of a rec center in her city. And they noted that Palin has been accused of improperly using her office to have her ex-brother-in-law fired from his state trooper's job.

"She's under investigation right now," the Democrat said.

Staff writers Dan Balz and Anne E. Kornblut contributed to this report.