McCain Manager: 'This Election is Not About Issues'

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.

"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

Davis added that issues will no doubt play a major role in the decisions undecided voters will make but that they won't ultimately be conclusive. He added that the campaign has "ultimate faith" in the idea that the more voters get to know McCain and Barack Obama, the better the Republican nominee will do.

Davis generally dismissed the controversies surrounding McCain's vice presidential pick — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — as a media creation but did acknowledge that her acceptance speech, which seems likely to come tomorrow, is critically important to defining who she is to the American public.

As for the speech itself, Davis said a generic, "masculine" speech was being prepared before the pick was made and, now that Palin is the choice, she is adapting the speech to her own needs and personality.

Davis demurred when asked when Palin will sit for interviews with major news organizations, pointing out that now would not be the right time given the "combative" attitude the media has seemingly adopted toward Palin. Pressed on the issue, Davis insisted that "we allot a lot more access in our campaign than any campaign in modern political history....we'll get around to it."

On the general election playing field, Davis alleged that Obama had tried — and failed — to expand the political map, and that 11 or 12 states (and maybe as many as 13) would be truly competitive. He added that campaign operatives are feeling better than they did a month ago about Iowa and Minnesota and believe their prospects have not dimmed in any competitive state during that time.

Davis did admit, however, the challenges of running for president as a Republican in this political atmosphere.

"We are in the worst Republican environment since Nixon in 1972," said Davis. "We take that seriously. We get the joke."

Hookers and Blow: Welcome to the RNC

By Brave New Films, ABC News
Posted on September 2, 2008, Printed on September 2, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//97277/

From thedailyphosdex:

Thanks are in order to RawStory.com for bringing to the world's attention and enlightenment this ABC News item about a rather lurid and tasteless party in connection with the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities as is attracting the ire of "Secular-Progressive" bloggers.

Let RawStory.com elaborate thus:

Despite John McCain's request over the weekend that the Republican convention be toned down in light of the threat posed by Hurricane Gustav, Republican delegates and their lobbyist friends continued to party the night away — and Democratic bloggers were delighted by the spectacle.

ABC correspondent Brian Ross reported on several of the more flamboyant revels, including one Saturday night GOP party in honor of the convention president where pink spotlights, pink boas, and pink wigs were the order of the day. When Ross tried to corner Republican officials and ask them about the appropriateness of partying as Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans, they either fled, hid behind their pink boas, or simply shrugged and said, "Everybody goes through hard times."

Even after John McCain announced that the convention was being toned down, the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin, and the American Trucking Associations sponsored a Sunday night party at a downtown bar — with a band called "Hookers and Blow" — hosted by former Tom DeLay aide Glenn LeMunyon.

GOP House Deputy Whip Bill Shuster was there at a table of lobbyists and Capitol Hill staffers and told Ross, "I have no hesitation" about coming to the party, adding that the lobbyist he was sitting with "is a friend of mine, I've known him for twenty years." Despite the glitz, concluded Ross, "this was all about business — the behind-the-scenes business of influence and power."

Democratic blogs have not been shy about ripping the GOP for its indulgences. Although many merely posted the ABC video with such brief comments as "Thank you, Republicans, for just handing the Democrats the election" or "You get the feeling nobody in GOP politics really gives a damn about McCain," a few were more scathing.

One blog headlined the video, "McCain asks for 'only absolutely essential business' at the convention. Delegates decide parties are absolutely essential."

FireDogLake wrote that "given McCain's selection of the scandal-beset Sarah Palin for Vice President, the last thing his campaign wanted was the image of a heartless, indifferent group of blindingly white people dancing the night away while the South struggled with yet another natural disaster. So the McCain campaign handed down a stern edict: 'No celebrating!' This is what they got instead."

Finally, one blog suggested more tartly, "Some raised money, but the fundraising activities of others were most decidedly not directed at disaster relief. Unless, of course, you're referring to the loss of Republican Power in America."

Which, if anything, ought to arouse the ire and indignation of Right-Thinking Americans still deluded into supporting the McCain/Palin ticket as one with G-d, Country and Family.

(In case you need some historical insight, consider the irony-laden gaffe of 1884's Republican Presidential candidate James G. Blaine: Shortly after making the remark that the Democrats were "the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion," he subsequently made his way to the snug of Delmonico's Restaurant in New York to dine in the company of prominent and powerful bankers, businessmen and industrialists—a gathering quickly dismissed in the press of the time as "Belshazzar's Feast," taking note of the hypocrisy that Blaine saw himself as the champion of the working classes while consorting himself with "the Four Hundred" soon afterwards.

The news would be enough to sway the vote to Democratic candidate Chester A. Arthur.)

There were a variety of protests and marches in St. Paul yesterday, most conducted without incident.  There were a few small groups, apparently anarchists for the most part, who seem to think that breaking windows of cars, delegates' buses, and storefronts and throwing buckets of urine are effective ways to recruit for their cause.  Their methods are as lame as their philosophy and serve only to paint the efforts of the anti-war marchers as work of the lunatic fringe.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Gustav caused the RNC to limit its overtly political activities, which allowed delegates to visit the Minnesota State Fair, the Mall of America, and the Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) "wide stance" men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.