WingRight

Excellent blog post by Hugh Hewitt on what McCain should do after the Palin debate win:

His simple, closing message ought to be that the world is threatened by terrorism, and the global economy is threatened by rising taxes, chains on productivity, pressure on trade, and corrupt, self-dealing political elites at home and abroad.

McCain needs to declare that he’s been around a long time, and he’s seen all the big mistakes made and all the costs paid, and that he isn’t going to stand for it now.

McCain should pledge to be John McCut from day one in the White House:

He’ll cut taxes on new businesses and construction to jump start a flat economy and invigorate employment;

He’ll cut federal spending to make sure we have the resources for those that need it and not those who have gotten fat off of subsidies;

He’ll cut the chains that government has put on productivity, allowing builders to build and energy companies to explore and producers to make;

He’ll cut every trade barrier he can find and commit to an export economy that will surge the growth in American production of the goods and services demanded around the globe;

He’ll cut the corrupt culture of self-dealing that allowed Freddie and Fannie to pump hundreds of billions of bad loans to over-their-head borrowers and into the economy and thereby infect our financial system to the point of collapse;

And finally, he’ll cut the MSM down to size, calling them on their ridiculous double standard that sought to impale Palin while protecting Obama from his past. McCain should demand a MSM that serves that common interest, not the interest of Beltway-Manhattan elites and which holds all elected officials, not just conservative ones, to the fire. McCain should particularly demand that big media look at Fannie and Freddie and who turned them into Frankensteins and who profited thereby.

Tags: Hugh Hewitt, McCain, Palin, Taxes by Publius
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The smartest thing that John McCain could do is to fly to wherever Karl Rove is, get down on both knees and beg Rove to manage his campaign for the next month.

The last Republican presidential campaign that was this bad was run by Bob Dole, another aging war hero. In the late stages of Dole’s horrible 1996 campaign, Dennis Miller commented, “You know, this wouldn’t happen if Bob Dole was still alive.”

Like McCain, Dole was a long-standing senate incumbent who hadn’t had a serious opponent in decades. Like McCain, Dole ran his presidential campaign as someone who had never been an insider in a successful national campaign. Like McCain, Dole acted like candidates had acted twenty years earlier.

What would Rove understand?

1. The main-stream press is completely committed to the election of Obama. The good old days of fawning Straight Talk Express coverage are gone and they’re not coming back.
2. Given that the majority of voting Americans don’t trust the reliability of the MSM, openly treating the network broadcasters and major papers as the enemy and as hopelessly biased will be extremely effective. The old time adage about not picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel and paper by the roll no longer applies in a world where newspaper circulation is plunging, Rush Limbaugh’s audience is four times the size of Katie Couric’s and Drudge gets more viewers in a week than all the network news programs will get in a month.
3. Rather than trying to reach the independent voters with watered-down talking points that may or may not make it through the MSM, find the non-MSM communications channels that independent voters use and give them a straight McCainian message.
4. Ridicule Obama. Over and over. The Britney/Paris commercial hit a nerve. Do that kind of thing all the time. Pick up the best YouTube ideas and turn them into commercials. When Obama fanatics go over the top with things like the Hitler Youth songs celebrating Obama (sorry for no link, the Obama campaign took it down) and prayers that end “in the name of Obama, Amen,” highlight that weirdness and tie it to Obama’s arrogance and air-head celebrity style.
5. Start hitting Obama hard on his radical left-wing past and his deep ties to corrupt Chicago machine politics. Demonstrate that Wright and Ayers were not exceptions, but part of an overall pattern of close cooperation with people who hate America. Show Obama’s ties to ACORN, a lawless radical organization that has faced voter fraud charges in a dozen states. Pound home that Obama filed suit against Citibank to force it to make subprime loans that are exactly the same loans that caused the credit meltdown.
6. Get Sarah Palin out for lots of press interviews – with interviewers who are not dedicated to stabbing her in the back. Have her become the new best friend of Rush, Sean, Glenn, Hugh, Instapundit, Powerline, NRO, Mark Steyn, etc., etc.   Let her take shouted-out questions from reporters and tell her to answer the Jeopardy questions a la Couric and Gibson with, “What did Senator Obama say when you asked him that question?”  The MSM’s goal has been to make Sarah look bad.  For the rest of the campaign, Sarah’s job is to make the MSM look bad.

Senator McCain – Call Karl Rove and beg. Otherwise, like Bob Dole, you’ll be remembered more for your Viagra commercials than for any of your political accomplishments.

Tags: McCain, Palin by Publius
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All the early commentary about Sarah Palin focuses on the obvious fact that she’s a woman, evidently smart and outspoken, and a tempting choice for disgruntled Hillary supporters. Palin is also the only one of the four President/Vice Presidential candidates who has run anything bigger than a senate staff.

The most important thing that I see early on is that Gov. Palin is a big proponent of more oil drilling, including at ANWR. I take this to be an indication that McCain is going to move more toward drilling and (could it be?) away from the whole global warming/cap and trade mish-mash.

I think this is a bold, gutsy move on McCain’s part.

Tags: Climate Change, McCain, Oil by Publius
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