Brass knuckles at the debate? Hell, no. McCain’s going to wimp out. He won’t bring up Ayers, or he will bring him up in passing in such a small way that Obama won’t bother to acknowledge it.

And McCain will expect the base (us!) to eat that shit sandwich. “Hey, I mentioned Bill Ayers, why are you base people complaining?” Is what he will say. It’s BULLSHIT.

McCain needs to step up. He’s not a “pussy,” and I was wrong to call him that. He’s just acting like one, for reasons unknown (a misplaced sense of honor? trying to suck up to his liberal media friends? surrounded by squishy Republicans taken in by Obama who warn him that the country will devolve into race war if McCain wins by going negative?)

I don’t care why. McCain won this nomination by claiming he was the best Republican to win the election. He promised he would do his damnedest to win. Obama certainly is. If McCain flip-flops on that promise–that’s a flip-flop too far. I’d prefer he flip-flopped on partial-birth abortion, or gay marriage, or announce big new steel tariffs. If he’s going to flip flop on trying to win the race, we’re screwed.

The thought of Michelle Obama as First Lady is almost more than I can bear, for those reasons.

a capella on October 13, 2008 at 3:54 PM

This is what we can expect with a militant whitey hater and a terrorist sympathizer in the oval office.

If McCain doesn’t have the stomach for exposing Obama’s decision to choose a hate-mongering bigot as one of his closest advisors, then I hope one of the 527s does it for him. I don’t think that the Rev. Wright story penetrated into the minds of mainstream, apolitical Americans. My recollection is that it mostly played out in the Spring, during the Dem primary.

Y-not on October 13, 2008 at 6:08 PM

Exactly right, Y-not. It’s amazing what the “moderate voter” doesn’t know, or manages to forget about. I’ll bet a lot of them think Wright, whose name they don’t recognize immediately, was some old crank that Obama bumped into a couple of times, and then Obama gave this great speech that was in the same league as the Gettysburg Address (all the reports said so!) and that was it. A good number of them will be genuinely surprised to hear some of Wright’s Greatest Hits, then be told Obama was his close friend and disciple for 20 years.

This why liberals get so much mileage out of endlessly beating dead horses. The true “swing voter” thinks history began four weeks ago.

I don’t think it would be productive for McCain to dwell on Wright at the debate, but I’d be making some effort to get that story into the public eye again. Hell, let Palin denounce him. The liberals won’t be able to help talking about that – it will make blood vessels in their temples burst.

So I don’t buy this whole thing about “going after a preacher turns people off due to freedom of religion”. That’s nonsense. Especially since Black Liberation Theology is not a religion, but a political ideology. A political ideology which is anti-American and anti-capitalism. That should have been evident to every sane person in America when Wright was exposed. People clearly saw that we were not dealing with religion, but anti-Americanism and racism.
Michael in MI on October 13, 2008 at 5:52 PM

+1

If McCain doesn’t have the stomach for exposing Obama’s decision to choose a hate-mongering bigot as one of his closest advisors, then I hope one of the 527s does it for him. I don’t think that the Rev. Wright story penetrated into the minds of mainstream, apolitical Americans. My recollection is that it mostly played out in the Spring, during the Dem primary.

So I don’t buy the whole idea that people are turned off by bringing up extremist preachers. Obama is just getting a pass, because… well, I have no f***ing clue why he is getting a pass. No f***ing clue.

Hey, maybe the Mac and That One will head out to Borelli’s for pizza afterwards…

By going after a pastor’s words, any pastor, you turn off as many people simply on First Amendment grounds as you bring over to your side by exposing Rev. Wright as the racist nut that he is. A lot of people will just say that’s Obama’s business–not our’s.

RBMN on October 13, 2008 at 5:18 PM

That’s the spin of the Left (not accusing you of being Left, just that this is the rationale of the Left). If this were a White Supremacist preacher somehow linked to Palin or McCain, you know damn well the mass media would find it relevant and it would sink their campaign. So I don’t buy this whole thing about “going after a preacher turns people off due to freedom of religion”. That’s nonsense. Especially since Black Liberation Theology is not a religion, but a political ideology. A political ideology which is anti-American and anti-capitalism. That should have been evident to every sane person in America when Wright was exposed. People clearly saw that we were not dealing with religion, but anti-Americanism and racism.

No one tolerates the KKK and rightfully so. Rev Wright and his church are the equivalent of the KKK. To say that people just don’t care about that and “it’s just Obama’s business to be a racist and Black Supremacist and okay with Black Supremacism if it hurts Whitey”, well… if that is the case, then I wonder what is wrong with American society nowadays to just let that pass as irrelevant.

This can’t be an actual Republican candidate, can it?

A curse on all the stupid “Republicans” who handed the nomination to such a terrible candidate.

I feel like I am in Jerry Seinfeld and experiencing the bizarro world. I go back and forth from extremely angry to just shaking my head not knowing what the f*** to do anymore.

Michael in MI on October 13, 2008 at 4:57 PM

My sentiments exactly.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWNhM2E2ODcyNThhYmQxYjM0MWQyYmU2MDMxMmU0NmU=

Obama 45: McCain 43: Unsure: 13

Go figure.

C’mon, McCain, if not with the alliances, at least draw some blood with the policy issues. Call Obama’s tax plan what it is–welfare. Today, the WSJ said you could; other articles have too.

Tell Middle Americans that Obama wants to limit their gun rights, reduce their employment prospects by killing off employers, tie up the nation’s prospects for energy independence in the same regulatary red tape that’s existed for 30 years, give the Fannie-Freddie enablers a free pass, appoints judges who will release terrorists into the suburbs of Virginia, and all that and more in exchange for an unclear health plan and seven complicated, half-*ss tax credits that are nothing more than glorified welfare for half of all recipients.

As passionately as George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) spoke to his depositors as they were making a run on the Bailey Building & Loan in It’s a Wonderful Life, McCain needs to convince Middle America that Obama (Henry Potter) isn’t selling, he’s buying. And in Obama’s case, he’s buying their votes–and along with it their freedoms–in exchange for that pittance of glorified welfare.

What does matter to me, and it’s something McCain has used in his campaign (but not enough), is that all these things… Rezco, Ayers, Wright, ACORN, the Surge, the response to Russia’s actions against Georgia… are indictments of Obama’s judgment. And the only two things Obama has been running on have been his judgment and Bush’s low popularity.

McCain has certainly had his own errors in judgment in the past (his first marriage and Keating come to mind), but there’s evidence that he regrets and has learned from them. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that Obama even acknowledges his own mistakes, much less learns from them.

If McCain brings them, he won’t be wearing them. And after he gets a surprise two-by-four to the face, he’ll spend most of the debate fumbling to put them on.

BuckeyeSam on October 13, 2008 at 4:27 PM

I agree. He won’t talk about Wright. He apparently won’t hit him on Ayers, because he considers him just some washed up terrorist who no one cares about, nevermind the extensive relationship of Obama and Ayers on the Chicago Anneberg Challenge, which was used to indoctrinate school children with anti-America, anti-capitalism, pro-socialism propaganda. Nah, that’s not relevant. Not at all.

Plus, after reading Michelle Malkin’s piece on McCain’s ties to ACORN today, he lost that argument as well. If McCain brings it up, all Obama has to do is say “Well, you had no problem with ACORN when you wanted to use them to help you with your Immigration legislation”. And then that’s the end of that issue.

So then we are back to foreign policy and the economy. The war effort is going fine, so people don’t even care about that anymore. If they did, all Obama’s wrong stances on the war effort would have eliminated him long ago. So it’s the economy, where Obama is promising everything (nevermind that he is lying about his tax plan and such, it all sounds just spiffy to our Welfare state society) and McCain can’t put forth a very good conservative alternative, since he doesn’t really have an economic philosophy or understand it that much. All he has it earmarks and that won’t cut it.

I just don’t see how McCain can win. It seems there are 100 things majorly wrong with Obama, yet the American public has given him a pass. There are a few things wrong with McCain, and the American public demonizes him for every single one of them.

I feel like I am in Jerry Seinfeld and experiencing the bizarro world. I go back and forth from extremely angry to just shaking my head not knowing what the f*** to do anymore.

The fact that Ayers is demoted to simply a washed up terrorist tells me that a)they have not taken the time to adequately research Bill to know what he is all about or b) they know who he is but don’t mind diminishing his importance if it helps soft-sell the connection.

As for Wright, McCain should have reached out to “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda Bob Dole” for his input because he’s about to join him.

This does not have to be either or. Wright or Ayers or Acorn
IF McCain had anyone with a brain they could craft ONE MESSAGE that linked it all together and would devastate Obama.

Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
Spirit of 1776 on October 13, 2008 at 3:58 PM

Strange. That’s exactly what he says.

Almost word for word.