Back to Basics

The only good advice Bob Dole or John McCain could ever offer about how to send an incumbent president packing would be “don’t listen to Bob Dole or John McCain’s advice”:

Sen. John McCain acknowledged Sunday he’s concerned about the increasing odds that President Barack Obama will be reelected.

“I think there’s reason to be concerned about it,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the heightened negativity in the GOP presidential primary race. “I’ve been in very tough campaigns. I don’t think I’ve seen one that was as personal, and characterized by so many attacks, as these are. Frankly, one of the reasons is the super PACs.”

McCain’s actual concern has nothing to do with the final four candidates still going at each other this far into primary season — it’s that his GOP establishment candidate of choice isn’t being allowed to run away with the nomination as many had predicted. McCain and Dole worried that the Republicans are doing something wrong is the best evidence there’s something going right.

Let’s start this way… here’s part of the description on Amazon of the 2010 book “Game Change”:

In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country’s leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. How did Obama convince himself that, despite the thinness of his resume, he could somehow beat the odds to become the nation’s first African American president? How did the tumultuous relationship between the Clintons shape—and warp—Hillary’s supposedly unstoppable bid? What was behind her husband’s furious outbursts and devastating political miscalculations? Why did McCain make the novice governor of Alaska his running mate? And was Palin merely painfully out of her depth—or troubled in more serious ways?

Judging from the just released trailer for the upcoming HBO film of the same name, in spite of the fact that a good portion of “Game Change” was about Obama, Hillary and Bill, only the last two Palin-related sentences above were worthy of making the cut (though I hear Obama does make a cameo in the brief “Hawaiian golf course” scene). In these clips it’s all Sarah bashing, all the time. I actually laughed out loud before the end. They made her such a dingy, clothing-obsessed bitch that this could be an audition for the new show “Real Housewives of Wasilla”

*****

Based on that, here’s an outline of what the plot appears to be: Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain’s running mate because she had useful demographic attributes that could be exploited, but there was also a downside that McCain’s people thought they could keep in check. However, about halfway through the campaign, Palin became self-aware, turned on her creators and wreaked havoc on humanity — Skynet in heels. They should have called the movie “The Campaign Terminator.”

Watching that clip you’d almost forget that the reason John McCain lost was because of… John McCain. It’s shocking that a solid lineup of Hollywood lefties couldn’t be a little more even-handed when it comes to the story of Sarah Palin.

(h/t Hot Air)

Romney and McCain: The GOP Frenemies’ Club
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

Michael Corleone said to “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” But what, pray tell, do we do with our frenemies? This is the awful, election-year quandary of movement conservatives. And everything you need to know about our heartache can be summed up in one image:

2008 presidential election loser John McCain and Mitt Romney together on the campaign trail.

When they’re together, they look like they’re holding each other (and the rest of us) hostage. Their toxic chemistry makes seething, ex-newlyweds Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries look like Fred and Ginger. In New Hampshire last week after Romney’s Iowa caucus squeaker, an overly giddy McCain mocked his endorsee for his “landslide victory.” Awkward.

Then in South Carolina on Friday, McCain mistakenly referred to Romney as “President Obama” – as Romney and South Carolina GOP governor Nikki Haley rushed to correct the gaffe. Freudian slip? Senior moment? Sabotage? All of the above?

Of course, if you choose to pal around with a double-talking, big government barnacle, you get what you deserve.

McCain is the entrenched incumbent Arizona senator/war hero who lost to a neophyte, radical leftist community organizer from Chicago. The “straight-talk” GOP candidate flip-flopped on everything from illegal immigration to global warming to offshore drilling to closing Gitmo. He pandered to minority grievance-mongers and the liberal media. He proposed massive government interventions bigger than Obama’s.

This Beltway fossil who now poses as a Tea Party hero proudly teamed with Big Government liberals Teddy Kennedy and Russ Feingold. He’s the “maverick” who supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, the $25 billion auto bailout, the first $85 billion AIG bailout, and a $300 billion mortgage bailout – yet, who now carps about “record deficits and debt.”

A career politician for the past 30 years, McCain set the stage for the suicidal anti-capitalist rhetoric now polluting the GOP primary. Four years ago this month during a GOP primary debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, it was McCain up on stage denigrating Romney’s private-sector experience. Asked whether he thought Romney’s record as CEO made him qualified to lead, McCain snarked: “I know how to lead. I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit.”

Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman have all followed suit, bashing Romney’s venture-capitalist past at Bain Capital with Occupy Wall Street-style zeal.

It’s one thing to carefully dissect Romney’s investments, as the Wall Street Journal did, and weigh his wins against his losses. (The paper found that “in total, Bain produced about $2.5 billion in gains for its investors in the 77 deals, on about $1.1 billion invested. Overall, Bain recorded roughly 50% to 80% annual gains in this period, which experts said was among the best track records for buyout firms in that era.”)

It’s quite another to shamelessly disparage those who work in private equities as immoral corporate raiders and avaricious job-killers, as the three aforementioned GOP Occupiers have done. If they keep it up, they’ll soon be chaining themselves together with bike locks performing “mic checks” and “down twinkles” at the next GOP debate.

Gingrich has pushed McCain’s profit-bashing line the furthest.

These guys deserve each other.

Shaking my head…

Watch how Romney and Nikki Haley rush to correct the bumbling McCain as the crowd begins to murmur and boo after his flub.

Romney’s thinking: Mother fudge biscuits, someone get a cane and yank this saboteur off the stage.

You want to parade Big Government/Tea Party-trashing Tea Party poseur/loser McCain around on your campaign trail? You get what you deserve.

Freudian slip? Senior moment? Sabotage? Or, as someone on Twitter suggested, maybe a bit of “In vino, veritas?” You decide.

Via The Right Scoop:

Campaigning for Romney in South Carolina, John McCain still has Hope & Change on the brain:

McCain drew chuckles from the audience with a slip of the tongue near the close of his speech. “And so I am confident with the leadership and backing of the American people, President Obama will turn this country around,” he said, inadvertently referring to the Democratic incumbent before repeatedly correcting himself with a grimace.

If a video of that line exists, it might be coming to a “Re-Elect Obama” ad near you.

Philip Ellender, a representative of the libertarian Koch brothers, has issued a statement saying that, “Contrary to unfounded speculation by Politico and others, neither Charles Koch nor David Koch, nor any Koch company has provided funding to or has any involvement with the Center for American Freedom.”

The categorical statement seems to put to rest the innuendo from Politico, which has set the left-wing blogs on fire, that the billionaire Koch brothers are behind a new conservative start-up organization designed as a response to the liberal/left Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP).

The new conservative group is supposed to be launching an on-line publication called the Washington Free Beacon.

Politico’s Ben Smith insinuates that Orion Strategies, a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm run by Randy Scheunemann, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain, was somehow involved in the creation of the Center for American Freedom. He writes that the chairman of the new group, Michael Goldfarb, was a vice president of Orion, “where his clients include Charles and David Koch.” Goldfarb had been Deputy Communications Director of the McCain 2008 presidential campaign.

But here’s where it gets interesting, at least for conservatives. It turns out that Scheunemann, not mentioned in the Politico article, has himself represented the Open Society Policy Center, founded and funded by George Soros, on Capitol Hill. Scheunemann has personally registered as a lobbyist for the Soros group.

In fact, the lobbying disclosure documents on file with the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and reviewed this week by Accuracy in Media show that, as late as last year, Scheunemann was still a registered lobbyist for Soros interests on Capitol Hill.

The Open Society Policy Center is one of dozens of Soros-funded progressive groups and was once run by the controversial Morton Halperin, a former official in various Democratic Administrations whose appointment to a senior post in the Defense Department in the Clinton Administration was opposed by Scheunemann’s old boss, Senator McCain.

The Arizona Senator had said, “Dr. Halperin has consistently affiliated with individuals whose views are inimical to the security interests of this nation. Dr. Halperin was closely involved with [CIA defector] Philip Agee, whose extensive publication of the identities of American covert intelligence agents in foreign countries is attributed by some as the indirect cause of the assassination of Richard Welch in Athens. Dr. Halperin flew 4,000 miles to London for Agee’s deportation hearings from Great Britain after certain British intelligence agents who had been ‘outed’ by Agee were murdered in Russia.” Halperin was a character witness for Agee.

Under fire, Halperin withdrew his nomination and later went to work for Soros, who didn’t mind his association with identified enemies of the United States. He currently sits on the board of the Open Society Policy Center and serves as the group’s senior adviser.

Justin Elliott of Salon.com wrote about the Scheunemann-Soros  connection on November 12, 2010, “Top Palin aide is on Soros’ payroll,” noting that Scheunemann was also advising Sarah Palin, who had been McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Scheunemann’s mission on Capitol Hill was assisting Soros in his campaign of economic sanctions and other measures designed to destabilize the government of Burma.

John McCain has endorsed Romney, saying Mitt’s the best candidate to restore the United States of America.

It seems like only yesterday…

Brace for “from my house” reference

Actress Julianne Moore, who happens to be of Hollywood liberal pedigree, is playing the part of Sarah Palin in “Game Change,” a movie from a screenplay adapted by a liberal and directed by a liberal. But that’s balanced out because the part of John McCain is being played by an actor who is a liberal, and the role of McCain’s advisor Steve Schmidt will be handled by Woody Harrelson, who is — you guessed it — a noted lefty (Richard Dreyfuss and Josh Brolin must have had other obligations).

No matter what level of objectivity, or lack thereof, “Game Change” displays, after these last three years, the movie might accomplish little except to make people wonder what might have been. In other words, the flick is being released two and a half years too late.

I’m told the movie is rated PG-13 — due mostly to a fairly torrid love scene between McCain and Russ Feingold. Here’s a preview: