Selected “McCain Is Dead” stories from the NY Times…
Is there a less rewarding political task in America today than carrying the president’s water on Iraq? But there was poor John McCain yesterday in the Senate, slogging all through the night and into the morning, beating back the Democrats’ attempt to impose some kind of timetable.
“I cannot be certain that, even if I could convince Americans to give General Petraeus the time he needs to determine whether we can prevail, that we would prevail in Iraq,” he said. This is what amounts to his sales pitch, when followed by a promise that the awfulness that will transpire if we leave would be even worse than the awfulness that we created when we arrived.
Lately, the senator has been dividing his time between the American mission in Iraq and his presidential campaign, and they are going equally well. The campaign has pretty much retreated to New Hampshire, where a small group of volunteers and a rapidly shrinking staff are trying to live out one of those old movies where everything falls apart and then Andy and the gang decide to just put on a show in the barn.
The decline of John McCain’s presidential campaign, and the rising profile of Fred D. Thompson as a prospective contender, are forcing candidates to rewrite their strategies as they adjust to a playing field vastly different from just one month ago.
Seeing an opening created by Mr. McCain’s problems, Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York headed for Iowa on Wednesday, the start of a two-day trip that reflects the campaign’s confidence that he now has a shot to win in the state, after Mr. McCain cut his Iowa staff by half. And Mitt Romney of Massachusetts released a television advertisement Monday emphasizing faith and family values in what aides said was an effort to stir unease about Mr. Giuliani among conservative voters who have gravitated toward him.
More bad news today for John McCain. John McCain’s media team has resigned. But McCain says he intends to stay in the race, according to the campaign’s new media spokesman, John McCain.
One occurred at a McCain event Wednesday. In Washington, the McCain campaign is considered dead, but somebody seems to have forgotten to tell the people up here. A man at one packed event rose to vent his outrage at Washington. He ignited something in McCain, who started talking about what he’d learned from the failure of immigration reform. McCain worked himself up, recounting one failure and disgrace after another, culminating finally with an angry bellow, “Nobody trusts us to do what we say we’re going to do!”
Maureen Dowd (quoting her Republican sister) July 25:
“W.’s loyalty to Cheney has hurt his presidency,” she says sadly. “When Cheney picked himself as vice president, W. should have said, ‘Bug off.’ He could have made his own banquet instead of choosing leftovers. If only he had dialed his father or listened to Powell instead of Cheney and Rumsfeld on Iraq. Not only has W. brought himself down, he’s brought down John McCain, who I wanted to support but can’t because of the war.
WHEN Senator John McCain’s campaign went into a midflight stall last week, it was not only the candidate’s hard-line stance on Iraq or problems with his party’s conservative wing that enthralled the thumb-tapping hordes of the blogosphere. It was leaks from inside the campaign alleging that Mr. McCain thought his handlers were dressing him up as a metrosexual.
In other political news, John McCain’s communication director has quit. McCain had no immediate comment because his communication director quit.
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