John McCain can't win the election on the issues

October 25, 7:57 AMProgressive Politics ExaminerKaren Harper

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John McCain

John McCain can’t win the presidency on the basis of the issues Americans are concerned with.  Instead, he has chosen to make much of his campaign an assassination of character of his opponent.  So far, it doesn’t seem to be working.  The McCain campaign seems to be falling into an abyss with each day bringing a new embarrassing story about McCain or his running mate’s foibles. 

John McCain and Sarah Palin are busy attacking the character of Barack Obama, a ploy that has obviously worked for the fringes of the Republican party.  The right wing eats this stuff up.  But the right wing isn’t who McCain and Palin should be focusing on.  The right wing fringe, the ones who listen to the McCain and Palin rhetoric and then deliberately filter out the facts that contradict the rhetoric, would never vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances.  

The McCain-Palin campaign should instead, be trying to reach out to the larger segment of the Republican party, the segment that feels disenfranchised by the way the party has lost its way on fiscal responsibility and is more moderate on moral issues.  When traditional Republicans like Colin Powell, Scott McClellan and newspapers like the Chicago Tribune   endorse the Democrat, the Republican candidate should be asking himself why.  

Perhaps the reason McCain and Palin have so far, in this campaign, worked hard to satisfy the evangelical right wing fringe is that on the issues that most Americans, including most Republicans, care about, they cannot win.  The issues that the majority of Americans care about include the economy, health care, and the ongoing war in Iraq (a war that is costing tax payers $10,000,000,000 or ten billion dollars a month).  

As McCain and Palin continue their campaign to savage Barack Obama’s reputation, Barack Obama has remained level headed.  Barack Obama is prudent and thoughtful.  He has spoken on the issues that really matter in this election year.  

The number one issue that American voters are concerned about is the economy.  

McCain’s tax proposals give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the nation.  People in middle income brackets will get a tax decrease of between 1 and 1.6 % while people earning over $1,000,000 per year will get a tax decrease of between 6 and 10%.

John McCain rallies his supporters in stump speeches by declaring that Barack Obama’s tax plan will hurt the middle class.  Apparently John McCain still believes that the middle class is made up of people who make only $5 million or less a year.  Because under Obama’s tax plan , the only people who will pay more in taxes are people making over $500,000.

John McCain doesn’t seem to know anything about the middle class in America.  He has talked a lot about Joe the Plumber and how Obama’s tax plan will hurt Joe the Plumber and people “like” Joe the Plumber.  But the truth is that the average plumber’s yearly salary is $37,500.  Under Barack Obama’s tax plan, plumbers will get a $1000 tax reduction.  Under John McCain’s the average plumber will get about $350 in tax reductions.

McCain’s economic adviser is none other than Phil Gramm.  Phil Gramm was an author of the bill that was passed in 1999 that removed regulations from Wall Street, regulations that had been put in place after the Great Depression in an effort to avoid another Great Depression.  McCain voted for the bill and has a long history of being a staunch supporter of deregulation.  It is the deregulation that McCain championed that has led us into the greatest financial disaster of our time.  John McCain’s economic adviser is Phil Gramm.  

And let’s not forget that McCain thinks we should stay in Iraq for 100 years if that is what it takes to win there.  What would constitute a win in McCain’s mind?  The Iraqi government is in place and they want us to leave.  It’s costing the U.S. $10 billion dollars a month to stay there.  How much would that be in 4 years?  What about in 10 years or a hundred years?  After eight years of the current Republican administration, our country has the largest deficit it has ever seen.  How much worse can it get?  The Iraq war alone will raise our budget deficit another $480 billion in four years.  

It seems obvious that John McCain knows he cannot win on the issues.  But can he win by attacking Barack Obama?   The McCain/Palin campaign appears to be falling apart.  There is infighting, backbiting and finger pointing.  The New York Times is set to publish a special feature this weekend with comments by McCain campaign workers who are frustrated and venting their frustration.  

Each day something disturbing comes out about John McCain, Sarah Palin or one of their supporters.  Discovering that John McCain’s campaign funded Palin’s wardrobe from Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus has some middle-class Republicans seething by the thought that their hard earned $25 may have contributed to the shopping spree.  

No one can really blame John McCain for his brothers antics but his antics do little to help McCain when he is bent on winning the the presidency by attacking his opponent’s character.  John McCain’s fervent attempts to link Obama to Bill Ayers who was involved in the Weather Underground when Obama was 8 years old have may have impressed the fringe right wing of the GOP but thoughtful and reasonable people who bothered to check the facts were disgusted by this ploy.  Thoughtful and reasonable people like  Republican Colin Powell were appalled.  

And the attack list goes on.  Each item of attack on the McCain Palin list has been proven to be mostly untrue or completely untrue and indeed, often comes back to haunt the McCain-Palin team.  McCain declared Obama an elitist and yet it was John McCain who was wearing the $500 shoes.  It was John McCain’s campaign that funded Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe.  It was John McCain who didn’t know how many houses he owned and thought the middle class were people making less than $5 million a year.  

John McCain declared that Obama has ties to Bill Ayers, supposedly a terrorist connection, a declaration that is absurd and untrue.  By McCain’s definition of a connection, you could say John McCain pals around with G Gordon Liddy, an acknowledged domestic terrorist.

John McCain declared that Obama has ties to an organization that participates in voter fraud.  In truth, Obama once represented the organization in a successful lawsuit.  Perhaps more importantly, that organization is a perfectly legitimate organization that seeks to help low income families find homes and get registered to vote and are a victim of McCain's smear tactics.  Now it has come out that John McCain has very close ties to a voter registration group that has been conducting blatantly fraudulent voter registrations.

John McCain declares to his supporters that Barack Obama is a socialist because he wants to spread the wealth.  McCain is referring to the fact that Obama wants to roll back the tax cuts that George Bush has given to large corporations and individuals who earn $1 million or more per year.  And yet in 2000, John McCain was against those very same George Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, the ones that Obama is against.  Back then, John McCain said that that the tax cuts for the wealthy would hurt the middle class but now it seems that to be against tax cuts for the wealthy is socialist.  Bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion dollars and buying Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is socialist too and McCain voted for that bailout.  McCain also wants the government to buy all of the bad mortgages and that is even more socialism.  

John McCain has sunk to his lowest.  In 2000, George Bush’s campaign used ‘robocalls’ against John McCain.  Voters in South Carolina and other battleground states received calls telling them that John McCain had an illegitimate black child, which is untrue.  John McCain found robocalls abhorrent back in 2000.  But now that his campaign is using the same shameful strategy against Barrack Obama, McCain thinks they are okay.  Voters in battleground states are receiving calls from the McCain campaign telling them that Obama is a terrorist and whatever other foul lies they think will scare people into voting for McCain and Palin.  John McCain defended the use of his robocalls on Fox news, saying the calls are legitimate and not like the calls that were used against him by Bush in 2000.

John McCain simply cannot win the presidency on the issues Americans care about.  Can McCain win his campaign by character assassination of his opponent?