Now McCain Campaign Says He Will Offer Economic Proposals Tomorrow
Despite a top surrogate's suggestion over the weekend that McCain would be unveiling new economic proposals, we learned this morning that in fact John McCain wasn't planning to announce anything of this kind. Instead, in a big speech today, McCain revealed that the new change to his campaign was that he'd more aggressively take the fight to Obama.
Now it turns out the whole plan all along was for McCain to offer new proposals. And he'll be offering them tomorrow.
That's what the McCain campaign just announced on a conference call with reporters moments ago, a few hours -- coincidentally, we're sure -- after Obama made headlines with proposals of his own.
"John McCain has consistently talked about the actions necessary to preserve their financial and economic futures, as we've gone through this terrible crisis, and he'll continue to do so tomorrow," said economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin. "And that's the plan, it's always been the plan, and he will lay it out, and we should look forward to hearing from him."
Late Update: Holtz-Eakin said on the call that specific proposals would be forthcoming. "He will both sketch out a vision that has been in the process of being fully depicted since the beginning of the campaign, and also be offering new specific measures," he said on the call. I've edited the above to reflect that.
Late Late Update: If the plan all along was for McCain to announce "new specific measures" tomorrow, it seems odd that McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds said this just yesterday:
"We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way."
Old man yelling at clouds.
The place I used to have in Colorado was in a narrow high valley totally surrounded by extremely high mountains. The wind would funnel down that valley and then do tricks because of the mountains. I was on a lake, and I watched many an afternoon as the wind totally boxed the compass more than once in the space of a couple of hours.
McLame also reminds me of that wind.
October 13, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's some great imagery. Palin takes her cue from McCain and says "Clouds have been spotted in the company of terrorists. Where do clouds come from? They come from Russia. If clouds threaten our nation, we will attack them."
October 13, 2008 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I once ate a an enchilada pie in Tijuana and failed to hit the rest room before heading back for the border. McLame also reminds me of that wind!
October 13, 2008 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
wonderful.
I live in DC.
I liken McCain to the gray mouse scurrying around my now clean kitchen looking for crumbs to feed on. There are none.
October 13, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
out of curiosity, was that Nederland CO?
October 14, 2008 12:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sign at my local bar:
FREE BEER! TOMORROW!!!
October 13, 2008 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Boy, if there's one thing we can count on from mcShame it's inconsistency!
October 13, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
But the DOW closed up over 900 points today...crisis averted. Now we're all free to vote for McCain!
October 13, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to Europe.
And I do thank Europe.
October 13, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
American can't lead on this because it's essentially leaderless at the moment. Bush is a lame duck and nobody looks to him anymore or would trust and rally around him.
Funny thing is wasn't Gordon Brown in trouble politically? If he gets credit for this, he's saved his political career.
October 13, 2008 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
O they're talking overseas about the end of American Capitalism.
And that was frankly inevitable once Communism fell.
;)
American Socialism - a new era dawneth.
October 13, 2008 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
These supposed Free-Marketers make me want to vomit. When our financial institutions gamble on instruments (of which they have no idea how they work) and lose, then they believe in government hand-outs. But heaven forfend that the government actually turn a profit on their bail-out investments lest we all become "socialists".
October 13, 2008 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
O I think that's going to change again.
FDR had them under control - though it's true that a lot of the old regs didn't fit the new economic reality.
So ok, the Repugs tore the whole thing down, Obama and the Democrats can build it back up with the kind of regulation structure that will keep this from happening again until some bunch of politicians start trying to remove them all over again.
And I'd personally like to see the tax code restructured to the point where one person/one family cannot amass the obscene amounts of wealth people have been amassing. Nobody needs several hundred billion dollars personally. Nobody.
October 13, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Remember, if you don't like what McCain is saying, just wait five minutes and it will change.
October 13, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, no fair! This is what we say about the weather in Kansas. Well, now that you mention it, it describes McCain's economic policies pretty accurately... Never mind!
October 14, 2008 1:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like it will be a late night over at Camp McCain.
October 13, 2008 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
So ... whaddya think about offering a Starbucks tax holiday?
http://pufferfish.typepad.com/
October 13, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
You betcha!
October 13, 2008 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain had to wait for Obama's plan so he can rip it off, add is a couple of tax breaks/cuts and claim it as his own.
McCain probably wanted to release his plan after the debate so he wouldn't have to explain or defend it, however once Obama gave his speech today, he couldn't go into the debate only talking about Obama's plan either.
October 13, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds about right...
All they do is react. Perfect.
October 13, 2008 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
First he has to consult with Mr. Puddles.
October 13, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL!!
"I have snausages!"
October 13, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant!
October 13, 2008 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gawd, I just had to go back & watch that again....
I keep getting reminded of Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail diatribing about Humphrey being on Ibogaine...
HST craziness aside, campaigning for president is absolutely gruelling. Doing so at age 72--I just can't imagine.
So I do really wonder if they're giving him stuff to keep him feeling good, energetic, etc., that's causing a significant personality shift, incoherence, etc. (I dunno, Xanax, maybe??--we've got psychology professional types here, what do you think?).
I read the Rolling Stone piece. It makes perfect sense as a map for the lifelong personality type, but I do think we're seeing something different here...something possibly artificially induced.
BTW, if you haven't read Fear & Loathing..., do so! Yes, it took place all the way back in 1972, but there's so much there that's relevant today.
October 13, 2008 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Holz-Eakin continued saying that because McCain invented the Blackberry this could happen tomorrow, it allowed him to get the message and deliver it.
He continued saying that if it were not for McCain, we would still be using smoke signals. All praise McCain.
October 13, 2008 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, Jonze, if McLame starts doing what he did in the last debate - repeating what Obama just said - I wish Obama would turn and look him and say: "Excuse me, Senator, I just said that myself."
October 13, 2008 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Meanwhile, Steve Schmidt announced that the campaign will be totally reorganized, with McCain's "new direction" set to be unveiled on November 5th.
October 13, 2008 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
In what direction does an IED go when it explodes?
October 13, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama has played this brilliantly. McCain is playing on Obama's terms. McCain is the one making headlines, turning heads and creating talkingpoints, but it's Obama who comes out looking better on every story.
October 13, 2008 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hopefully this election will put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that "winning the news cycle" or "winning the week" has anything to do with "winning the election" and our idiot political press corps will stop talking about them.
October 13, 2008 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stay alert for a re-rebooted version of McCain next week.
Week before Last week: Forget Obama, I'm a Maverick
Last week: Forget me, who's Obama?
This week:Forget Obama, I'm a fighter.
October 13, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cut 'em some slack, guys. Didn't you hear? They're rebooting their campaign. Bear with them. All will be well and running on an even keel any time now.
Its just that, you know, sometimes you reboot and it hangs again while its starting up, so then you press the reset button again and it looks like everything's fine until you get that notice that its running CHKDSK, and that can take, like, forever, so if you're kind of impatient and short on time you hit reset again, and then it says the last startup was abnormal and it asks you whether you want to boot normally or into safe mode, so you choose safe mode and then you find out you can't really do anything in safe mode, so you reboot again and it blue screens on you, so then you pull the plug . . .
But hey, worry not, Republicans. They're totally on top of it. They'll be right back on track tomorrow.
October 13, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL! Damn you're good.
I shamelessly echo CT Voter from the other day - you are one of my favorite commenters -
October 13, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
" . . . so then you pull the plug . . . "
That pretty well sums it up.
October 13, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bad memory can cause an infinite-reboot loop. Like when you can't remember what you've said the previous day.
Then again, if you're running Windoze 98, rebooting twice a day is SOP, no matter how good your memory is.
October 13, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
He needed to clean out his cookies!
October 13, 2008 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ya think he can tell the difference between a cookie and a cow pie?
October 13, 2008 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's McCain ME - the Millenium Edition. Should work great.
October 13, 2008 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Palin ME -- the Milfennium edition.
October 13, 2008 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly how a government should be run, right?
October 13, 2008 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
So they've been campaigning for 80+ weeks, and yet since they're "rebooting", none of that is supposed to matter. All that matters is the final three weeks of the campaign?
October 13, 2008 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
O not really, silly. They're just pretending that's all that matters.
I will say this - McLame has certainly confused me over the course of this campaign. I can't even hardly remember now how he started out, except I remember a steady stream of attacks on Obama, starting with Inexperienced to Celebrity to the entire kitchen, then the dining room, living room - I think McLame has thrown about 10 of his 13 houses and all their contents at Obama by now.
October 13, 2008 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL. Chuckling into my second beer at this point...
October 13, 2008 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like I said this morning - they have to reboot. The ones they've got on now aren't high enough to keep out the muck.
The 'Hip Wader' campaign starts tomorrow.
October 13, 2008 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
They're telling me it's going to snow here tomorrow.
O boy!
October 13, 2008 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have been off the net for 3 1/2 days and listening to what McCain is doing is making me dizzy. I don't know how they think they can save his campaign. McCain lost 1/3 of his party when he brought Palin on board. No matter what he comes up with it is TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. I don't think a national security crisis could save McCain at this point.
October 13, 2008 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Dow is up 600 today with Obama's economic plan; if it plunges tomorrow with McGrumpys plan the Dow is in the tank for Obama.
October 13, 2008 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama, again came out with great refinements to a central plan theme. I saw that speech and it was inspiring. You just felt better as you listened. It felt like somebody was leading and they knew what they were doing. It was comforting.
They weren't planning to come out with it today because McCain campaign had announced they were going to. Obama decided to after Mc said they weren't. Obama avoided the thing that McCain jumped for. McCain now looks like a little kid running behind shouting, I said that, I can do it better than you, I'm smarter than you-------and generally looking like an ineffectual little dweeb.
October 13, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm almost -- almost, but not quite -- to the point of feeling sorry for McShame. After November 4, I'll let myself go there.
October 13, 2008 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Six little words to help you with that:
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!!!"
October 13, 2008 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh Brother Where Art Thou Campaign?
Here is a glimpse into a McCain campaign meeting:
John McCain sits smoking a cigar, nursing a glass of
whiskey, and soliciting the counsel of his sad campaign staff.
McCain
Languishing! Goddamn campaign is
languishing! We need a shot inna
arm! Hear me, boys? Inna goddamn
ARM! Election held tomorra, that
sonofa***** Obama would win it in a
walk!
Davis
Well he's the reform candidate, Johnny.
McCain narrows his eyes at him, wondering what he's getting
at.
McCain
...Yeah?
Davis
Well people like that reform. Maybe
we should get us some.
McCain whips off his belt and slaps at Rick Davis with it.
McCain
I'll reform you, you soft-headed
sonofa*****! How we gonna run reform
when we're the damn incumbent!
He glares around the table.
McCain
Zat the best idea any you boys can
come up with? REEform?! Weepin' Jesus
on the cross! Schmidt, you may as
well start draftin' my concession
speech right now.
Schmidt grunts as he starts to rise.
Schmidt
Okay, John.
McCain whips him back down with his belt.
McCain
I'm just makin' a point, you stupid
sonofa*****!
Schmidt
Okay, John.
As he settles back Schmidt looks around the table and helpfully
relays:
Schmidt
John just makin' a point here, boys.
Here's his next meeting:
John McCain sits around the conference table in a staff meeting,
smoking a cigar and sipping from a glass of bourbon as the
evening sun goes down.
McCain
I signed that bill! I signed a dozen
a those regulation bills! Everyone
knows I'm a friend a Joe six-pack!
What do I gotta do? Get onna stump with a SIX PACK?
Davis
We cain't do that, Daddy, we might
offend our constichency.
McCain
We ain't got a constichency! Obama
got a constichency!
Schmidt
Them straw polls is ugly.
Salter
Obama is pullin' ah pants down.
Schmidt
Gonna pluck us off the tit.
Salter
John gonna be sittin' there pants
down and Obama at the table soppin'
up the gravy.
Schmidt
Latch right on to that tit.
Salter
Wipin' little circles with his bread.
Schmidt
Suckin' away.
Salter
Well, it's a well-run campaign,
with a economic plan and all.
Schmidt
Devil his due.
Salter
Helluva orgazation.
Davis
Say, I gotten idee.
Schmidt
What sat, Rick?
Davis
We could get us a little economic
plan better than Obama's?
McCain whips at him with his belt.
McCain
Y'ignorant slope-shouldered sack a
guts! Why we'd look like a buncha
satchel-ass Johnnie-Come-Latelies
braggin' on our own plan! Don't
matter how stumpy! And that's the
goddamn problem right there - people
think this Obama got fresh ideas,
he's oh coorant and we the past.
Schmidt
Problem a p'seption.
Salter
Ass right.
Schmidt
Reason why he's pullin' ah pants
down.
Salter
Gonna paddle ah little bee-hind.
Schmidt
Ain't gonna paddle it; he's gonna
kick it real hard.
With his mouth forming an O around his dropping cigar, McCain
looks sadly from one to the other, like a spectator at a
particularly boring tennis match.
Salter
No, I believe he's a-gonna paddle
it.
Schmidt
Well now, I don't believe assa
property scription.
Salter
Well, that's how I characterize it.
Schmidt
Well, I believe it's mawva kickin'
sichation.
Salter
Pullin' ah pants down...
Schmidt
Wipin' little circles with his
bread...
Thanks to the Coen brothers
October 13, 2008 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love how McCain knows how to fix everything - he knows where bin Laden is and he's got a really super plan to fix the economy...he's just not going to tell us.
October 13, 2008 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
“I’ll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then…. After all, tomorrow is another day”
October 13, 2008 10:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
sorry.....can't resist.....
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.