McCain Suspending Campaign & Debate

John McCain announced today that, due to the financial crisis, that he was suspending his campaign & wants Friday's debate to be postponed.
What are your views?

Is it:



1. A panic(purely political) tactic to try to stop his slide of 9 points in the polls since the financial crisis



.....OR


2. A genuine leadership move to put "Country First"

To force BO to vote "PRESENT".

Of course its "Country First".

# 2

its funny, i said last night to a few people....lets see who shows up to vote first.

4:14PM EST


Fox News is calling for debate to go on, as scheduled.

McCain is making gaffe after gaffe about the economy. His campaign manager has been taking 15,000 a month from Fanny Mae up until last month, but he's not a lobbyist!! Sure he wants to suspend the campaign. He's getting his head handed to him. His economic advisor, Phil Gramm crafted the deregulation bill that got us where we're at.

He needs to go back to talking about lipstick on pigs, bitter middle class Americans, and the rest of the showboat nonsense that doesn't mean a dam thing. I'm far from an Obama fan but McCain has shown he doesn't have the temperment or judgement to be president. Ron Paul 08!!

If John Mc Cain pulled the plug on the debate,my feeling is that he is being power fed the facts around the economics of it all so obama won't mop the floor with him over this issue.John Mc Cain has some serious weight on his shoulders already since it was said on morning world news that as he votes on the bailout plan so votes all the rest of the republicans,not wanting to cross their potential Commander in Chief.You have to admit that is pressure in anybodys book. regards,mike

I'll make a few points.

If John McCain wanted to really provide leadership & show some guts....He would announce whether or not he even supports the bailout bill, which he hasn't done.

BUT


Neither has Sen. Obama announced his support or lack thereof!


The only candidate who has is Ron Paul, who stands against the bailout bill. All three men will eventually have to vote on Bush's bailout bill but only Ron Paul has the guts to tell us what side he's on!


Thus, it is my view that John McCain is taking the expedient, safe road again, while trying to APPEAR Presidential.
(in other words, he is trying to deceive us again, in re his true intentions)

There isn't even a bailout bill to support yet! There may be some early draft and parts of a draft floating about, but nothing complete to lend ones support or opposition to. Ron Paul has come out in opposition to any notion of a bailout and specifically the primary crux of this bailout proposal of 700 billion to buy up bad assets. A number of Republicans have too, Shelby and DeMint for instance. Democrats haven't been against it so much as wanting to tack on "main street" spreading around money to buy some votes while they make good on all the lobbying money from Fannie and Freddie and others that they've taken with the bailout money and cover their political asses by blaming it all on Wall Street. But I digress... That's the point of what McCain wants to do, he wants to go there to help drive and coalesce the Republican side of the debate on the contents of the bill and help get it passed (which he has voiced grudging support for, he for a bailout bill passed, he just wants to make sure it is a good bill). Sure, he wants to get out ahead on economics and this financial crisis for political reasons, but that that doesn't remove from the fact his going there is honorable and the right thing to to do for the country, it is his current job description, and well within keeping of his "country first" slogan and principles that he's governed by the past couple decades.

Now lets consider Obama's retort on all this: He claimed that McCain had come around to his position on the bailout provisions (a rather backhanded politically motivated statement that happens to be lacking in facts given McCain has been much more vocal on this bailout issue than Obama or even the democrat leadership in congress, at least until the last two days of hearings happened). He then moved on to discuss his phone call the notion he floated to McCain about a joint press release about the bailout. McCain agreed to that and suggested that they suspend campaigning to go to DC and lead their parties in getting a bill through, postponing the debate on Friday if need be. Obama balked, thus betraying his true intent of not so much getting McCain in on a joint press release so much as getting McCain to agree to *his idea* of a joint press release. No doubt the fact that it was "his idea" would have leaked out in short order.

Of this McCain idea, which by that time had become McCain's announced plan of action, Obama delivered yet another politically motivated backhand saying that presidents are expected to multitask. Let's examine what the two would have been doing. Obama would have been most directly involved in his campaigning, doing debate prep, and talking on the phone to democrat leadership in the senate and talking with Bernake and Paulson each day. McCain's campaign would have gone on, except no appearances or ads on Thursday and except for the debate, probably not Friday either; debate prep would have continued on the assumption it would still take place; he would be in DC working directly with republicans, democrat leadership, the President, and Bernake and Paulson to hammer out the bill and get the votes together to pass it; and he would have been calling various campaign staff to work on message and planning for after they turn the visible campaign back on. McCain's multitasking just fine, he's also upholding his duties as a Senator, putting political capital at risk in the outcome of the effort and his ability to rally congressional republicans together. Obama is doing what he would have otherwise been doing, leading no where, risking only that which is risked by inaction before a very favorable press that is distracted by the goings on in DC itself, plus making a few more phone calls to people in DC to keep tabs on a process he's shown practically no interest in being a part of despite it being the most important thing happening in the nation at the moment and it being what he and Biden are currently elected to be working on.

Thank God Bush saved him from his mistake of sitting on the sidelines by called him up and asking him to stop by and help out, he might have been mistaken for being out of touch and abdicating his elected responsibilities otherwise.

What should McCain do next? He should announce he will be flying in for the debate baring a major market meltdown and/or significant problems getting the bill together and passed through the Senate. He should also politely demand that the topic of the debate be changed back to economic/domestic policy. It was changed to foreign policy a couple weeks ago, I believe at the behest of the Obama campaign. Given what is happening and the expectation that people will have for a heavy economic policy component to the debate regardless of the official topic, it should be changed back so the topic gets a strong, full airing from the outset of these debates.

Within 40 days of an election, to believe that everything these guys do is not politically motivated is so naive it is laughable.
McCain admits he knows nothing about economics & is cynically looking for yet another photo op, probably with his sleeves rolled up to look like he's working hard. (His fellow Republican Senators don't even want him to come back to inject politics into the problem)
Just his usual theatrics!

I hate the strong arm act of McCain I will not debate unless the bill passes? So you are now not running for president of the United States? Is this signs to come of how he is going to deal with other problems down the road? To act like this and to place the fear of god into the American people is him acting nothing more then a school yard bully.


It's funny how they are talking last night of how close they are to coming together on agreeing on different things for this bill without the help of McCain. I think so much needs to come to light on this bill before anything gets past and I don't think we should be rushing into anything that is going to cost us more money then we have ever spent in our history of this great country.

pvolcko wrote:He should also politely demand that the topic of the debate be changed back to economic/domestic policy. It was changed to foreign policy a couple weeks ago, I believe at the behest of the Obama campaign. Given what is happening and the expectation that people will have for a heavy economic policy component to the debate regardless of the official topic, it should be changed back so the topic gets a strong, full airing from the outset of these debates.

McCain wanted to change the first debate to the foreign policy's because that is his strong suit and Obama agreed to move his strong suit on the economy to the last debate. I heard them talking about this last week and of course it's something that has once again backfiring on John McCain.

& he (McCain) hasn't even announced if he's in favor of a bailout bill!! (He's waiting to see which way the polls blow.....The he'll undoubtedly flip-flop anyway)

Adamiscold wrote:Obama agreed to move his strong suit on the economy

Now that's laughable.

BO doesn't have a strong suit.

Stephen

You shouldn't treat the next President of the Unite States like that