Thread: Some Republicans sense disorder in McCain campaign

Some Republicans sense disorder in McCain campaign

By Adam Nagourney Published: May 25, 2008



Senator John McCain attending a roundtable meeting at the Miami Children's Hospital in Miami, Florida, on April 28. Some Republicans said they were worried about signs of disorder in McCain's campaign. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

WASHINGTON: John McCain's presidential campaign is in a troubled stretch even before his formal nomination, hindered by resignations of staff members, a lagging effort to build a national campaign organization and questions over whether he has taken full advantage of Democratic turmoil to present a case for his candidacy, some Republicans say.

In interviews, some party leaders said they were worried about signs of disorder in his campaign and about whether the focus in the last several weeks on the prominent role of lobbyists in McCain's inner circle might undercut the heart of his general election message: that he is reformer taking on special interests in Washington.

"The core image of John McCain is as a reformer in Washington, and the more dominant the story is about the lobbying teams around him, the more you put that into question," said Terry Nelson, who was McCain's campaign manager until he was forced out last year. "If the Obama campaign can truly change him from being seen as a reformer to just being another Washington politician, it could be very damaging over the course of the campaign."

Some leaders of state Republican party organizations said they were apprehensive about the unusual organization that McCain had set up: The campaign has been broken into 10 semi-autonomous regions, with each having power over such things as buying television advertising and the candidate's schedule, decisions normally left to headquarters.

More than that, they said, McCain organizationally still seems far behind where President George W. Bush was in his re-election campaign in 2004. Several Republican Party leaders said they were worried the McCain campaign was losing an opportunity as they waited for approval to open offices and set up telephone banks.

"They finally assigned someone to West Virginia three weeks ago," said Doug McKinney, the state Republican chairman there. "I had a couple of contacts with him, and I e-mailed him twice, and I never heard back. I finally called, and they said that the guy had resigned."

McCain's campaign has transmitted conflicting messages in recent days about how he would present himself as he has tried to reassure conservatives nervous about his ideological consistency even as he has tried to expand his appeal to moderates and liberals.

Last week, he spent three days talking about global warming, a subject he uses to emphasize his differences with Bush. He ended the week with a high-profile speech to the National Rifle Association, a group suspicious of his views on gun control.

McCain's advisers, some of whom gathered with the candidate for the holiday weekend at his Arizona ranch along with three Republicans assumed to be under consideration as his running mate, said the concern within the party reflected, in part, exaggerated concern about Barack Obama's strengths as a general-election candidate. McCain, they said, was in a strong position entering the next phase of the race.

Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser, said that McCain had used the time since clinching the nomination to raise his standing methodically by traveling the country, delivering speeches on issues including national security and the environment, and raising money to make sure he could at least hold his own with Obama going through the summer.

Although Obama has continued to raise far more money than McCain has, Bush's fund-raising machinery has helped keep the Republican Party competitive. The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee, between them, have about $62 million on hand, $11 million more than the combined cash on hand of Obama and the Democratic National Committee.

"How do you measure success over the course of the spring campaign?" Schmidt said. "This is how: The reality of this race is the Republican Party brand is very, very badly damaged - in some places, broken. We've lost congressional seats in districts that have elected only Republicans for a generation. And Senator McCain is running even or ahead of Senator Obama in most national polls."

McCain has taken steps to inject new thinking into his campaign. He recently expanded his extremely tight circle of advisers by bringing in Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, which many Republicans view as the model for political management.

Last Sunday, McCain invited Mike Murphy, his longtime friend and political adviser, who is not involved in this campaign, to his home in Virginia. There, Murphy reportedly gave him a detailed and, at times, tough assessment of what McCain had done wrong.

Murphy urged him to tone down his attacks on Obama and stop coming across as so angry. He recommended that McCain concentrate on running as a reform candidate to strip that issue from Obama and make greater efforts to distance himself from Bush, according to Republicans familiar with the conversation.

Some of McCain's associates said that McCain may be interested in bringing Murphy back on board but that his current circle of advisers was resisting that.

As soon as Obama secures the Democratic nomination, Schmidt said, McCain will begin a series of speeches intended to contrast their positions on a variety of issues including national security and taxes. McCain's advisers said that they did not believe it made sense to do that until Obama wraps up his battle against Hillary Rodham Clinton, given how the two Democrats are dominating the news.

"The race changes the moment she drops out and he emerges as the official nominee," said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to McCain. "Then the focus becomes on a two-person race, and that leads to us getting more equal treatment in terms of getting airtime. We've had to fight with one hand tied behind our back."

Republicans said McCain certainly had time to get his campaign back on track, and they remained confident that he would be a strong general election candidate against Obama. Some said the level of concern was either overstated or reflected the general Republican apprehension about this electoral environment rather than anything McCain had done wrong.

"I think any Republican who doesn't say panic is in the wind is lying through their shirt," said Ron Kaufman, a former senior adviser to the first President George Bush who worked this year for Mitt Romney. "The question is, is that panic caused by McCain's campaign - or lack thereof in some respects - or is it the climate and, in some respects, the bad braining the Republican Party is taking these days."

The string of departures from the campaign was spurred by questions about lobbying activities by aides and advisers to McCain and a new policy, which he dictated, that active lobbyists not be allowed to hold paying jobs in the campaign. Schmidt said that policy was an example of how McCain would take tough action, part of a contrast he said they would draw with Obama for "giving great speeches" but having no record of accomplishment.

But McCain's associates said the campaign had failed to anticipate the extent to which the news media would use the policy to examine McCain's staff. The result was a run of damaging stories and resignations that highlighted not the policy itself but the backgrounds of top campaign officials, including Rick Davis, the campaign manager, and Black, both of whom have long lobbying backgrounds.

Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, said McCain was smart in addressing the lobbyist issues now, as well as in releasing his medical records.

"I think McCain has done a good job in taking the trash out," he said, and doing do before the end of May, so "he can move forward."

Still, some Republicans said they were concerned that the Democrats would soon unify around Obama, and that it was only a matter of weeks before Obama begins unloading a huge round of advertising aimed at defining McCain. If that happens, they said, McCain may soon look back at this period as a time of missed opportunity.

Discussing what McCain needed to do, Nelson, another veteran of the Bush 2004 team, said: "Step No. 1 would be finding a compelling message that excited Republicans, and Step No. 2 would be having the ability to turn your voters out. From what I see, in both respects, they have a long way to go, but they have time."

Reed said he had been struck by the apparent lack of coordination between the White House and McCain, pointing to last week when Bush gave a speech in Israel that was taken as an attack on Obama's foreign policy credentials on the same day that McCain was giving a speech in Ohio intended to lay out his vision for the presidency.

"The speech he gave in Ohio was probably the best speech of the campaign," he said. "That was just devastating."

McCain has made some gains in reassuring conservatives nervous about his views on issues like immigration, polls suggest. But if McCain is going to rely on turnout within the Republican base more than on winning over independents and disaffected Democrats, there is evidence that he has not gone as far as needs to, particularly given how energized Democrats appear to be.

"He is going to need extraordinary participation of Republicans if Democrats continue to flock to the polls the way they have," said Kris Kobach, the Republican Party leader in Kansas. "It's critical that he use this period to generate enthusiasm from his base."

McKinney, the Republican chairman in West Virginia, said McCain's identification with immigration legislation that would eventually permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship continued to be highly problematic for him.

"But it doesn't matter what we think - Senator McCain goes his own way," McKinney said. "Always has and always will."

McCain healthy, doctors say
Doctors who examined Senator John McCain, 71, said he was in excellent health and showed no evidence of the recurrence of the melanoma skin cancer that led to extensive head and neck surgery in 2000, Lawrence K. Altman and Elisabeth Bumiller reported.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has kidney stones and takes medication to reduce his cholesterol but otherwise has a strong heart and is in good shape, the doctors said.

"At the present time, Senator McCain enjoys excellent health and displays extraordinary energy," McCain's primary care physician, Dr. John Eckstein, said Friday in a conference call arranged by McCain's campaign. He concluded that the prognosis for McCain was "very good" because "the time of greatest risk for recurrence of invasive melanoma is within the first few years after the surgery."

McCain's campaign released 1,173 pages of medical records before the conference call. The reporters were permitted three hours to review and take notes on McCain's medical documents, spanning 2000 to 2008, but they were not permitted to remove the documents from the room or photocopy them.

Campaign officials said they imposed the restrictions to prevent the widespread dissemination of the actual records and to protect McCain's privacy. The release of McCain's health records came the same day that his wife, Cindy, released a summary of her 2006 income tax return after weeks of vowing not to do so. The form revealed that she took in more than $6 million in taxable income that year.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/25/ ... mpaign.php

McCain is as clueless as Papa Bush was when Clinton came from behind and beat him.

MCAmnesty a "Reformer ?" yeah right . And i got the code to Bill Gates fortune .
Juan has trouble cause he begged for trouble when he let super ego Juan Hernadez into his camp !

Do you suppose the Republicans will have enough sense to select a candidate that would have a chance to win? Maybe one who is NOT Pro-ILLEGAL and Pro-Open Borders.

Originally Posted by lccat

Do you suppose the Republicans will have enough sense to select a candidate that would have a chance to win? Maybe one who is NOT Pro-ILLEGAL and Pro-Open Borders.

NO, The fix was in before the nomination campaign started. How else can you explain a candidate who the majority of his own party voted against and dislike getting the nomination? Those calling the shots here are betting that McCain's semi-left message can beat out Obama's far left message.

Didn't even read all this article but I still can't believe he is the best the Republicans could come up with. Very strange imo.

"It's critical that he use this period to generate enthusiasm from his base."

His base is made of wax.

Poll:

Who are you going to vote for this November?

(60%)
Other

(15%)
Bob Barr

(15%)
John McCain

(5%)
Barack Obama

(5%)
Hillary Clinton

Comments (9)

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