Thread: Sen. John McCain Riles GOP With 2008 Planning

Friday, Oct. 6, 2006 10:47 p.m. EDT

Sen. John McCain Riles GOP With 2008 Planning

U.S. Sen. John McCain has been riling some South Carolina Republicans as his Straight Talk America enlists more of the GOP's top members for an expected 2008 presidential bid in this first-in-the-South primary state.

The Arizona Republican was in the Upstate Friday stumping with the Republican state agriculture commissioner, attending a veteran's memorial ceremony, meeting with key GOP legislators and handing out checks from his Straight Talk political action committee. Leaders from state college Republican groups even picked up $1,000 checks.

Trey Walker, one of McCain's advisers, says every Republican member of the Legislature has now received at least some money from the PAC.

McCain, who won't announce whether he is running for president until after the Nov. 7 election, knows how important South Carolina can be in the presidential primary. The state proved to be a firewall for President Bush - and McCain's undoing - in 2000.

That primary was bitter and still has some here harboring hard feelings.

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Last week, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had enough of people jumping about Straight Talk America and sent a letter noting "efforts are already underway to secure commitments for the presidential primary, even though it is still well over a year away."

He urged Republicans to "remain focused on the task at hand: electing our Republican team in South Carolina this November."

McCain notes he's made no commitment to run, so the commitments he's received are for the PAC and don't intrude on the 2006 races. "People are signing up for Straight Talk America all over the country" and it hasn't been raised as an issue anywhere, he said.

Two of McCain's biggest allies were at the Spartanburg ceremony honoring dead veterans. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and state Attorney General Henry McMaster both defend McCain. In fact, McMaster, a former state GOP chairman, wrote a letter of his own that says Republicans leaders are "smart, mature and sophisticated people. We are perfectly capable of focusing on the 2006 elections and, at the same time, working to organize a team to help our favorite candidates for president in 2008."

There's no doubt the 2008 Republican presidential contest - the first in decades with no incumbent or heir-apparent - is getting under way far faster than the 2000 race. It wasn't until May 1999 - nine months before the 2000 primary - that Bush announced he had his South Carolina heavyweights lined up.

McCain spoke to a crowd of more than 120 Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force veterans and their families at a monument to dead service members. One wing of the monument had a handful of names of people killed in the first Gulf War and during the past two years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unfinished wall will have more names for this "conflict that we're in today against people who have taken an honorable religion and perverted it into the greatest force for evil perhaps we have ever faced," McCain said.

"We will never surrender. They will," McCain said.

McCain told reporters afterward that the Army and Marines need to expand their forces by at least 100,000 to give National Guard units a break.

"It is my conviction we have to have a larger Army and Marine Corps. It is absolutely essential because we are asking the Guard to do things that we have never asked them to do before," McCain said.

The event was also an opportunity for McCain to lend support to state Adjutant General Stan Spears in his re-election bid. Spears, the nation's only popularly elected National Guard commander, said South Carolina has sent close to 7,500 Guard members to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Spears said in the "next several months we're going to be loading up again and we're going to be sending close to 2,000 over to Afghanistan."

© 2006 Associated Press.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006 ... shtml?s=ic

Speaking of McCain. Has any one notice the web ads Ole John has had on straight talk. I have seen them everywhere.

He should start off in S. Mexico not S. Carolina. He will get more votes out of S. Mexico don't you think?

W