Reply To: Political Statements
Yep. McCain’s doing his job. That is, if his job is to raise his poll numbers.
From that bastion of liberal media, FOX News:
The summit at the White House, which included Barack Obama and John McCain, was intended to be a consensus-building exercise one of the final stops on the rocky road to approving the controversial rescue package. Congressional leaders just hours earlier had announced they had reached an agreement in principle on the rescue package.
But as Obama and McCain left, officials and aides who had attended the meeting said the summit ended on a very low note.
“This meeting ended bad real bad,” one source told FOX News….
Despite the national prominence of Bush, McCain and Obama, none has been deeply involved in this week’s scramble to hammer out a package.
Most Americans (myself included) are not happy about this bailout deal, and now McCain is supporting has made mention of an alternative proposed by House Republicans to lower the capital gains tax (surprise!) and offer some other incentives for investors to buy up the bad mortgage debt instead of the federal government. (Note that it’s not some novel idea that he came up with himself.) He is trying to regain his “maverick” image by positioning himself opposite Bush and trying to paint himself as the champion of the people. But I firmly believe that McCain isn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart, nor out of any conviction that it’s the right thing to do. His poll numbers were subsiding after the “Palin bump,” he blundered with his “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” statement, so now he’s looking for a way to redeem himself in the eyes of the voters, not to mention redirect the media narrative. Purely a political stunt. And one that just might work. We shall see.
ETA: Wasn’t it just last week that McCain accused Obama of using the economic situation for political gain?