In a Return to Federal Hall, McCain Takes On 'Extreme' Obama
Out on the campaign trail, town hall-style meetings are often held in barns, or factories or high school gyms. John McCain's "Town Hall Meeting in New York" on Thursday night took place under the vaunted marble dome and pillars of Federal Hall, where the audience mostly looked like they had wandered in directly from their Wall Street offices. Men wearing dark suits and long power ties and women, most of them blond, surrounded a wooden podium, next to a thigh-high speaker. In the quiet, show's-about-to-begin minutes before McCain arrived, Tony Carbonetti, the former chief political adviser to Rudy Giuliani and a good friend of McCain, twisted in his second row seat to chat with Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman behind him.
McCain, wearing a gray suit and a striped tie, came out calling New York a "great city" and honoring "this great Federal Hall."
A little more than eight years ago, this same Federal Hall was the site of a dramatic, defiant appearance by McCain: In the heat of a bitter Republican primary fight with George W. Bush, he stood on the steps, surrounded by war veterans, and railed against “comrade” George Pataki for attempting to keep him off the New York ballot.
Last night was a calmer affair. McCain explained that he preferred town hall meetings because they encapsulated "the essence of everything about America I believe in" and that, as a result, it was especially disappointing that Barack Obama had declined an invitation to join him at the forum.
"It would have been a little more interesting tonight if Senator Obama had accepted my request for him to be here," said McCain, who also promised to "block out a day every week to do this."
The reporters perched on the balconies overlooking the floor, scribbling in notebooks they held over the ornately carved wood banisters. Next to them, in a dark room, McCain’s staff monitored nine television screens showing the senator pacing the floor.
In brief prepared remarks to the enthusiastically friendly crowd, McCain said his candidacy existed to provide "reform, prosperity and peace" to the country. And McCain, who has been under near-constant attack from the Democratic Party for staffing his campaign with prominent lobbyists, said that elected officials could "begin by cleaning up our act in Washington."
In his remarks about foreign policy, McCain made light fun of France, and of his age.
"We now have a pro-American president of France, which shows that if you live long enough anything can happen," he said.
McCain then sought to portray Obama as insensitive to the needs of everyday Americans by arguing that the Democratic nominee wanted to deny them the "little relief" of the gas tax holiday he has proposed. As for the economists who think the proposal is a bad one – and there’s no shortage of prominent ones who do -- he was as dismissive as Hillary Clinton was when the issue came up in the primary.
"If you took all the economists in the world and put them end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion," he said, citing an old line, not for the first time.
Unlike his other applause lines, this one got a muted reaction from the Wall Street-centric crowd.
McCain closed his prepared remarks with a now-standard mix of attacks on Obama and arguments for why the war in Iraq, to which his candidacy is largely tethered, is going well.
"He wants to raise taxes," McCain said of Obama, adding, "He wants the government to make the choices."
On Iraq, he said, "Thank God for General David Petraeus," and, as always, "I would much rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," and “we are succeeding, we are succeeding."
The questions from the audience ranged from whether he would agree to allow third-party candidates like Bob Barr and Ralph Nader to join him and Obama on the debate stage ("I would if they met certain objective criteria," he said) to an inquiry about whether he would discuss his military service during the campaign.
"Yes,” McCain answered, “but I don't consider myself a hero."
Responding to a question about bipartisanship, McCain called Obama's record "extreme" and then said that "he wants to raise taxes in very difficult times" and talk to the world's worst dictators.
"Without any precondition?" McCain asked incredulously.
The most interesting question came from a small-business owner from Staten Island who complained about the lack of regulation on the stock market and the price gouging that helped boost oil and gas prices.
"There needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators," said McCain, adding "I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies." The reply gave way to a longer defense of the free-market system.
At another point, he answered a question about education by saying, "I think there has been significant progress in the New York City school system."
After the event, the McCain campaign talked up his performance, and made much of the mere fact that he had shown up to participate in such a format.
"When he does these question-and-answers, it shows, ‘Here I am, scars and all, answering the questions,’” said Ed Cox, the chairman of McCain’s New York campaign. “Frankly, George Bush didn't do it. Is Obama out here? Obama can't handle it."
- Poll
- Obama (D)
- McCain(R)
- Spread
- RCP Average
- 49.8
- 42.5
- Obama +7.3
- Candidate
- Favorable
- Unfavorable
- Spread
- Obama
- 57.3
- 35.9
- +21.4
- McCain
- 50.1
- 42.3
- +7.8
I hear that the McCain campaign hand picked an audience of supporters. If true, this was a set-up and one can understand why Obama did not show up. Also, if true, your reporter should have made note of it or at least file a correction.
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I AM TIRED OF LISTENING TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES RHETORIC ABOUT THE OUTRAGEOUS COST OF OIL & GASOLINE AND THEIR SOLUTION FOR MAKING US “ENERGY INDEPENDENT” BY THE YEAR 2525. WE NEED RELIEF NOW, OR OUR ECONOMY & STANDARD OF LIVING WILL BE IRREPARABLY HARMED. THOSE HURT THE MOST WILL BE PEOPLE ON FIXED INCOMES, THE WORKING POOR AND THE MIDDLE CLASS.
WHY IS THAT DONALD TRUMP, A FINANCIAL GIANT, SAID THAT ‘IF HE WERE PRESIDENT, HE WOULD GET THE PRICE OF OIL CUT IN HALF WITHIN 24 HOURS’ BY THREATENING TO WITHDRAW OUR MILITRAY FORCES FROM PROTECTING THE REGIMES OF THE OPEC COUNTRIES, IN THE MIDDLE EAST? WHY DO WE NOT FLOOD THE WORLD MARKET WITH SOME OF OUR “STRATEGIC OIL RESREVES” TO BANKRUPT THOSE OIL SPECULATORS WHO ARE BLAMED, IN PART, FOR THE RECENT RUN UP OF OIL PRICES? WHY WAS OUR GOVERNMENT SO DEFICIENT IN FORESEEING THIS CRISIS? A NUMBER OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES ARE FAR, FAR MORE ENERGY INDEPENDENT THAN WE ARE. WHY?
THE PRESIDENT AND OTHER PROMINENT POLITICAL LEADERS DID NOT USE THEIR “BULLY PULPIT” TO BUILD A CONSENUS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO DECREASE OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL BY (1.) DRILLING FOR OIL ON U. S. LANDS & TERRITORIES; (2.) EXPEDITING THE BUILDING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS; and, (3.) DEVOLPING COST-EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES. INSTEAD OUR GOVERNMENT WAS ESSENTIALLY ‘DEAF, DUMB & BLIND’ IN FORESEEING THIS CRISIS AND PROVIDING FOR OUR INCREASING ENERGY NEEDS. WE HAVE LET THE ‘TREE HUGGERS’ ON THE LEFT AND THE ‘GREED MERCHANTS’ ON THE RIGHT RESTRICT OUR MEANS OF SUPPLING OUR ECONOMY WITH ITS NEEDED SUPPLY OF ENERGY.
I WILL VOTE FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO UNDERSTANDS THE SERIOUSNESS OF THIS ENERGY CRISIS AND WHO HAS BOTH A SHORT-TREM AND LONG-TERM PLAN FOR PROVIDING US WITH THE NEEDED RELIEF. WE CANNOT WAIT 10 OR 20 YEARS TO OBTAIN FINANCIAL RELIEF FROM THE CURRENTLY OUTRAGEOUS COST OF ENERGY. WE NEED ACTION --- NOT RHETORIC.
I read that McCain with the help of his friends at Fox stacked the audience with sympathetic right wingers. Is it true? Why didn't the reporter preface this fact in his reporting? A townhall meeting by definition should bring out the dissenting parties. This was a stacked deck.
I was actually there and am not a gung ho McCain supporter. I am a middle of the road guy who went to hear what he had to say. I can confirm that there were others like me in the room. And secondly what campaign doesnt fill a room with supporters, supporters have tough questions too and have questions like anyone else. Last I checked Obama isnt stacking his event with the catholic right wingers. That is the nature of this game.
McCain is going to get a wake up call real soon. He should be careful what he wishes for, Obama is going to wipe the floor with him.
MC-CAIN’S LAST DATE WITH THE REAGAN REPUBLICAN PARTY
McCain’s ideological support, like Bush’s, comes from Podhoretz Neo-Cons and Leiberman Neo-Libs, not Reagan Conservatives nor Kennedy Liberals. These supporters have the same Neo-Marxist roots, which originated over 60 years ago, when millions of defeated Marxist immigrants from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were admitted by America, as desperate persecuted refugees; after all of the European nations refused to take them.
By the McCarthy Era, many of these pathetic refugees had gotten good government positions; and, by way of showing their deep gratitude to the American People, they systematically corrupted the government and endangered national security, by working as spies for Marxist Russia. The most notorious of these spies, the Rosenbergs, were executed for treason. This had the intended beneficial effect of stopping most of the dangerous spying; but it had the unintended consequence of causing these Marxist refugees to seek social and economic power by pretentiously assimilating into the Conservative Republican and Liberal Democrat parties; where they quickly mutated into the Neo-Conservatives and Neo-Liberals, with insidious ideological opposition to traditional Christian culture and Constitutional principles. The result of the subversive influence by these virulent Crypto-Neo-Marxists in the government, schools, news media and entertainment media was the increasingly intolerably cultural degeneration that has led up to the American Cultural War.
Podhoretz Neo-Con and Leiberman Neo-Lib ideology notoriously instills subversive contempt for patriotism, defensive war, historical accuracy, Christian culture, and Constitutional rule, United Nations resolutions, and Conservative Reagan Republicans and Liberal Kennedy Democrats.
All of this contempt is transparently motivated by a dogmatic belief in gaining an advantage by insubordination to the practices of national religious and governmental traditions, which grant the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These Crypto-Neo-Marxists, like their failed Marxists predecessors, imagine that they can somehow create their own new superior civilization, if they first destroy the traditional allegiance to the nuclear family, Christianity, nationalism, and the Constitution.
Israel, which these Marxists refugees have had all to themselves for 60 years, to do their utopian social engineering, in their own artificially created state, is notoriously poorly governed and heavily subsidized by the Diaspora; and the People of Israel, once the most widely pitied in the World, have come to justly earn the distinction of now being the most universally despised, condemned, and threatened with annihilation.
In this crucial 2008 presidential battle of the American Cultural War shall the Reagan Conservatives and the Kennedy Liberals finally combine forces against these desperately united Podhoretz Neo-Cons and Leiberman Neo-Libs supporting Insane McCain; or shall they continue to suffer ideological corruption of their Republican and Democrat parties, subversion of their traditional Christian culture and Constitutional rule, pernicious governmental strife, and the illegal and un-patriotic sacrifice of the wealth and blood of the American People to sole benefit of Israel?
With Leiberman Neo-Lib Princess Hillary burnt at stake by the Kennedy Liberal Democratic Party, shall Podhoretz Neo-Con McCain have his final date for the presidency, or for the Reagan Conservative Republican firing squad?
Google: “Mearsheimer Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”; “Evans Blacklisted by History: Untold Story of Joe McCarthy”; “Wall Street Journal McCain-Feingold”; Stricherz Why the Democrats are Blue; “Human Events Ron Paul Interview”; McClelland "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception"; McCain Keating Five; Abramoff Israel McCain.
ISRAEL’S SUSTAINABLE PARASITISM ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Israel and the American Diaspora notoriously donate thousands of dollars to elect corruptible American presidential and congressional officials, who then repay Israel a thousand fold from precious tax revenues; with millions of dollars worth of technologically advanced military equipment and services, and with the priceless lives of thousands of young patriots. In the case of the un-Constitutional Iraq War, Podhoretz Neo-Con Bush sacrificed over a trillion dollars and the lives of 4,000 young patriots, to sole benefit of Israel.
Obama is a nightmare.
http://www.youtube.com/user/brightamericaneyes
ISRAEL DEARLY LOVES AMERICA AND DREADS OBAMA
Israel and the Diaspora dearly love America, like the parasitic blood sucking leech loves a barefoot boy. Obama, by refusing to commit himself to treason on behalf of the Israel, wonderfully reveals himself to be an American patriot, and a mortal threat to Israel’s parasitic relationship with its America host.