Marathon Pundit: This morning's teleconference with the McCain campaign

Thursday, September 18, 2008

This morning's teleconference with the McCain campaign

For the first time since I was in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention, I was able to listen in on a McCain-Palin campaign teleconference call. The participants this time were campaign teleconference veteran Doug Holtz-Eakin, McCain-Palin senior policy adviser, joined by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).

"The vet," Holz-Eakin started first:

This is the man who voted for higher taxes 94 times in the U.S. Senate -- 94 times he had the opportunity to either keep taxes where they were or lower them for middle class Americans; he did not. He then entered into a presidential campaign where he ran as an advocate for higher taxes in the primary.

Since then, Obama has equivocated:

He, in the primary for example, said we're going to get rid of the cap on the taxing the maximum Social Security and subject all of that to a 12.4% tax. It became apparent after he won the nomination, that that was an agenda that is not possible with Americans. So very quickly he said no, no I didn't mean that, I mean anyone who is making over $250,000 I'll raise tax for that and then he said no, no I didn't mean that, I'm going to tax those people who are making more than $250,000 a 4-5% rate. Oh no I didn't mean that, I'm going to do it in 10 years.

"So he has changed that story from an immediate increase, the largest tax increase in American history, to something that he won't do for 10 years, when he would be out of office if he were so fortunate to be elected.

Is this leadership? I don't think so.

Rep. Cantor then spoke:

And I don't know that we've heard any position articulated by Barack Obama, on the situation surrounding AIG up until last night. And even this morning, I think we are very unclear as to where Barack Obama is on the issue of AIG.

We don't know where he is. And I think it's clearly demonstrating that Barack Obama trying to vote present while we're in an economic crisis, yet again. It seems that this is a pattern of his behavior in the legislative body in Illinois, certainly in the Senate repeated and now in his candidacy for the presidency. He once again cannot come down on an issue that is going to have such an impact, and it already has, on millions of Americans.

As I remarked yesterday, Obama has no US Senate record to run on--well, he did vote for a lot of tax increases--so during the primaries, he touted his Illinois State Senate accomplishments, which were often the work of others. But Obama did vote "present" a lot. Draw your own conclusion.

Senator Burr through then threw some cold water on the "Annointed One."

From standpoint of setting the example, one needs only to look at the Freddie and Fannie challenges and the government response, and the fact Barack Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Freddie and Fannie. It's not good enough to go out and just talk about reform and to talk about change. The American people are going to hold these candidates to their actions. And though the pitch has been strong and its been eloquent, the facts are that he was the number two recipient of the money he has suggested bought off the legislative process in Washington from adopting the types of regulations that Freddie and Fannie needed to oversee the products that didn't exist when the original regulation was structured. It is absolutely essential that Freddie and Fannie in the new world that they will go into are under a different type of regulation that regulates new products. The question is can you accomplish that with somebody that is so indebted to those. Not only was it campaign contributions, it was former heads of those companies that were selected to head that vice presidential selection team (My note: Jim Johnson) for Barack Obama. It was the campaign adviser, Frank Raines (My note: Bill Clinton's budget director), who walked away from that company several years ago, with over $90 million of a golden parachute that Barack Obama has criticized regularly throughout the marketplace, that these things shouldn't exist.