Chris Shays, co-chair of John McCain's Connecticut campaign and the last remaining New England Republican Senator, damns the "maverick's" campaign, without the faint praise:
Locked in a tight congressional race, Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut’s 4th district is the latest in a slew of Republican incumbents, including Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, to concede a near-certain victory to the Obama camp.
“I just don’t see how [McCain] can win,” Shays said in an interview here on Sunday.
Shays, the Connecticut co-chair of McCain’s campaign, said he was disappointed by the standards of McCain’s race, which has increasingly relied on mudslinging.
“He has lost his brand as a maverick; he did not live up to his pledge to fight a clean campaign,” Shays said.
But Shays — who is famous for never running a negative campaign ad, even when behind — said the negativity in the presidential race has nevertheless been flowing both ways. He said that though they have been diluted by positive ads, Sen. Obama’s campaign has empirically run a greater number of negative ones.
“Obama has four times the amount of money McCain has, so for every negative ad he runs he can balance it with an upbeat one,” Shays said. “McCain, on the other hand, has been nearly 100 percent negative.”
Shays laid much of the blame on the far right, which, he said, has “hijacked” the Republican Party, threatening to walk out if its demand are not met — despite being in the minority.
"He's taken the thing that is most valuable, his (maverick) brand, and he's not staying true to it," Shays said. "I admire John McCain more than you can imagine. He would make a great president."
But, Shays added, "I don't see how he wins if he isn't true to who he is ... a straight shooter talking about the issues."
And the heart of Shays' problem:
An Oct. 20 UConn-Hearst Newspapers poll shows Himes and Shays each supported by 44 percent of likely voters. The same poll showed voters in the district prefering Obama over McCain, 54 percent to 34 percent.
Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district 146,000 to 103,000, while nearly 157,000 more voters are unaffiliated.
Uh-oh... So, what about McCain's other Connecticut co-chair, Joe Lieberman?
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, one of John McCain’s closest political allies, said Friday he does not believe that Barack Obama is unprepared to be president.
“I’m saying he is less prepared than McCain,” Lieberman said.
But what about Sarah Palin?
Is she ready?
“If, God forbid, an accident occurs or something of that kind?” Lieberman said. “Um, she’ll be ready. You know, she’s had executive experience. She’s smart and she will have had on-the-job training.”…
“[McCain] is ready to be our president at this very difficult time,” Lieberman said. “And Sen. Obama is not as ready. It’s as direct as that.”
By the way, the writer of the New Yorker post including that "modification," Hendrick Hertzberg, goes on to lay into Holy Hypocritical Joe:
That little word—“as”—is supposed to be Lieberman’s life jacket, I guess, now that the SS McCain looks like it’s going glug glug glug and may not, after all, be seaworthy enough to deliver its chaplain to that big corner office in the Pentagon. Google “lieberman obama ‘not ready’” if you need a few thousand samples of the unqualified way Joe talked about Barack’s readiness before the ship hit the iceberg.
Admittedly, I have strongly disliked Lieberman ever since he cemented his bogus reputation for “integrity” by denouncing Bill Clinton’s supposed lack of family values during the Lewinsky fiasco. I thought the denunciation was—what’s the word?—inappropriate, coming from a man who not only divorced his first wife while their children were at highly vulnerable ages (just past puberty) but also had the gall to attribute the divorce to the insufficient piety of his wife. In other words, he was too good for her.
Oh, Joe... By the way, the old "hey, maybe he's just not AS ready is kind of an official campaign tactic...
The idea, of course, is to court undecided voters who actually like Barack Obama, by telling them that maybe after four years of McCain's stewardship of the country, he'll be (less of a terrorist communist socialst America hater...) and more ready! Warm, and fuzzy!
