Feb. 17, 2008
RNC Donor Event Outlines Obama Attack Plan
Politico: If Democrat Is Nominated, Republicans Will Focus On Inexperience, Messaging
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Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at his campaign rally at Memorial Hall in Racine, Wis., on Wednesday Feb. 13, 2008. (AP Photo/Journal Times)
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Focusing on Barack Obama’s “inexperience” and “undisciplined messaging” are two ways to ensure that the senator from Illinois doesn’t get to be president, according to honchos at the Republican National Committee.
Big RNC contributors got an earful this weekend about methods the GOP will use to battle the Democrats for control of the White House this fall, as well as other initiatives central to the conservative cause.
The RNC’s “winter retreat” for major donors at Los Angeles’ Beverly Wilshire Hotel featured such party stalwarts as Karl Rove, RNC chairman Robert Duncan, former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, as well as some Hollywood types, including Dave Berg, a segment producer and “political director” for "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno.
But chief among the RNC’s concerns were how to keep a tight grip on the White House this fall. Plenty of lowbrow Hillary Clinton jokes were tossed around at the three-day event, but of highest concern was the notion of Obama seizing the Oval Office in a contest against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.
“We all dislike Hillary,” declared Southern California Rep. Ken Calvert, from the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, echoing thoughts of the roughly 75 attendees at a Sunday morning RNC session. “Forgetting who will be the easiest to beat, I've got to tell you, a President Hillary doesn’t scare me nearly as much as a President Obama.”
RNC Chairman Duncan as well as Co-Chairman Jo Ann Davidson opened the Sunday session with a Power Point presentation outlining five main strategic attacks against the Obama candidacy. The first called for pointing out what the GOP views as a seeming incongruity between Obama and the mantle of commander in chief. The second point harkened back to Obama’s days in the Illinois state Senate, noting how his “pattern of voting ‘present’ offers many openings to question his candidacy.” The third offered hope to the GOP faithful that “we can be confident in a campaign about issues.” A fourth bullet point relayed how “undisciplined messaging carries great risk,” while the fifth and final attack point stressed, “His greatest weakness is inexperience. He is not ready to be president. He is not ready to be commander in chief.”
The RNC event also broached taking control of traditionally Democratic issues such as health care, with even Rove stressing a need for Republicans to start addressing the matter. Congressman Calvert described health care as “one of the seminal issues” of the upcoming election and asked, “Are we going to move towards socialized medicine or away from it? Because we can’t move towards the middle.”
Calvert spoke during a morning session of California congressmen including Brian Bilbray, John Campbell and Dan Lungren, which focused mainly on immigration and lowering taxes, as well as more esoteric matters such as water rights. Throughout the event, the subject always seemed to return to this November.
“The American people are yearning for leadership,” said Lungren, who represents a Sacramento-area district. “We can win this election. We will win this election. Forget the carping about John McCain not being the perfect conservative. Ronald Reagan wasn’t a perfect conservative, but he was pretty doggone good. I’m not saying John McCain is Ronald Reagan: John McCain is John McCain. But we can win this election.”
For most of the weekend, however, the retreat gave the chance for donors who contributed $15,000 or more to bask in the 70-degree California sun, enjoy some golf or tennis at the L.A. Country Club, wolf down Wolfgang Puck pizzas at Spago, tour the Getty Center and Paramount Studios, and pay tribute at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library a half-hour away in SimiValley.
Berg, the "Tonight Show" segment producer, delivered an informal talk about the pride and pitfalls of being a conservative working in Hollywood. Peppering his speech with references to Michael Moore, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and other Tinseltown lefties, he argued against the liberal mindset that he believes dominates the industry.
“We [conservatives] believe capitalism isn’t a dirty word,” he said. “If you’ve seen Daniel Day Lewis’ portrayal of a greedy, sinister oilman in ‘There Will Be Blood,’ it’s just another example of the Hollywood left’s contempt for capitalism.
“People have called Hollywood conservatives ‘the new gays,’ but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” Berg contended. “The gays have been accepted in Hollywood for years. They’ve long been out of the closet. In fact, they’re fixing up the closet, decorating it, and it looks nice, actually.”
Berg centered his talk around the “unintended consequences” of the recent Writers Guild of America strike against networks and studios, which ended last week. Berg placed blame on the WGA’s “radical” negotiators, with writers earning six-figure salaries casting themselves as “poor, exploited, downtrodden” workers, “acting like it’s 1957” and they were UAW members trying to get back on the assembly line building Corvettes.
“When the writers went on strike Nov. 5, they entrusted their futures to a leadership that essentially believes Karl Marx is still relevant,” he said. “This was a revolution against The Man.”
Berg discussed the return of "The Tonight Show" without its writers in early January, when the only guests consenting to cross the WGA picket lines were NBC News anchors, goofy animal acts and Republican presidential candidates, including McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.
“The WGA cut a side deal with David Letterman but not with our show,” he recalled. “We had to go back to work as the No. 4 network with no writers and no stars. Actors would not cross the line. I didn’t read this anywhere, but they were threatened with blackballing if they crossed the line to do our shows” - ironic, he says, since he believes Hollywood is “obsessed” with the 1950s blacklisting era of Joseph McCarthy. “The true threat of McCarthyism,” he says, “is coming from the left.”
By Jeffrey Ressner
Copyright 2008 POLITICO
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See all 91 Comments"What will you do or change from the way it is done by th Bu$h Adminstration?"
The answer is nothing, as best I can tell and that will not win this election.
"Inexperienced?" How about Senator " I don''t know anything about the economy"?
"Undisciplined messaging? How about " Bomb bomb Iran, bomb bomb Iran!" and who can forget " I don''t care if we stay in Iraq 100 years!".
If the GOP thinks they can succeed by raising doubts about Obama without offering sensible solutions to the problems they''ve created and allaying public fears about them they''ll go down in flames.
Does anyone really think he can withstand it like Clinton has ?
I am not sure anyone could !
Are you kidding me ? They could sell a C student for two terms ! ! !
Just think what they could do with war hero John McCain !
AMERICAN his father is black mother white born in
america how can he be african
Brian Young
hbkoln@mts.net
They earned my vote !
Obama is a lefty left. Him and the righty rights can take a hike ! ! !
The people of the USA will reject the lefty lefts and the righty rights and elect John McCain !
Oh...vote republican.......
Don''t under estimate them ! People that have been voting for Obama are under estimating them. They will go over every detail of every paper he ever signed !
Very few lawyers could withstand what Clinton went through.
This is pure Tighty Whitey Righty Repugniscum-ism at its core--dirty jokes about Hillary aimed at her for daring to be a female, and a core fear that a non-white man might actually become president. It speaks to the core of their pathetic, rotten little souls. This bag of rotten garbage should be dumped at sea, if only it wouldn''t pollute so badly.
Just die, would you, RNC?
John Kerry and Al Gore !
Don''t forget Al ! He was a war vet too ! ! !
Boy have the standards dropped ! ! !
Hillary ''08 ... she can stand up to this corrupt group!!!
I agree. A vote for Obama right now is a vote for McCain.
Clinton is the one that could beat them. Obama will drop the ball.
"Inexperienced?" How about Senator " I don''''t know anything about the economy"?
"Undisciplined messaging? How about " Bomb bomb Iran, bomb bomb Iran!" and who can forget " I don''''t care if we stay in Iraq 100 years!".
If the GOP thinks they can succeed by raising doubts about Obama without offering sensible solutions to the problems they''''ve created and allaying public fears about them they''''ll go down in flames.
Posted by realpatriot1 at 11:22 AM : Feb 18, 2008
Well put! There are no saints running for office...and if there were, they wouldn''t win without divine intervention.
It will be interesting to see who McCain picks as his Veep. Whoever it is, their being a heartbeat away from the Presidency becomes a scarier possibility, given McCain''s age.
Don''''t forget Al ! He was a war vet too ! ! !
"--Posted by old300d
Well that''s to your credit. Of course Kerry and Gore were in the trenches, so to speak, (Gore as a journalist), while McCain had nice showers on his ship every night after dropping napalm on Vietnamese villages.
Obama is a flip flopper - He said he has been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns, combined with free television and radio time, as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests." But now, he indicated that public financing was more of an "option" than a "pledge." This must be the ''CHANGE'' he meant. Change his minds at any cost, just to be the PRESIDENT. HE doesn''t care about Americans, as long as he can help out his brother in Kenya.
When the bomb Israel then hide behind the children it is OK.
They are Muslim children thus they can be used as human shields.
It they are killed then they were doing their Muslim duty !
Muslims will say Obama is Muslim because his dad is. That is what they believe !
You can get put to death for it in certian countries !
They believe one is born with these duties.
Becoming a Christian is rejecting these duties and a great crime !
What happened between this rookie sales man and REZKO? Is the rookie will return the house and lot that he bought from this scum? YES HE CAN%u2026. but I don''t think so because they are both scum....Blood sticker than water, YES HE CAN!
What happened to his present votes? This is is a fact. A first grader knows how to differentiate Yes or No. He did not the have the courage or judgment to vote YES or NO for a difficult legislation. It was wrong, and it will always be wrong. How can you vote for person who does not have that capacity? NO WE CAN%u2019T...
Posted by Hailstorm4 at 03:26 PM : Feb 18, 2008"
McCain will unfortunately be painted as Bush III. He will be seen as having no new ideas and to be an extension of the past failed 8 years. 8 years ago McCain went up against the Rove machine and was destroyed, now Rove is on his side...what strange bedfellows blind ambition makes.
McCain will lose in November because he has nothing new to offer. The Republican base is not excited about him, they are doing everything they can just to stomach him. Either Hillary or Obama will win because the Dems are thrilled to have both of them as candidates as evidenced by the all time record turn out of Dems to the polls.
Please, put your money on McCain, I''ll give you 5-1 odds. ;o)
All of the independents and disaafected Republicans who voted for Obama could''ve just as easily voted for McCain(many of them did).
If McCain wins it will be on the votes fo disaffected Democrats.
Once the Democratic fight is over someone will have to sulk for awhile and then the adults will have to make a responsiblr choice between McCain or a Democrat.
If you want the economy to recover and you want our troops to come home ther''s nothing safe about McCain.
I considered supporting him until I listened closely to waht he had to say. When the public has 3-4 months to listen closely they''ll realize that neither candidate is ideal but Mccain is every bit as much of a candidate to be considered the scarier alternative, although that remains to be seen.
The number of terrorists being generated yearly has massively increased.. if you do a "head count" of total terrorist inclined folks in the World, it is many times higher than in 2000. While there have been no major succesful attacks on American soil, there have been on our Allies, and when you include the hugely increased head count for Terrorists on "their watch", that invalidates ANY argument that what they are doing is effective. Keep in mind, Terrorism is a TACTIC and NOT a country.. Iraq did NOT have anything to do with Terror, and was a democracy building exercise by Bush that has grossly failed.
And image? Our image is S H X T! Other countries HATE our government.. why does this matter? Well, we DO act Arrogant as the only "superpower" (which will NOT last), tourism is at all time lows, and continuing to drop. Easier to get folks to hate us and other western countries.
Core costs for the average american family have mushroomed.. medical, energy, food.
As for experience:
Hillary''s 45 years of experience? C''mon, the Clintons were shyster lawyers from the second most backward state in the country where, in fact, they were embroiled in scandal and controversy. Hillary was First Lady for eight years, that does not extrapolate into experience. Plus, Hillary''s felon backer Hsu, gave her campaign a sizable donation that she had to return when he was indicted. Women that will vote for Hillary simply because she is a woman is the height of naiveti.
How simple minded.
It would be same-o, same-o.
Incidentally, I am a 72 year old, white male, veteran,
and have seen it all. Also, I have voted for more women than men for my state''s political offices.
Should Obama select either of them, I will vote for the Green Party candidate.
Under no circumstances will I vote for Hillary, four more years of the same. No thanks.
roncraw-and just what facts would the madame be quick with????
They will attack the Demacratic candidates strongest attribute
And they will lie outrageously -
And lie some more -
And slime -
And lie some more -
And sneer.
We can be greatful that neither Hillary nor Obama are veterans. I don''t think we could survive the shameless Republican trashing of another veteran.
Surely Satan himself must blush at the bold malice and deceitfulness of Republican politics.
You ask me the other day if I was "ilikecats"; no I am not. I did pick up the "pie" thing from him though.
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