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McCain's mixed messages leave none getting through |
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By Sam Youngman
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Posted: 10/30/08 06:08 PM [ET] |
John McCain is employing several lines of attack each day and Republican strategists say the lack of focus makes it nearly impossible for him to gain ground before Election Day.
Over the last several days, while Democratic nominee Barack Obama has emphasized his "closing argument," McCain's campaign has employed a variety attacks against the Illinois senator: they criticized him for wanting to "spread the wealth," promoted the Joe the Plumber tour, reminded voters of Obama’s past relationships with domestic terrorist William Ayers, questioned Obama's readiness to be commander-in-chief, warned about the dangers of one party rule, and hit Obama for voting for the 2005 energy bill, among other things.
With five days left until the election, Time's Mark Halperin counted seven messages from the McCain campaign while The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder counted five.
Republican strategists say they see a campaign being pulled in many directions, and undecided voters are left to guess which message is the reason to vote for McCain.
"Every minute that he spends on Ayers or ACORN or Palestinian terrorists is a minute he's not talking about jobs and taxes," said Dan Schnur, McCain's communications director in 2000. "It creates more difficulties for the campaign than it helps."
Schnur, who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said the campaign seemed to be getting traction as it focused on the economy and the Joe the Plumber story-line, but McCain and his aides have gotten in their own way by convoluting that message with competing lines of attack.
While the McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, the senator's lead pollster distributed a memo to reporters Monday night suggesting that the campaign's recent messaging, specifically on Obama's "spread the wealth" comment and Joe the Plumber, was hitting its mark.
"This has been the week where 'Joe the Plumber' has literally become a household name," Bill McInturff said. He added: "The campaign’s relentless focus has helped strengthen our margins on the issue of taxes and broadened as well to the attribute of handling the economy and jobs."
One Republican strategist who asked not to be identified said that "obviously when you're behind you're trying to find whatever attacks will stick," but because none of the attacks have found traction on their own, the campaign is employing them all at once.
"I think they don't lose effect because if none of them work then they don't have effect," the strategist said. "There's a difference between death by a thousand cuts and trying a thousand ways to just get one cut."
The strategist said another reason for the scatter-shot message strategy could be that it is the "manifestation" of reported in-fighting within the campaign. In other words, there are too many messengers with their own messages.
Republican strategist Ron Christie, a Hill Pundits Blog contributor, said he was getting his haircut Thursday, and even his barber asked him what McCain's one message was.
"Does Sen. McCain have a consistent message or a theme, or does it change every day?" Christie said the man cutting his hair asked.
Christie said his advice is to find three core messages -- McCain's fix for the economy, his readiness to be commander-in-chief and the risk of one-party rule -- and stick to those, trusting that the others have either been absorbed or just aren't working.
"Otherwise the clock will run out on them, and the game will be over," Christie said.
Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, former Vice President Al Gore's spokesman in 2000, said McCain's message strategy of late "reminds me of Al Pacino in 'Scarface' when he walks out with a machine gun and shoots at everything that moves."
Lehane said that after the financial crisis, there was a fundamental shift in the campaign that left the Republican campaign struggling to settle on a message, creating a sense of instability that has been supported by the opposition and the McCain campaign's seeming inability or reluctance to choose a focus.
"In some ways, they're reinforcing their own negative which is the 'erratic' issue," Lehane said. "There's a thin-line between being a maverick and being erratic."
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