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McCain setting his own trap with celebrity gambit »

McCain’s Inspirational Moment

Posted by TONY CAMPBELL, Columnist in At TMV, Politics.
Aug 1st, 2008 | Comments

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I usually only post once per day but this video really is a dichotomy of everything that is John McCain. He needs to derail Obama’s momentum but has almost a split personality on how he wants to accomplish his goal. Earlier this week, McCain targeted Obama as a “celebrity” although his own website took the reference off recently. Now, the McCain campaign is portraying Obama as the second coming.

There are a few points in the video to make note of…

1) The music in the background definitely comes from an African-American church organist. Talk about playing the race card…and so early in the video.

2) “He has anointed himself carrying the burden of the one” Does that mean the Obama is fated to give up his life to save us all? So now we have the race card and the Messiah card, ok, go on…what’s next?

3) “The World Shall Receive His Blessings” Yep, definite Messiah context with the universal blessing motif. What do the Germans and the French know anyway?

4) What is the deal with the Moses reference? Is the Obama symbol supposed to be the children of Israel? Aren’t they supposed to be going the other way? Wait until Jon Stewart gets his hands on this part of the video.

5) Finally, isn’t this supposed to be slamming Obama? If so, then why does the ad feature a bald eagle with the Obama symbol and the Obama website? (Scratching my head)

6) Congratulations, Senator McCain, you have created the first political ad in history that will equally offend Christians (the not-so-subtle reference to Jesus Christ) and Jews (with using the Exodus from Egypt for political gain).

I think I need to ask for divine intervention between now and November…I fear the bounds of reality are just beginning to fray.

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Silhouette

"He needs to derail Obama’s momentum but has almost a split personality on how he wants to accomplish his goal."

*******

If you plug in that he at once is trying to uphold Obama as his opponent (instead of the GOP-feared Clinton) and at the same time tear him down enough to shine next to, you understand why McCain is acting so weird these days.

Don't worry, he'll settle in quite predictably and totally on tearing down just as soon as he gets a pesky worry out of the way.

Get it?

Mystery solved.

pacatrue

McCain. He may be the Republican nominee. But is he ready to offer anything other than fear of Obama?

Neocon

Well I commented the other day that the internet is the wild west. I now see what they are doing. They are appealing to the UTUBE crowd. The wild west of the internet. Those people who come to the internet expecting anything to go.

vwcat

McCain is so desperate to win that he is doing everything at once and operating like he's ADD.
I don't know if he's flipped or just that nasty or what to make of him.
And throwing all the money and ads now, this early, when no one is paying attention looks like panic.
But, why?
Why are they so panicked this week.

Neocon

They are not panicked. Remember Obama did not take federal funds. So come sept 1st I believe McCain gets 80 million dollars from the Feds. Obama does not. Hes hoarding his money till after sept 1st and then hes going to pound the air unmercifully with his billion dollars of money they have stored up.

StockBoySF

If McCain is targeting the You Tube crowd it's because he wants to discourage one of Obama's biggest group of supporters- the youth- from getting too excited about Obama and voting for him.

I actually don't know what to make of this ad.... I can usually see some camp or b-rated stuff in the ads which make them all that more stupid and a parody to be laughed at. But this ad is odd... it's clearly religious and portrays Obama as the saviour. But Obama has never claimed to be the saviour.

Tony, with respect to these comments in your post, "He needs to derail Obama’s momentum but has almost a split personality on how he wants to accomplish his goal." and, "I think I need to ask for divine intervention between now and November…I fear the bounds of reality are just beginning to fray."

I think McCain is just trying to throw everything out there so he puts Obama on the defensive. The best way to keep Obama from inspiring folks and looking presidential is to have him blast the ads. The ads, as we have all seen tend to be factually wrong (outright lies) but it does change the dynamic of the race. Unfortunately the more Obama's ratings go down and the more that McCain's ratings go up McCain will continue to make crap up. Even if he has to apologize for it later (or back track- I'm not sure he would actually apologize, the slime bucket) McCain still comes out ahead. The slime bucket.

vwcat

Obama is raising a ton of money off these ads.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/08...

and he has a big ad buy during the Olympics. McSame can't do anything about answering them either. The media is on vacation, Obama is slapping him on big time tv. for two weeks and McCain is out there unable to do anything.

JSpencer

Neocon: "Hes (Obama) hoarding his money till after sept 1st and then hes going to pound the air unmercifully with his billion dollars of money they have stored up."

I sincerely hope so. It would serve the GOP right... in a particularly poetic way.

elrod

What a bizarre ad. It never actually calls his ability to lead in question. It just shows him with faux-messianic imagery. But it doesn't actually cast his ability to lead in doubt. In fact, the gut-level response to the question, "Is he ready to lead?" is "yes." This ad seems to backfire against McCain.

Michael Merritt

I've gotta say, I never thought I'd see McCain jump on the "Obamessiah" bandwagon that many of the conservative talking heads have done.

Kind of sad, actually.

daveinboca

None of the commentators above note that the ad takes Obama & his own vapid & vacuous words [i.e.: "we are the people we have been waiting for"] and simply puts them into an ad. So McCain is being "negative" by simply quoting Obama during his frequent excessive self-adulation sequences? This is simply hilarious & satire at its best. I guess McCain must be blamed for criticizing the empty-headed exhalations Obama is prone to, according to the critics on the completely liberal MSM left.

Obama is being hoist by his own petard..... Can't the guy stop becoming a self-parody? YouTube is the way to let the air out of his tires [pls excuse mixed metaphors]

DLS

Dymero -- the Messiah cult is not something conjured by sinister right-wing talking heads (upon receiving the message through the Cheney mind-control machine that is programmed by Karl Rove). The shows responded to what the public has observed and noted aloud since before, repeat before, Super Tuesday. The cult followers are blind to this fact as if they are brainwashed and some deny they are behaving that way to this day. But it has been that way from the start, a common though extreme version of Obama's emotional appeal to so many voters this year, from simple attraction to "rock star" groupie behavior (the extreme among so many foolish fans of Bill Clinton), to Messiah worship or cult following. (Howard Dean plus Gary Hart fans, pumped past normal by Obama's youth and PC reverse racism).

Just so you know, instead of believing myths you may have been told by those who may be defensive about it.

Obama's having to appeal to swing voters (occasionally "betraying" his most faithful, on the left end of his fan base) and the simple passage of time, along with what many of us have done, read about his earlier history, will dispel this, but not completely given the nature of those who are his most fervent fans (and fulminant Bush- and now McCain-haters), aided by an openly Obama-campaigning media.

DLS

What's remarkable is that so many desperate lefties keep telling us the "McSame" Big Lie that McCain is another Bush (possibly due in come cases to pathological hatred of Bush; the Left has been truly hateful in the cases of Bush and Reagan).

Yet if people should start to be concerned it should be about Obama, because by wanting to give people $1000 energy credits and fund them by a windfall profits tax on oil, Obama definitely is hinting at being another McGovern plus another Carter, something no normal American would want at all. At least, in normal times; maybe Obama believes his media-protected saint status allows for such crazy overreach or over-confidence.

Neocon

The ads, as we have all seen tend to be factually wrong (outright lies) but it does change the dynamic of the race.

Actually I disagree. The truth is that if he starts outright lying then these adds are going to be a huge drag on him and destroy his credibility. These adds are in fact........factually sound. The problem is you can take any fact and imply something that may or may not be untrue.

Fact. John McCain is 72 years old. You can make an add to imply hes going to drop dead anyminute and why vote for him. Questioning his age is not a factual lie, but you can imply from the facts that something may or may not be true from a fact.

That is what McCain is doing. Facts are that Obama is a celebrity now. The problem with Obama is that he is milking his celeb status and that is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Hes being portrayed indirectly by simply showing these two as examples on the add, as the Paris Hilton who got drunk with her celeb status and ended up in jail. Or Britnay spears who got drunk with celebstatus and ended up in rehab.

I can see why the left is up in arms. Being compared to two superstar Loosers is not very flattering but its also not factually incorrect because the facts are that Paris and Spears are in fact monsterous celebs who attrack a huge following every time they show up in public. Just like Obama.

ChrisWWW

What's remarkable is that so many desperate lefties keep telling us the "McSame" Big Lie that McCain is another Bush (possibly due in come cases to pathological hatred of Bush; the Left has been truly hateful in the cases of Bush and Reagan). Yet if people should start to be concerned it should be about Obama,

McCain supports roughly all the same policies as Bush. They're on ideologically the same footing. The biggest difference there is between them is that McCain is MORE hawkish on Iran. Great.

JSpencer

2008 is shaping up to be another national IQ test. Is the electorate any wiser now than they were in 00 and 04? That's the critical question, since the BS will be slung fast and furious between now and November. Btw Dave, context is everything, so don't imagine the cherry-picking is the successful gambit you'd like it to be.

DLS

"The biggest difference there is between them is that McCain is MORE hawkish on Iran. Great."

Actually, no, but it's good that McCain won't sell out principles and Israel due to oil-industry interests, with whom the lefties choose to be deeply related in this case.

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