The one downside of all this attention being paid to Sarah Palin is that the following gaffes are not getting much play by the media:
1. McCain campaign manager, Ricky Davis, saying that this election is NOT about the issues.http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/mccain_manager_this_election_i.html?hpid=topnews/snip
Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.
"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."Davis added that issues will no doubt play a major role in the decisions undecided voters will make but that they won't ultimately be conclusive. He added that the campaign has "ultimate faith" in the idea that the more voters get to know McCain and Barack Obama, the better the Republican nominee will do.
Davis generally dismissed the controversies surrounding McCain's vice presidential pick -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- as a media creation but did acknowledge that her acceptance speech, which seems likely to come tomorrow, is critically important to defining who she is to the American public.
As for the speech itself, Davis said a generic, "masculine" speech was being prepared before the pick was made and, now that Palin is the choice, she is adapting the speech to her own needs and personality./snip
2. McCain's healthcare advisor, John Goodman, saying that no one is uninsured, because everyone could simply go to an emergency room:http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-Uninsured_27bus.ART.State.Edition2.4dce428.html/snip
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
Mr. Goodman's analysis drew a sharp response from the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank focusing on poverty issues. "That is not the same thing as having health insurance," said Eva Deluna, a budget analyst for the center. People without insurance are less likely to seek care, and when they do, the cost to the health system is greater, she said.
/snip
3. Phil Gramm calling Americans whiners . . . Again! http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/phil-gramm-mcca.html/snip
Bloomberg News reports that at a Financial Services Roundtable event in Minneapolis today, former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, revisited the comments that got him into trouble in July.
"If you're sitting here today, you're not economically illiterate and you're not a whiner, so I'm not worried about who you're going to vote for,'' Gramm said. Gramm resigned as a senior adviser to McCain after giving an interview to the Washington Times in which he said "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession...We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline...We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today...Misery sells newspapers. Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."
The Obama campaign was quick to pounce -- not surprisingly since Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, mentions Gramm's comments in every speech.
"Today, the man who wrote John McCain's economic plan further insulted struggling Americans by suggesting that if they are not attending the Republican Convention, they are not only whiners, but economically illiterate," said Obama's cub spokesman Tommy Vietor. "From the campaign whose candidate has said that we've made 'great progress' economically under George Bush and believes that the fundamentals of our economy are 'strong', that's pretty rich."
/snip
It would be nice to see some commercials coming out attacking these points, but perhaps the problem is that such commercials would largely be ignored due to the soap opera that has surrounded Palin, which is resulting in almost hourly disclosures regarding scandals or flip flops or downright weird beliefs held by the GOP Vice-President nominee.
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