Yep, Nuthin McSame About That
New McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt on the US Attorney firings scandal: It was "mostly a combination of nonsense and politics and provides us no concern at all."
Schmidt hired key firing scandal figure Tim Griffin after his resignation.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: McCain: I Gotta Be Me
Are the Rove proteges reshaping McCain's campaign? Are they cracking down on the cringey laugh and turning McCain into just one more bland teleprompter jockey? And what's the progress on scoring the budget victory numbers?
We bring you all up to date in today's McCain campaign update (with special new cringey laugh footage) ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Laugh a Minute
I guess a love a good slavery joke as much as the next guy. So here's a terribly witty Jonah Goldberg column in which he belittles slavery and debt peonage by comparing them to requiring college students to do a few hours of community service in exchange for taxpayer-subsidized student loans or getting kids to volunteer for Americorps.
--Josh Marshall
Another AP Beaut ...
Here's the lede from the AP's latest McCain fluffer, this time from Nedra Pickler ...
Barack Obama says John McCain's plan to balance the budget doesn't add up. Easy for him to say: It's not a goal he's even trying to reach.
Well, easy for McCain too, since he doesn't either.
Pickler doesn't mention that McCain doesn't even say how he'll do it; he just says he'll do it. No numbers -- No nothing. Every sentient being who's looked at his spending and tax cut proposals knows he won't come close to balancing the budget in four years. And within a few hours of making the claim his own economic advisor decided that he was actually going to do it in eight years not four.
--Josh Marshall
Don't Hope for Good Slogan -- Copy One
This morning we showed you John McCain's new ad which ends with his new campaign slogan "Don't hope for a better life; vote for one."
But as TPM Reader AF points out, they seem to have copied it from a late-70s slogan Saatchi & Saatchi created for the UK Tory party.
From a 1997 article in the UK Telegraph (emphasis added) ...
The first work produced for the party was a television broadcast devised by Charles, in which images of everyday Britain were run in reverse. The dramatic sequence was concluded with Michael Heseltine uttering the slogan: 'Backwards or forwards, because we can't go on as we are. Don't hope for a better life; vote for one.'
It's also referenced in this book.
Now, to be clear, I think this kind of borrowing is part and parcel of political messaging. It's got a long history. It's not 'plagiarism'. It's just borrowing a good line.
But it's always worth keeping track of who the candidate is cribbing from.
--Josh Marshall
Burned by Astroturf
Over at TPMCafe, David Sirota takes up a favorite TPM topic -- astroturfing -- and explains how it's a symptom of what he calls "autocratic progressivism," which emphasizes a top-down structure versus true grassroots organizing. Jared Bernstein responds by pushing for progressives to do both: [W]e've got to think on both bottom-up and top-down tracks."
--David Kurtz
Times Bucks AP Bamboozle?
New York Times out of step with Associated Press on Obama's Iraq stance?
Voters should understand, he said, that they rarely will find themselves in 100 percent agreement with him. "But don't assume that's because I'm just doing it for "political reasons, he said."That just means we disagree," he said.
At which point he returned to Iraq, an issue where he has wavered very little from the stance he took many months ago. He favors a phased-in 16-month withdrawal. The McCain campaign has labored hard to suggest that he is inconsistent on this issue.
--Josh Marshall
BREAKING: Obama "Petless"
The AP pulls out all the stops to bring you the substantive political reporting you can't get anywhere else.
--David Kurtz
Another Contempt Threat
The House oversight committee gives Attorney General Michael Mukasey until July 16 to produce subpoenaed FBI reports on interviews with the Vice President in the Plame leak investigation -- or face a contempt of Congress vote.
--David Kurtz
Sad
Whether you're pro- or con on the recent and flagging neo-imperialist turn in US foreign policy, it's a bit sad when the White House has to resort to 'dog ate my homework' level excuses when a country says they don't want to remain under occupation any more. As you can see, the demand for a definite date for withdrawal of US troops turns out not to have been a 'transcription error', as the White House earlier claimed. Seems like they really want a date certain.
--Josh Marshall
Prospectin'
We got ahold of one of BMW Direct's mailers. This one is on behalf of Ada Fisher in her 2006 congressional campaign, when she says BMW Direct "screwed me." Take a look.
--David Kurtz
Love?
That's the title of the new McCain bio ad just released that takes a few shots at Hope.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
It's not just FISA and warrantless wiretapping. There's a whole web of government domestic surveillance that goes unnoticed and largely unregulated.
--David Kurtz
Election Central Morning Roundup
What role for Hillary at the convention? Negotiations continue. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
--David Kurtz
Fun Times in South Florida
A new poll suggest that both Diaz-Balart brothers, Republican members of Congress from South Florida, are in real danger of losing their seats in November.
--Josh Marshall
Wheel of Fortune
We finally got an interview with someone from BMW Direct, the GOP direct mail firm whose business model includes fleecing GOP donors on behalf of obscure, often minority, candidates and then skimming off most of the contributions for itself and its affiliates. Good work if you can get it.
Our calls to the firm last week went unreturned, but we got lucky when we called again late today and Jordan Gehrke, BMW Direct's director of development, answered the phone. We called to ask specifically about complaints we'd received from another BMW client whose campaign had seen precious little of the contributions it was paying BMW to solicit.
Over the weekend, TPMmuckraker's Andrew Tilghman interviewed Ada Fisher, who's running for Congress in North Carolina. She used BMW Direct during her unsuccessful 2006 congressional run, but after that experience decided she'd be better off without them this time. "They sort of -- what shall I say? -- screwed me," Fisher told us.
By our count, BMW raised $400,000 for Fisher during the last election cycle, but only about $30,000 actually wound up being available for her campaign to use. The rest was plowed back into paying BMW and its affiliates for raising the money in the first place. "They make it seem like each of these people is a private entity. But as you listen more and more and you get smarter, you realize they all work together," Fisher said in the interview with us.
BMW's Gehrke acknowledged that Fisher's was a unique case. She came to BMW Direct late in the cycle, with less than a year left before the election. That's usually not enough time for the sort of direct-mail campaign BMW runs to yield results, Gehrke said, but they thought Fisher was a strong enough candidate to make up for the lost time. Alas, things didn't work out. As Gehrke explained: "[W]e think we would have been very successful if we had had another six months. For all kinds of reasons, fortune had its say, and things did not work out as we hoped."
Seems not. The donors who gave the $400,000 to Fisher's campaign saw less than 10 cents of every dollar actually go to the campaign they were aiming to help. Fisher herself complained that what little money BMW Direct did raise was so unpredictable and arrived so late in the campaign that it didn't really help. The only party to this arrangement who came out ahead was BMW Direct.
According to Gehrke, we're not taking into account certain intangibles, like building name recognition and improving the GOP brand:
"Is it worth it? Yes. If she doesn't win this year, maybe she ends up turning it into a state senate seat a few years later and then runs for Congress again. Going into a district where Republicans have not traditionally competed and having a black doctor on the ballot is a way of saying this is not your father's Republican Party. This is what building a party is about. This is what expanding your coalition is about. The point is, it has value."
That may be one way of explaining why it's good for the GOP, which is already struggling to raise money and hold on to House seats this year, to lose millions of its donors' dollars to the churn of direct mail costs. It doesn't explain why donors and candidates alike are being played for dupes.
Maybe we just don't understand.
Some right-wing blogs have taken up a concerted defense of BMW Direct in the past few days, claiming that the BMW Direct business model makes perfect sense, unless you're ignorant of the way direct mail works.
Mark Hemingway at NRO's The Corner, proclaims that "whether the candidate gets 5 percent or 75 percent -- it's basically free money to them." The reason for the scrutiny, according to Hemingway, is that the left is trying to undermine the GOP's advantage in direct mail by painting direct mail firms as "the used car salesmen of politics."
Michael Krempasky at RedState (husband of former DOJ darling Monica Goodling) gives a nod to left-wing conspiracy theories, but ultimately dismisses us as oblivious:
"Every year, we see it again: shrieking, hand-wringing, gloating (?) lefties pointing fingers at Republican direct mail fundraisers. Trouble is, they don't seem to have much idea what they're talking about."
We're not alone apparently. It took Ada Fisher an entire campaign to figure out how the game is played.
--David Kurtz
Wolfson Signs on With FOX
Chief Hillary flak Howard Wolfson joins the FOX News team as a contributor.
--David Kurtz
TPMtv: Iraq Backtrack Flak
The McCain camp has jumped all over Obama's statement last week that he would continue to "refine" his Iraq policy following a planned upcoming meeting with military leaders in the country. Obama says he's remained totally consistent, but Joe Lieberman and the Fox News Sunday "All-Star Panel" beg to differ ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Ben Craw
Very Interesting
Marcus Brauchli, one of the more high-profile cases of Murdoch roadkill over at the Wall Street Journal will be replacing Len Downie as Executive Editor of the Washington Post.
--Josh Marshall
U.S. Blocks Payments To Gitmo Attorneys
According to the ACLU, the federal government has prevented them from paying their attorneys who currently represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The Treasury Department has told the ACLU that it needs to obtain a special clearance to proceed.
First GOP Rep Retracts Phony Oil Drilling Myth
The truth will set you free! Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk has come to his senses and acknowledged that no, China is not drilling for oil off the coast of Florida.
Does McCain Camp Screen Reporters On Calls?
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- 43,000 Sign Petition To Strip Lieberman Of Senate Chairmanship
- ACLU: U.S. Blocking Payments To Gitmo Attorneys
- Waxman Threatens Attorney General With Contempt
- Congressional Approval Rating In Single Digits
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- Weapons Firm Tied To Ex-GOP Rep Fends Off Forgery Charges
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