The Candidates
Reaction to McCain’s speech at VMI on Wednesday is still pouring in. A day after the speech, more than 200 veterans around the country endorsed McCain’s candidacy and his campaign unveiled veteran supporters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
In responding to the speech, the Washington Times called it a “Churchillian Address” and George Will compared McCain to Lincoln.
Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America. McCain knows this, but is undeterred. During Vietnam, McCain risked and nearly lost his life. Regarding Iraq, he is risking the great goal of his life. There is only one precedent for the position of dependency McCain has put himself in. In 1864, President Lincoln’s re-election perhaps depended on a general’s success on Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September. McCain’s candidacy is in General Petraeus’s pocket.
McCain granted a lengthy interview to the New York Times’ Michael Gordon and Adam Nagourney yesterday in which he greatly elaborated his position on Iraq. This is a must read. The Times also has an accompanying front page article based on the interview.
The speech also had a very noticeable impact on his fundraising. Fred Barnes notes that it caused “an immediate fourfold increase in McCain’s online fundraising.”
That should help with his second quarter numbers after an admittedly lackluster first quarter. Speaking of which, McCain has $5.2 million cash on hand compared to Romney’s $11.9 million and Giuliani’s $10.8 million.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
McCain was the best tonight at the dinner, from what I saw, along with Tommy Thompson, who was quite a show.. I updated the survey in the forum below that was held after the dinner.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I missed Guiliani, so I couldn’t compare him.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
You know, I love John McCain, and have said nothing but nice things about his candidacy. He’d easily be my second choice after Romney, and I believe would make a fine president. But I watched the first 6-8 minutes of McCain’s VMI address on C-SPAN and to be honest, I thought it was pretty unremarkable. I began watching something. Did he improve quite a bit after that? I mean, the message was quite sound and welcome, but from what I saw, the delivery wasn’t terribly impressive.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
The highlights I saw were excellent. He got hammered the next day by Dems on cable news. No idea how it will play out.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I read the transcript of the interview at the New York Times, and it was a pretty good interview. I’m with you, Matt–if Romney weren’t in the race, McCain would definitely be my guy. Although I support his view on the war, it seems like there’s very little that he focuses on outside of the war. He’s got this one topic he talks about, and nothing else. I like Romney’s ability to focus on and talk about many different topics, and do so coherently and intelligently.
If Romney loses at the primaries, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that McCain wins it. I guess we’ll see…
Hava
http://mittforpresident.wordpress.com/
April 15th, 2007 at 12:24 am
I agree with Matt. The speech, in my opinion, was nothing too spectacular. There were some good lines and it was consistent with what you would expect McCain to say about Iraq. However, I think Fred Barnes analysis of the speech was way off the mark. If people think McCain can turn his ship around with his VMI speech, or with his Iraq policy, then they have another thing coming. Even the most staunch of war supporters, such as myself, can see that everything in Iraq now is simply damage control. And I dont see that changing between now and 2008.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
[...] http://race42008.com/2007/04/14/the-mccain-roundup/ [...]
April 16th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
This is just a brief note to let you know that “McCain 2008″ - votemccain.blogspot.com, cited this article in one of his posts. I then incorporated it into “Musings on McCain”, the regular feature that collects what everyone in the new media/McCain blogger/blogosphere has to say on the campaign.
I think that the Fred Barnes article that was linked in here was probably the most important of the many useful facts included in this post.
I should note that Campaignia, although it covers the McCain campaign, is about campaigns, per se, and as such I hope that it would be of interest to anyone who follows campaigns. I am in the process of collecting other political links for the site. I would like to ask the Romney supporters in particular, if they would mind taking a look at the main site and contributing their feedback.