How to Attack McCain in NH
by Patrick Ruffini :: December 23rd, 2007 3:53 pmJohn McCain is practically tied in New Hampshire.
As someone who drove the six hours to Manchester to volunteer for Bush in 2000, I’ve seen this movie before and I don’t like how it ends.
How do you jam up McCain’s momentum in New Hampshire? It won’t be on immigration or taxes or campaign finance reform — the standard litany of reasons why conservatives hate McCain. This is New Hampshire, and any such effort will be seen “typical Republican vs. maverick McCain,” playing directly into the Arizonans hands. Remember that McCain has a huge fount of independent votes to draw from, that he’s competing with Obama, and that he could easily put together a primary plurality with tax cut and immigration agnostics.
I think the answer here is to attack his strength. Muddy the waters and contaminate his message. Call into question his maverickness. Brand him with the tagline “Independent… When It’s Convenient.” Remind people that right before “rediscovering” his maverick roots, he was running as a standard Bush-issue Republican, taking cash from lobbyists, shilling for Cablevision, and running as George W. Bush’s rightful heir.
In New Hampshire, McCain brands himself as a longtime critic of our Iraq strategy. And yet for four years, he was one of the war’s staunchest defenders. He criticized Don Rumsfeld, and yet he campaigned strongly for President Bush in 2004, who could have fired the Defense Secretary at any moment and was ultimately responsible for the strategy. McCain is smart enough to know that the buck stops at the President’s desk, yet he conveniently “forgot” this just in time to run for President. Is McCain somehow implying — in a Republican primary — that the President was being manipulated by his own Secretary of Defense and Vice President? If so, he’s echoing the left’s insulting rhetoric.
None of this is to take issue with where McCain has been right on the war. Rather, it’s a question of wanting to have it both ways. Someone who acts like a holier-than-thou crusader shouldn’t act like a Washington insider or pretend he was a war critic when his bottom line has always strong support from the war and the President. It all leads to the question of… Which John McCain would lead?
I would envision a series of ads around this theme launching right after Christmas — tease them on the Web on the 26th and start running them on the 27th. Do one on some sort of questionable post-Keating quid-pro-quo that’s evocative of the Drudge hit of last week without referencing it directly. Then play back his pro-war rhetoric, in contrast to his disingenuous claim of being a war critic (it’s not that he didn’t criticize — it’s that he wants New Hampshire voters to think he was exclusively a critic before the surge).
Attacking off the beaten path is unexpected, throws him off balance, and is more likely to make him lose his cool. Save the immigration and taxes stuff for Michigan and South Carolina. It’s time to deflate McCain’s tires a bit with New Hampshire independents and buck up Obama, giving us a non-McCain nominee and dragging out the Democratic primary for as long as possible.
Tagged: john mccain 
new hampshire strategy
Comments (11) 
Trackbacks (0) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
You can do your worst and it will not stop the mccainiaks because in ZZ Tops infamous words we are wall-to-wall and nation wide. We are everywhere just out of sight but always with in range to take care of anything that needs taken care of. Where do you think that this surge came from out of the sky? The people are beginning to actually look at the candidates and they have realized that there is only one and that this Senator John McCain and just think we have never had to even stoop to the things like what you are plotting in this blog. We have never attacked any of the candidates other than to state facts and that is all that some of the candidates have done is attack us and to no avail I wonder why that is? could it be that Senator McCain can stand on his own merit and the other candidates well they don’t have any.
Talk about desperate. It wasn’t enough to smear McCain in 2000 and attack his record. Since McCain doesn’t agree with you and your far-right buddies, he must be politically stopped. get a grip buddy. Bush was a failure and McCain is the only chancehe GOP has.
Immigration is in many ways simply a vehicle. If Ruffini wants to stop McCain, let me suggest finding people who are lawyers or who otherwise are familiar with “cross-examining” people. And, make sure that they’re familiar with immigration matters at a deep level.
Then, send them to appearances by McCain together with a video camera, and have them ask him a series of questions with the goal of revealing that he’s a liar and/or he can’t think things through. Then, upload his response to video sharing sites.
Once again, immigration is just a vehicle to be used to show that McCain is a liar and/or someone who can’t think things through.
My McCain example is a year old, but here’s an example for Obama:
youtube.com/watch?v=Z0zfEXqND_s
Hillary:
youtube.com/watch?v=Q_l4Lawj14A
And Huck:
youtube.com/watch?v=1KxDhesWutc
Asking questions like that will also reveal how incompetent the MSM is.
http://www.rightwingnews.com/category.php?ent=5365
The Conservative Case against John McCain - MUST READ
If McCain’s Gang of 14 RINO antics were not enough, his latest SHAMNESTY for illegal aliens should disqualify him from ever being our president. McCain rejected all that was good about Bush and embraced the worst — amnesty.
Other reasons not to trust him:
1) McCain was against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them
2) McCain supported banning gay marriage until he opposed it –Voted NO on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006) Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
3)McCain calls himself pro-life but wants to fund embryonic stem cell research with YOUR money even though there are alternative ways to do this research
4)McCain voted to give illegal aliens social security benefits!!!!
5)McCain & Huck only two to buy into the ALGore Global Warming hysteria and proposed non-conservative Kyoto-like proposals in response.
So Patrick your strategy is to blur the truth with untrue innuendo?
I hope the American people are smarter than to fall for such claptrap.
I knew you were a shill for Rudy, but I’m surprised you are so shrill about McCain as your guy fades off towards irrelevancy.
McCain is clearly the best choice for preventing a 2nd round of the Clintons or a disastrous 1st round with Obama.
He’s also the only choice for POTUS that will make me feel secure in the scary world we live in. Mitt would consult with focus groups on what to do, while Rudy would concentrate on the politics of the latest scandal in his administration. Only McCain would provide real leadership when America needs it most (which is before the next big terrorist attack not after).
McCain is a respected VietNam hero and cannot say anything wrong on or about him. He has served his time in government honorably. BUT today is today. We need real strength in Washington. AND MITT ROMNEY IS THE ANSWER. Romney is by far the best GOP candidate today. Yes, Mitt will have my vote for President of this USA.
Ha, Mitt is the one who gives you strength? Is that because as a young man he garnered the courage to swim beyond the sand bar and out into the deep water of Lake Michigan?!?! Is that where he got his strength…what a laugher. Mitt is a TOTAL PHONEY. there is nothing he won’t say or do to get elected. He sucks and for some reason Mr. Ruffini is bagging our best candidate John McCain. Wake up Patrick!
I respect your belief Patrick…You must truly believe McCain will ruin our country or something… I feel like Rudy (as most Republicans and Conservatives do) would ruin our Party and America, but can you be a little less tacky?
I didn’t think you would get this desperate. How sad. This is not your typical work.
However your attempt to adapt Rove strategy fails and you watch: it won’t be picked up by a single campaign. We’ll talk after New Hampshire. You can be sure that like your previous McCain posts (like the one where you mentioned that McCain had cut internet advertising, or the time you said McCain was done, or the time where you stated that Ferry was off the campaign and failed to report that he volunteered and then went on to move ranks…) this will be brought to your attention the moment your proved wrong.
Oh and remember you talking about Ron Paul winning the Iowa Straw Poll. Haha.
Step up your game. You’re a force within the Party, I just hate to see your track record so full of blatant acts of desperation.
For the record: I support McCain. I don’t come out with posts asking people to act like madmen and start attacking Rudy’s accomplishments or bringing them into questioning. It’s tacky.
What a great strategy prepared by Patrick Ruffini, the servant of all possible impostors. Shame is dead for such a character, for if this was a man of some spinal movement, would have never boasted for his participation in the stabbing of the ONLY real American hero Republicans have. But Judas will still be around even two millenniums later, they are an old kind that smell money whenever they go. After this is over and done Ruffini will be thinking who is going to pay him and his company for the executions to come in the next election cycle. One day though he is going to learn the hard way and for an eternal period of time that “You can not serve God and mammon”!
Not to worry. We have a secret weapon in NH and he’s doing to do better than McCain. McCain is just another elitist poser.