anitram said:
I thought King McCain had this thing in the bag????
Isn't that what you've been telling us over and over and over again? That there was no point in even having an election? Did we all dream that up?
[q]
McCain Revamps His Fund-Raising
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON, April 3 — Lagging in fund-raising and under fire for his support of the Iraq war, Senator John McCain is overhauling his campaign finance operation and delaying the official announcement of his candidacy, his aides said Tuesday.
They said he would adopt the kind of big-donor fund-raising program pioneered by President Bush and give a speech explaining his support for the administration’s troop buildup in Iraq.
The maneuvers come at a time of sharp anxiety in Mr. McCain’s camp, especially over his fund-raising, which is trailing all the major Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
The concern grew after his visit to Iraq over the weekend, when he asserted that conditions there were improving.
Mr. McCain’s aides said that to deal with his fund-raising problems, he would adopt what had been a centerpiece of Mr. Bush’s fund-raising technique, and one that has been embraced by most major presidential candidates: creating an honorary campaign designation to reward the campaign’s top money raisers. Mr. Bush called his Rangers and Pioneers; Mr. McCain will call his the McCain 100’s, for supporters who collect $100,000 for the campaign, and the McCain 200’s, who collect $200,000.
Mr. McCain has been identified throughout his career as an advocate of curbing the influence of money in politics, notably as a co-sponsor of a landmark bill limiting political contributions. He criticized Mr. Bush, when the two were opponents in 2000, as leading overly aggressive fund-raising efforts.
Mr. McCain has also enlisted two senior advisers and put them in charge of a fund-raising effort that campaign aides described bluntly as being in disarray and without a single person in charge. They are Tom Loeffler, a former Texas congressman who was named the campaign’s national campaign finance chairman, and Steve Schmidt, who ran Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most recent campaign in California.
Mr. McCain’s aides said his problems arose because contributors, staff members — and perhaps Mr. McCain himself — had been lulled into complacency after a year in which they had systematically portrayed his nomination as inevitable.
“This is a moment that has truly defined what needs to be done with respect to political fund-raising,” said Mr. Loeffler, whom Mr. McCain elevated to run the fund-raising effort at the first signs of trouble three weeks ago. “What it has shown for this team is that this is not a jog. This is a sprint.”
John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s senior adviser, said: “We have a responsibility to make sure this doesn’t happen again and that we fix it. We take that seriously.”
Mr. McCain held only three fund-raisers in January and February, they said. Mr. McCain’s aides said that they had spent Tuesday in conference calls with contributors across the country and that they were loading Mr. McCain’s schedule through the spring with fund-raisers to try to recover.
At the same time, Mr. McCain will, upon his return from Iraq, deliver what his aides said would be a major speech at the Virginia Military Institute that will argue that the troop escalation was showing signs of success and urging Americans to back the war effort. The speech will take place on April 11, the day on which Mr. McCain had been scheduled to formally enter the race.
The candidate’s coming speech on the war, too, comes as Democrats are assailing Mr. McCain as having an overly optimistic view of conditions in Iraq, where he toured a Baghdad market while clad in a bulletproof vest and protected by helicopters and armed guards.
Democrats suggested that Mr. McCain had become so committed to building up forces, a stance he has long favored, and that he had linked his fortunes to the war so much that he failed to appreciate what was happening there now.[/q]
poor, delusional old fool. yet, when you debase yourself at the foot of the Bushies for 7 years, what do you expect?