Opinion: McCain strategist Steve Schmidt outlines GOP endgame plans
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Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s campaign manager, was on talk radio this week talking amid considerable poll turbulence about the endgame they plan as time continues to tick away for the Republican come-from-behinder.
Schmidt was talking with Scott Hennen, one of the Midwest’s top conservative regional radio hosts, and professed confidence while admitting trailing.
‘The race is tightening through last week and this week,’ Schmidt said. ‘We’re being badly outspent. Clearly, much of the national media has decided that the race is over. Or they want it to be over.
‘We have some challenges in that environment. But the crowds are huge. We think we’re behind 5 or 6 points nationally.’
He added: ‘We’re going to focus very directly coming down the stretch about his inexperience to deal with international crises. We’re going to talk very directly about his bad economic ideas -- his plans to raise taxes to increase spending in a recession, to put this country into a depression.”
Hennen, who was featured in The Ticket during the Republican National Convention, asked Schmidt about Barack Obama’s oft-mentioned....
...tax cut for 95% of Americans. (To see that past Ticket item, including a video on Hennen, go here.)
‘Here is what is important to remember about his tax cut or quote-end-quote tax cut’ Schmidt said, ‘when you judge it against the ‘spread the wealth’ comment, his 95% tax cut. That is a government check for millions of people who do not pay federal income tax, written to people by people who do pay federal income tax...That’s not a tax cut, that’s a social welfare program, a European-style social welfare program, and we don’t do that in this country.”
‘And then the second thing to consider: when you have a trillion job dollars in new spending promises, above and beyond the $700-billion bailout package, and your running mate says it’s patriotic to pay higher taxes, how long do you think it’s going to be after Inauguration Day should he be elected, before this country is told it’s time to be patriotic and pay more taxes for his spending programs?”
The Hennen program is part of a network across North Dakota and into Minnesota based out of AM 1100, The Flag out of Fargo. The entire interview transcript is available here. And you can listen to the conversation by clicking here.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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