McCain's New Trick: Paint Obama as a Job-Killing Machine (memo leaked)

[Yes We Did]

John McCain was widely ridiculed several weeks ago for fielding reporter's questions in the cheese aisle of a grocery store. But the location of the impromptu press conference was hardly random. The McCain camp, in a strategy memo, has pinpointed grocery stores as an important venue for the Senator to push his economic agenda.

In a McCain campaign "Economic Communications Plan" that was obtained by the Huffington Post, an aide to the Senator lays out several themes, tactics and objectives to shore up the Arizona Republican's standing on the economy and paint Barack Obama as a "job killing machine."

"Our polling tells us that Americans are still not tuned into what the candidates might do to fix the economy," reads the memo. "We have an opportunity to fill in that gap."

The strategy, which was authored by Taylor Griffin -- a veteran of the Bush White House and Treasury Department who serves McCain as a senior adviser -- seems built around traditional themes. The McCain campaign will paint Obama as being "aligned with trial lawyers" and "unions (card check, trade, education reform)," and push the frame that he "raises taxes" and "will kill jobs."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/07/leaked-mccain-memo-paint_n_117484.html

[ingac70]

1. So projection is the Repuke plan....

tell the voters your opponent is exactly what you are.

[MagickMuffin]

2. Well then he's playing with FIRE, and he's gonna get burned

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is in Wilmington, OH and being forced to address DHL’s merger with Airborne-Express, which may cost roughly 8,000 jobs in the area. In a private meeting, “residents will ask McCain for help in stopping DHL’s proposal to quit using the airport as a hub,” which would put the air park out of business.

Today, McCain is dealing with the fallout from the merger. But five years ago, McCain’s campaign manager lobbied heavily for the deal. The AP reports that Davis “lobbied the Senate to accept the proposal by DHL to buy Airborne Express for $1.05 billion.” Davis’s lobbying firm reaped the benefits:

Filings in the Senate show Davis’ lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, was hired to help both companies deal with Congress, where objections over DHL’s foreign ownership arose. Davis and a partner earned their firm $185,000 for the DHL-Airborne Express work that year, records show.

“McCain took steps that helped Davis’s clients” and thwarted Sen. Ted Stevens’s (R-AK) “effort to insert language into legislation that would prohibit foreign-controlled companies such as DHL from holding certain military contracts,” the Washington Post reported in June.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) called the situation “one of the worst job catastrophes that any community in this nation is facing.” Will McCain deliver straight talk about the role that he and his campaign manager had in helping shuttle through the DHL deal?

UPDATE: "McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, also had a role in the DHL deal with Airborne Express. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain urged then-Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to abandon proposed legislation that would have prohibited foreign-owned carriers from flying U.S. military equipment or troops. Airborne Express said the measure was aimed at torpedoing its merger with DHL."

http://thinkprogress.org/

His campaign manager IS a lobbyist after all and makes large sums of money.