McCains’ Rapidly Changing Message On Those Critical of Obama

John McCain came out with two negative ads after Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate, but the Republicans don’t seem to realize that they are making contradictory points. The first ad brought up the inevitable clip of Biden criticizing Obama during the primary campaign. I’m sure that soon we will be seeing plenty of clips of Mitt Romney attacking John McCain, especially if Romney becomes his running mate.

The second ad goes to a richer source of attacks on Obama by quoting Hillary Clinton. The message in this ad is a claim that Obama did not put Clinton on the ticket because he could not tolerate someone who had previously criticized him. This is immediately disproven by the first ad which shows that Obama’s pick was also someone who had criticized him. Obviously Obama is beyond such pettiness.

When Steve Benen moved from The Carpetbagger Report to The Political Animal on Friday I hope he remembered to pack his definitive list of McCain Flip Flops. McCain sure flip-flopped in one day on his message of whether Obama would choose a running mate who had criticized him.

This ad is also directed towards attempting to get Clinton supporters to vote for McCain. I imagine a few Clinton die hards will vote for the guy who promises to try to bring back shirt hanger abortions, but in the end I doubt the majority will. Obama is in a great position if he has a slight lead in the polls despite lacking the backing of a chunk of pro-choice Democrats. There’s a lot of room for upward movement there, which won’t be changed by an ad from John McCain.

Update: Hillary Clinton’s response (via Marc Ambinder):

“Hillary Clinton’s support of Barack Obama is clear. She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn’t. It’s interesting how those remarks didn’t make it into his ad.”

1 Comment

  1. 1
    Jerry says:

    I try not to be cynical, but when it comes to McCain I have to be.  His camp understands that Hillary’s supporters don’t care about a logical attack against Obama.  They just want some words to hang their disgruntlement on.  The Hillary ad sounds like a bone for them.  McCain is just complying.

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