McCain may not speak for the McCain campaign
The Tax Policy Center prepared an interesting report (pdf) this week, noting the key differences between the economic policies articulated by John McCain and the economic policies presented by John McCain’s presidential campaign. There’s a bit of a gap — to the tune of $2.8 trillion (that’s “trillion,” with a “t”).
According to the study, the tax plan McCain’s campaign laid out privately is different from the one he’s selling on the stump. If you include the policies he has advocated publicly—such as repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, increasing the dependent exemption to $7,000 right away, and reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent immediately—then the deficit after 10 years would actually be $2.8 trillion greater than if you go by his private plan. There’s also a rhetorical gap for Obama, but in his case the public version generates more revenue than the private one, thanks to a suggested hike in payroll taxes for people who make $250,000 or more.
How does the McCain campaign respond to this? As it turns out, hilariously.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, told Slate, “[McCain] has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.”
Got that? If we want to better understand John McCain’s economic policies, we should overlook what John McCain says about his economic policies. McCain’s “official” positions don’t come from McCain.
As Yglesias summarized, “Basically, the McCain campaign’s position is that their candidate should be allowed to produce one set of “official” numbers for the purposes of expert scrutiny. But when going around the country talking to voters, McCain should be allowed to produce a different set of “unofficial” proposals — perhaps made with his fingers crossed behind his back — that are designed to trick voters into believing he means what he says, while really they’re just unofficial proposals he doesn’t mean. Or something.”
Wonk Room dug a little deeper.
Two problems: the numbers Holtz-Eakin gave to the Tax Policy Center in their initial analysis weren’t available to “anyone who asks,” and pointing out the gaping distinctions between what McCain says on the stump and what his advisers say in private, is far from parsing.
For months, the McCain campaign had not offered specific numbers on his profligate budget proposals. In June, Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition, a prominent advocacy group for balanced budgets, told Bloomberg news: “I haven’t received anything, and if some of the other groups have then I’ll be really ticked off…If he’s got some more complete budget proposal he can send I’d love to get it.”
Detailed figures did finally appear publicly in the first Tax Policy Center report and later in the Washington Post, but are still not available on the campaign’s web site. And no wonder: there are still serious inconsistencies between what his advisers provide to the wonks at the Tax Policy Center (and the editorial board of the Washington Post) and what appears on McCain’s web site and in his stump speeches.
As Douglas Holtz-Eakin himself has said, only “Senator McCain speaks for Senator McCain.” Silly us, we believed him.
Let this be a lesson to all of us — according to the McCain campaign, we shouldn’t take too seriously the things John McCain actually tells us. Good to know.
The economic plans of John McCain depend on whatever Wall St and Club for “Growth” tell him it’s supposed to be much like his oil exploration and energy policies.
you are not a report. you are a propaganda rag for one of the presidential candidates
So consider this from the recent Blitzer interview of McCain in which McCain reveals his understanding of what it means to be a politician.
McCain tries to explain why Maliki’s call for a withdrawal isn’t a call for withdrawal. The reason is that Maliki is a politician trying to win an elections. Once he has won the elections, he’ll use the conditions on the ground loophole to go back on his word. That you see is what politicians do according to McCain, the politician.
To summarize, McCain is a politician. According to McCain, politicians lie to win elections. It therefore follows that McCain will lie to win this election.
Wanker trolls don’t like to be confronted with REPORTS of their side’s shortcomings – so they try to pretend it’s something else. Wank away Dieter – but would you mind pulling your shades down so we don’t have to know you’re doing it?
What a maverick: he even talks against his own positions. He’s so mavericky that he even opposes himself. It must be tough to be John McCains.
@2,
One McCain Point.
It would have been 5 if you had asked anyone to play with your monkey.
Is it any wonder, then, that a current conservative article of faith expects ignorance, even outright stupidity, to be looked upon as virtuous?
(Especially if you’re among the ranks of the Great Unwashed that The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang claims to appeal to. The same ones, unfortunately, who accept Fox Prolefeed’s Weltanschauung unfailingly, and without question or reservation; any attempt to challenge same being looked upon as nothing short of failing G-d and Country.)
Sounds like the perfect candidate for my vote. He’s already shoveling shit like there’s no tomorrow, so when he’s president, the country will get exactly what he campaigned on.
McCain may not speak for the McCain campaign
LOL Thanks for starting my surfing day off with a laugh.
If Deiter wanks while discussing politics does that make him a wonker?
Seems pretty clear to me. Only McSame speaks for McSame, except for when he says something stupid, in which case he doesn’t.
You “do” know who this Holtz-Eakin character is, don’t you?
No? Well, then, it seems a wee bit of a refresher course is called for:
http://www.accf.org/
ACCF is where “Dougie” cut his teeth. Things like “cost-effective environmental policies” that are founded on—and secondary to—unrestricted capital formation and economic growth. ACCF was also one of the big movers-n-shakers behind the drive to “outsource” American jobs (China’s “environmental policies” are so much more cost-effective than our own).
ACCF is also one of the big engines behind the drive to move toward unrestricted offshore drilling.
When a guy like Holtz-Eakin pops out from under a McCain rock, it becomes all too obvious that McCain himself is, in all likelihood, nothing more than a false-front mechanism for something altogether more sinister than anything ever before experienced in the United States. Fascism on steroids, perhaps?
When a guy like Holtz-Eakin pops out from under a McCain rock, it becomes all too obvious that McCain himself is, in all likelihood, nothing more than a false-front mechanism for something altogether more sinister
After Dumbya, puppet for (a) the Nixon Avengers (Cheney, Rumsfeld) and (b) the Think Tank Neo Con Chickenhawks (Wolfie, Perle), I suspect many on the right will see this as SOP from now on.
How did the Republican’t party pick this guy again?
Oh yah, he was the 5 foot something “Giant” amongst a crowd of dwarfs.
11.
On July 27th, 2008 at 12:37 pm, Steve said:
“When a guy like Holtz-Eakin pops out from under a McCain rock, it becomes all too obvious that McCain himself is, in all likelihood, nothing more than a false-front mechanism for something altogether more sinister than anything ever before experienced in the United States. Fascism on steroids, perhaps?”
That’s all Shruby has been though he may not have known it in the beginning. He may still be too stupid to have grasped, (or been able to acknowledge), his true purpose. He got his “talking to” somewhere around 9/11, (a little bewildered during the Pet Goat period but he got with the program quickly), and has been a perfect vessel ever since.
Oh jeez. I just went to the link for ACCF. American Council for Capital Formation. Just show us the money. The only thing worth spending any time on is the accrual of private fortunes. That will be untaxed private fortunes please.
McBush is a punch drunk bookies runner with a shot at becoming a Mafia Don. He doesn’t want to get caught doing whatever it takes but he want’s to be the guy at the top as bad as anything he’s ever wanted. Besides, he’s a daft old fucker who’s paid his dues. He’s owed this G’ damn it and folks just need to get in line behind the new, (very old), boss.
Neither he nor Shruby are leaders but they were tapped as malleable putz’s who craved the mantle and would say anything to get it.
Trojan horses infected with a fascistic AID$ virus they want us all to catch. Our immune system is weakened and vulnerable and they smell the rot. Smells like money. And right now our gov’t is full of folks just like them.
Mondale would have wiped the floor with guy. Maybe even Stockdale.
We learned from Lincoln Chaffee after the 2000 campaign that Boy George II didn’t speak for his administration. Dick Cheney told him so.
With the same barrel scrappings running his oepration, is it any surprise that JSMcC*nt doesn’t speak for his campaign?
to Dale in 9, it makes Dieter a wonky wanker monkey spanker.
rxbusa said:
to Dale in 9, it makes Dieter a wonky wanker monkey spanker.
That’s it!
This is a fine example of McCain’s “smoke and mirrors” economic policy. Also, McCain is now inside the minds of the Iraqi Prime Minister and Barack Obama. He claims to know these people so well that he challenges their statements, saying he knows better what these are thinking. Speaking of arrogance or simply being disconnected with reality.
…it makes Dieter a wonky wanker monkey spanker.
But—wouldn’t that require that he first have in his possession a spankable wanker? He just comes across as someone who’s been thoroughly “Bobbittized….”
Why am I not surprised? This is just more of the usual Mc Same Old BushSpeak. Its what republicans do best, lie to the American people as a matter of policy and campaign tactics. After all, you can fool some of the people all the time.
Hey Dieter, please present some facts or thoughts on the above article instead of a blanket dismissal.
Makes you look like a whore if you don’t.
I’m sure you have it in you. Come on, just one counterpoint. Just one. You can do it.
Interesting- just 15 mins ago FOX News ran a story about this same report but stated that Obama’s plan would create the $2.8 Trillion debt while McCain’s would be $4.9 Trillion. Which is it?? Is FOX guilty of fudging?
I picture a USPS/UPS/FedEx guy with a package of votes that requires a signature looking in the windows of the house matching the package’s address. He hears noises coming from it, there are lots of voices murmuring, he thinks he sees someone peeking through the curtains but when he tries to look, the curtains are rustling back into place.
Maybe the UPS guy will leave the package anyway even if no one talks to him, hoping that the guy inside who’s supposed to get em does, but the poor delivery guy is frustrated as all get out and wonders what kind of emotional toddler is making him late for the rest of his work.
Par for the course – he’s already campaigning against his own Senate bills on immigration & tax reform. John Sidney McCain III is a puppet & the hand up his butt is Wall Street’s … just don’t ask him anything when they take a drink.
I’ve read McCain’s official platform and it reads like a copy of what we have now. So, whatever he’s saying is not what is in his official platform, which is all Republican Bushisms.
so what he says is not his platform or is it not what his campaign says, or what they have written or perhaps the website they have. hhmmm, is he perhaps just a confused old man who maybe needs to take a nap.
Mr. McCain has become a poorly written parody of his original bio. He is morphing into Cotton Hill daily.
One after another, he continues to abandon the anchor tenets of his political promises. He is even changing his supposedly sacred captivity story. How can he change that?
Now he uses the very wounded troops he pretends to love to invent an ad and a stump issue that he delivers like a punchline from a hateful joke followed by his laughing. He has changed, he is being led by others right now, and he has lost what ever ground he had to speak from.
This is going to come back to bite him, because the pendulum has to swing both ways, and when the media realizes they HAVE TO scrutinize him he is going to look like what he is, a politician puffed up by sophistry and ugly meaningless diatribe after diatribe.
He has become hateful, angry, frustrated, and it shows on his face.