IOWA
PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
Iowa...
Where Presidents Begin
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on each candidate to see today's news stories
(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Monday, Sept. 1, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Family
values challenge -
National GOP convention learns the news that Palin's
17-year-old daughter is pregnant. The story broke as a
result of an Associated Press article:
click
Obama: People's families
are off limits"
"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."
On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs:
"I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us," he said. "Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired."
Gustav wipes out GOP convention opener
John McCain told reporters via satellite Sunday that most opening day activities of the Republican National Convention will be suspended because of the threat from Hurricane Gustav.
“Of course, this is a time when we have to do away with our party politics, and we have to act as Americans,” he told a convention news conference from St. Louis. “We’re going to suspend most of our activities tomorrow.”
Four days of festivities were to open Monday, but now a party business session is all that is scheduled.
President Bush, first lady Laura Bush, Vice President Cheney and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger all canceled Monday appearances. Bush is likely to address the nation, instead, if killer Gustav does not veer off its path toward the Gulf Coast.
Convention planners said McCain hopes to show up later in the week to accept his party’s nomination, but there was no guarantee of it, and he is not required to be in the hall for the nomination to be official.
see also:
McCain, Palin receive Hurricane Gustav briefing
McCain says Palin a better leader than Obama
McCain
said that Palin's experience included "travelling to Kuwait, including
being involved in these issues, and look, I'm so proud that she has
displayed the kind of judgment and she has the experience and judgment
as an executive. She's run a huge economy up there in the state of
Alaska. Twenty percent of our energy comes from the state of Alaska,
and energy is obviously one of the key issues for our nation's
security."
McCain said that "as governor, she has had enormous responsibilities, none of which Senator Obama had. When she was in government, he was a community organizer. When she was taking tough positions against her own party, Senator Obama was voting present 130 times in the state legislature. On every tough issue, whatever it was, she was taking them on. That's the kind of judgment that I'm confident that we need in Washington."
McCain's pick of Palin may
foster
bigger campaign roll for Hillary Clinton
Advisers
to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Sunday that Senator John
McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate
would lead to a greater role for Mrs. Clinton as she campaigned this
fall on behalf of her former rival, Senator Barack Obama.
Mrs. Clinton’s friends said she was galled that Ms. Palin might try to capitalize on a movement that Mrs. Clinton, of New York, built among women in the primaries. And Democrats used strong words on Sunday to rebut the notion: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that women would not be “seduced” by the Republican ticket, and Guy Cecil, the former political director of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, said it was “insulting” for Republicans to compare Ms. Palin to Mrs. Clinton.
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain & Sarah Palin... today's headlines with excerpts
McCain
brings in $47 million in August
Republican presidential candidate John McCain raised at least $47 million in August, his biggest haul of money so far and a sign that he is dispelling doubts about his campaign among conservative donors.
...the biography of relatively unknown Sarah Palin was being snapped up by people eager to learn more about John McCain's choice for VP.
Today the book -- "Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear," by Kaylene Johnson -- is at No. 12 in all of books on Amazon. It is the No. 1 bestseller in Biographies & Memoirs of Women and also No. 1 in Biographies & Memoirs of Leaders and Notable People -- Politicians.
The Newsweek cover
The September 8, 2008 Special Republican Convention Issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, September 1), opens with Editor Jon Meacham's essay and interview with John McCain on his relationship with his parents and their influence.
Plus: a profile of Gov. Palin and what she brings to this historic race...
With Palin on the ticket, Evangelicals are energized
Outside his evangelical church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sunday, David Chung was mobbed by friends and church members suddenly excited about the Republican ticket. "I had half a dozen people come up to me," said Chung, a delegate to the Republican National Convention. "It's a night-and-day change."
For Christian conservatives, who watched with dismay as their issues were ignored or trivialized during the long Republican primary, the surprise addition to the GOP ticket of a woman raised in a Pentecostal church, who once described herself as "pro-life as any candidate can be," has transformed an election many had come to regard with indifference. Now Republicans such as Reed -- who describes the Palin selection as a "shot directly into the heart of the evangelical movement" -- hope the party will benefit in November from a crucial part of its base that is as energized as the young supporters of Democrat Barack Obama.
David Broder: How Palin could help
... without realizing it, Obama may have boosted the odds on this gamble paying off.
Obama began his campaign for the nomination as the outsider candidate, promising fundamental change in Washington and offering a post-partisan approach to politics. With time, he has come to be seen as a much more conventional Democrat who is now half of a ticket based in Congress, the least admired institution in a widely scorned capital. Millions who saw his acceptance speech heard a standard recital of liberal Democratic programs.
By picking Palin, McCain has strengthened his reputation not as an ideologue, not as a partisan, but as a reformer -- ready to shake up Washington as his hero, Teddy Roosevelt, once did. My guess is that cleansing Washington of its poisonous partisanship, its wasteful spending and its incompetence will become McCain's major theme.
Palin urges Gulf Coast's residents to evacuate
“As governor of Alaska, I recently just signed a disaster declaration myself, when the people of the Fairbanks region, they faced the worst rainfall and flooding in decades,” Palin said. “And when any governor calls for an evacuation, these instructions need to be taken very seriously.”
Palin also echoed the advanced thanks McCain offered to the relief workers that will undoubtedly be involved in any kind of clean up efforts.
“As we’ve seen in other disasters, crisis on this scale can bring out the best in our country. They show the resourcefulness,” she said to the roar of applause, “the resourcefulness of people shined through and the heroic kindness of which we are capable.”
Boehner on Palin: Nobody's qualified on the first day
Pressed on whether Republican Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, is truly ready to be vice president, or president if need be, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said that no one is truly ready to be president.
It was an echo of former President Bill Clinton, who at one point said the same regarding Barack Obama. The former president, at last week’s Democratic National Convention, gave Obama a more full-throated endorsement, saying he is ready to be president now...
Barack Obama & Joe Biden... today's headlines with excerpts'
Comedy Central video... Barack Obama: He completes us
1,000 miles away, Obama deals with Hurricane Gustav
It’s a tricky thing, asking for votes at jubilant campaign rallies while thousands of miles South a natural disaster looms. Biden and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., have decided to handle it by mentioning Gustav frequently on the campaign trail, activating supporters, phoning federal, state, and local officials to be debriefed and to offer help – and otherwise to campaign as previously scheduled...
Obama 'tired of listening to folks who talk tough and act dumb on foreign policy
"We are going to change our foreign policy," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to a crowd of 17,500 in Battle Creek, Mich., this evening, "because I am tired of listening to folks who talk tough and act dumb."
Obama says McCain pick of
Palin won't change race dynamic
"My sense is that she subscribes to John McCain's agenda,'' Obama, 47, said of Palin during an interview on CBS News's ``60 Minutes'' program. The election ``is going to be about where I want to take the country, and where Joe Biden wants to take the country, and where John McCain and his running mate want to take the country.''
Obama's first shot at Palin focuses on equal pay
After praising Republican John McCain’s new running mate the past two days, Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday lobbed his first salvo at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Obama, while ticking off a list of promises to an excited crowd in Toledo, Ohio, committed to closing the income gap between genders, and then turned sharply to Palin, the first woman named to a Republican ticket.
She “seems like a very nice person,” he began, repeating remarks he’s made often since McCain announced her selection on Friday. “But I’ve got to say she’s opposed, like John McCain is, to equal pay for equal work. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
... RNC spokesperson Alex Conant responded to Obama’s comments: “With Americans putting politics aside and preparing for Hurricane Gustav, it’s unfortunate that Barack Obama is continuing to put politics first and attack John McCain and Sarah Palin. If a natural disaster is not enough to convince Obama to ease off the political attacks, then what is?”
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