campaign manager

It’s been 24 hours since we learned who Karen Kraushaar is and the Cain people are going into full attack. Let’s start off with a bald face lie being told by Cain’s campaign manager, Mark Block:

Herman Cain campaign manager Mark Block, in an appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox News just now, insisted that a relative of the second woman to publicly accuse the candidate of sexual harassment in the 1990s works at POLITICO.

"Her son works at POLITICO," Block said of Karen Kraushaar, whose name POLITICO printed earlier today after other media outlets made her identity public.

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"I've been hearing that all day - you've confirmed that now?" Hannity asked.

"We've confirmed that he does indeed work at POLITICO and that's his mother, yes," said Block.

Block appeared to be referring to former POLITICO reporter Josh Kraushaar, who left for another outlet, National Journal, in 2010.

Josh Kraushaar tweeted earlier in the day, apparently after getting questions, that he's in fact not related to Karen Kraushaar, and simply has the same last name.

A flat out lie being told by Cain’s people and they keep pushing it. But it also doesn’t stop there. Here’s a screen shot of a post on Herman Cain’s PAC:

Things are really looking bad for ole' Newt the adulterous Gingrich:

Newt Gingrich's campaign manager and numerous other key aides have resigned together, a strong blow to his hopes for the Republican presidential nomination.

Gingrich press spokesman Rick Tyler told The Associated Press that he's resigned along with campaign manager Rob Johnson, senior strategists and aides in key early primary states.

I really think Newt will go down as one of the most anticipated, fastest dying campaigns in the history of American politics.

Another reason why President Obama shouldn’t have done this deal with big phrama – they are cheaters:

“The states are the next battle,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now, “and the insurers and health care industry are primed up and ready to go. The industry has enormous power at the state level, and very few states have state-level consumer groups that are able to lobby effectively against them.”

Last year, for example, the drug industry poured more than $20 million into political contributions in states around the country. In California alone, the industry spent an additional $80 million on advertising to beat back a California ballot measure intended to push down drug prices.

Now, speaking on condition of anonymity because the pharmaceutical trade group is officially backing the federal overhaul, industry lobbyists say they are eyeing Congressional proposals that would expand a state’s Medicaid obligations, and are preparing to fight efforts to make some of it up by paying less for drugs. (A spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures said many states were contemplating just that.)

Time to call big pharma back into the White House and tell them the deal's off. After that get changes to the health care bill, including reimportation, that big pharma was against. These people have been screwing Americans over for years and they won't stop now.

Now that the election is over we start getting a bigger look into the inner workings of the McCain campaign:

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain, was fired from the Arizona senator's campaign last week for what one aide called "trashing" the campaign staff, three senior McCain advisers tell CNN.

One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading "disinformation" about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.

"He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain's campaign message," said one of the aides.

In contrast, what bad news did we ever hear from the Obama campaign? What "leaked information" from campaign insiders bad talking the campaign did we hear? The answer is none - something that might be a first in presidential politics.

Just now breaking - John McCain is "suspending his campaign" and wants the debate postponed due to the economic crisis.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out. McCain says he wants both campaigns suspended until this "crisis is resolved". Of course we don't know when that will be. Could this be a lead up to trying to suspend the election?

It really seems rather "convenient" for McCain to do this on a day that a national poll finds him down by 9 points and more news comes out about his embattled campaign manager. It really sounds like a political game McCain is trying to play. To me it sounds like McCain is saying the Senate and Congress are too incompetent to handle this without him or Obama there. Listening to Rham Emanuel, it seems like there is a consensus on that view also.

UPDATE:

David Kurtz points out that the networks aired McCain addressing this and that it was pre-recorded. It sounds like he was playing a timing game on this, which makes it sound far more political.

Think Progress also points out that just yesterday, when McCain was asked about the bailout plan, he said he hadn't had time to read it. The plan is only 3 pages and McCain couldn't read it? Yeah - McCain don't care about the economy, he only cares about winning. I really hope the Obama campaign calls his bluff on this. Perhaps something along this line:

According to a new poll:

Asked which candidate could do a better job of handling the financial crisis as president next year, 48% of registered voters named Obama and 35% named McCain.

And now that we got more news of McCain's campaign manager being tied to Freddie And Fannie Mac, we can expect to see that lead grow even more. The Obama campaign needs a national ad blitz hitting Davis on his ties to the failed mortgage giants.

And John McCain does nothing but lie to the American people about it - the same American people expected to bail out these companies.

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee composed of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the coming midterm congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s his firm, Davis & Manafort, was kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who was widely expected by 2006 to run again for the White House.

Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafort for the duration of the campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to share in its profits.

So even though Davis took a "leave", he still profited from the company. If this isn't criminal, it sure as hell should be. John McCain should also be publicly flogged for this.

McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has sent a very nasty letter to NBC about the claims that McCain may have heard the questions. Sully has the fully letter. So why is the McCain campaign taking such a defensive approach to this? A general reaction to something like this would be "we won't answer such false claims", or something of the sort. By the forceful defense the McCain campaign is launching, it seems like they are trying to hide something, especially considering the fact there is a silence on this from the Obama campaign.

So is McCain trying to hide something? I think this question needs to be pursued.

Also an emailer just wrote:

You fucking LIEbrals are so stupid. I guess John McCain had a large cable running to his limo so he could watch CNN. Give it a break. Your story is week. [sic]

So we are stupid? Perhaps this emailer needs to catch up on technology. I listened to part of the forum in my car, and there wasn't a long black cable running to it. It's called satellite and on Sirius satellite radio, you can listen to CNN on channel 132.

(On a personal note - I usually don't bother with these emailers, but this total ignorance had to be shared.)