Elrod at TMV

Elrod actually spent time pondering the Coin Toss?  Did Elrod ponder the fact that Wouldn’t Obama simply say – what coin toss?  Just helps to enforce that TMV is still not worthy of my visiting it.

Jason: Are we twins or something?  After the forum, and seeing the response to my entry about it, I was thinking of a possible continuation to your entry on scripts, based on blog commenters.

1) Whatever the candidate did poorly is proof positive of their complete unfitness for office in every possible way.

2) Whatever the candidate did well is proof positive that they cheated and/or are an over-prepared robot tool of their advisers.

It appears that this forum was enough like a debate to mandate use of the standardized scripts without deviation.  Yawn.

"BTW, 3 of the Supreme’s [McCain] named as ones he would NOT choose, he vote to confirm. LOL."

That’s not necessarily a contradiction. Many reasonable people believe – although I myself am dubious – that the differing institutional roles of the Senate and the President requires that Senators should be deferential to the President’s choices, exercising their advice and consent role in something akin to abuse of discretion review. According to this school of thought, only when a Presidential pick is far beyond the pale should they be voted down; Lieberman, for example, has explicitly endorsed this attitude, and the Senate Republican caucus has implicitly advanced it. How much deference is due will of course vary, but the basic premise is very widely held.

If one takes that position, and McCain has given every reason to think that he does, it follows that one would routinely vote to confirm someone that you would not yourself have nominated. Thus, McCain’s statement only becomes a contradiction if one assumes an ancillary and disputed proposition: that a Senator should not vote to confirm someone they would not have nominated.

Why didn’t McCain come out and say he was stuck in traffic instead of let everyone believe he was, "In a Cone of Silence" when Warren asked "If the cone of Silence was comfortable? " Mccain joked that he was trying to hear through the wall.  This would have been a good oportunity to explain what had happend.

McCain answered so quickly that there was time for one more question that Obama did not answer.

BTW, 3 of the Supreme’s McSame named as ones he would NOT choose, he vote to confirm. LOL.

Come on.  The GOP knows that the stakes are too high.  They will lie and cheat every chance they get.

Personally, though I don’t particularly trust nor distrust McCain, I would be inclined to doubt he listened in on Obama. I don’t believe this because I am relying on his honor, but on his answers. McCain answered virtually every single question with standard stump speech talking points (with a few exceptions). He literally hijacked whole questions and never really directed himself towards Warren, but towards the viewing public. I believe he had planned to do this from the very beginning. His staff really did think that he wouldn’t be able to listen in (I believe him being stuck in traffic was accidental) and so they prepared for the event by reviewing answers to a variety of issues and how to twist any question into either a reminder of his veteran status or a review of his policy talking points. This is a standard political practice and McCain treated this like a standard political event, not a conversation. I don’t see very much in his answers that would have been different had he not heard Obama.

And btw, I don’t say this because I thought McCain did a good job.  I don’t.  I don’t understand why people think this way.  McCain gave easy, stock answers that Evangelicals wanted to hear.  Here, the philanderer pretending to be a good Christian by saying b.s. like "at the moment of conception" and "defeat (evil)" 

Spare me.

Barack gave introspective, thoughtful, articulate, intelligent answers full of moral struggle and passion.  You can see his credibility in the Christain faith.  McCain came off as a lightweight who was stumping, not having a conversation in a "civil forum."

And by the way, McCain did pause and think quite a few times if you watch the video again, just not as much as slow Obama.