Monday, October 6, 2008

POLITICO EXCLUSIVE: OBAMA TO HIT McCAIN ON "KEATING FIVE" SCANDAL

It's about time!

Nice guys finish LAST.

The Obama campaign is going to launch an attack on John McCain and his connections to the "Keating Five" savings and loan scandal that sent hundreds of people to the poor house.

Exclusive: Obama to hit McCain on Keating Five

By: Mike Allen October 5, 2008 11:28 PM EST
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14302.html

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday will launch a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the “Keating Five” savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain’s public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.Retaliating for what it calls McCain's “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign is e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday.

The overnight e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis.

Obama-Biden communications director Dan Pfeiffer said: “While John McCain may want to turn the page on his erratic response to the current economic crisis, we think voters will find his involvement in a similar crisis to be particularly interesting. His involvement with Keating is a window into McCain’s economic past, present, and future.”

Obama’s offensive comes after McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent two days telling voters, donors and reporters that Obama showed poor judgment in his relationship with the former radical William Ayers. McCain’s campaign has vowed to make a major issue of Obama’s Chicago relationships in coming days, with a senior McCain official telling Politico that they are “the vehicle that allows us to question Obama’s truthfulness about his past and his plans for the future.”

The McCain campaign also plans to invoke money launderer Tony Rezko. Officials say they will not bring up Obama's former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, because McCain has forbade his campaign from using that as an attack. But the officials said outside groups supporting McCain might highlight Wright.

Responding to the Keating blast from the past, a Republican official said the Obama team seemed "frantic" at "the mere mention of the word 'Ayers.'"

“The fact that the Obama team is recycling this old garbage 24 hours after Bill Ayers entered the race is a testament to how worried the Obama camp is of an unfettered airing of his associations," the official said. "Obama is a clever enough politician to know that his unexplored relationships with terrorists and felons are a serious liability in a race this close.”

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those who live in glass houses (McPalin) should not throw stones. McPalin should be careful since they both have enough skeletons in the cupboard; and women can give birth but that does not necessarily make mothers.

God bless Obama/Biden...

Bill Corcoran said...

Thanks for your comment and your support for Obama/Biden. If we don't win this election, I feel it will be the end of the United States. I just wish Obama would have the balls to say this financial crisis started when Ronald Reagan went on a spree deregulating everything.

Ronald Reagan was the worst President in the history of this country.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for researching this... it was driving me crazy that no one was bringing it up. Now that Palin is going back to the 60's on Obama - I guess McCain is fair game for the 70's. People should be aware of what a crook he is!
I will enjoy watching him try to get out of this one. Stupid airhead Palin will just look like the dummy caught in the headlights as she did with Katie Couric!

Bill Corcoran said...

Hi Katie: You are welcome. It is very risky for Obama to get into the gutter with McCain, but I don't think he can sit there and get "Swift-boated" like what happend to John Kerry.

The debate Tuesday night is going to be very, very interesting, however it is a townhall format which means the audience gets to ask most of the questions.

If McCain even hints at Obama's past from over 20 years ago when Bill Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, Obama has to point out the Keating Five and how thousands of people lost their life savings in that scandal and McCain was right in the middle of it.

Obsma should remind McCain that when Bill Ayers was involved in his terrorist acts Obama was eight years old.

Take care, Katie.

Bill