Pundits Zero In on McCain's Slide

GOP candidate once sat on board of far-right group linked to "anti-Semites"
By Drew Nelles,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 5, 2008 2:34 PM CDT

With the election campaign in its last month, the Sunday talk shows turned to John McCain’s substantial slide in the polls, Politico reports. The highlights:

  • Vice-presidential debate moderator and soon-to-be author Gwen Ifill suggested on Meet the Press that hype over her alleged pro-Obama bias came from a twitchy Sarah Palin camp: “It was also interesting to realize that if changing the subject from the stakes of the vice-presidential debate, then talking about the moderator, instead of talking about the candidate, they would do that.”
  • Sarah Palin’s attempt to tie Barack Obama to a radical leftist is a “strategic mistake,” ex-Clintonite Paul Begala told Meet the Press, arguing that McCain himself once sat on the board of a far-right group Begala termed “a point of contact for extremists, racists, and anti-Semites.”

  • House Minority Whip Roy Blunt sought to defuse Obama's charge that McCain was erratic during bailout negotiations: “John McCain in a very selfless and cool way began to talk to Republicans about why this had to be done this week.”
  • Noting a blue electoral map, Karl Rove told Fox News Sunday that the “McCain-Palin ticket needs to give voters a positive agenda so that people who are concerned about Obama’s qualifications have something to hang their hat on."
  • Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm cracked on Palin’s folksy style on Face the Nation: “I really believe, honestly, in Michigan we are hurtin’ so bad we don’t want to hear just you know by golly, aw shucks, doggone it."
(More Election 2008 stories.)

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