Story by Chris Graham
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The McCain-Palin campaign is trying to turn the page on the economics discussion that a top strategist suggested to the New York Daily News over the weekend will spell disaster “if we keep talking about” it by highlighting the tenuous ties of Barack Obama to a 1960s political radical. The Obama-Biden campaign is responding today with a direct assault aimed at McCain’s Achilles heel – his involvement in the Keating 5 savings-and-loan scandal that resulted in 23,000 seniors losing their life savings and the head of the S&L who asked McCain and four other senators to intercede with federal regulators on his behalf ending up in prison.
The Obama-Biden campaign has launched a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will feature a 13-minute documentary on the scandal that will debut at noon today.
Political operatives on both sides of the aisle have been asking the question – When will Obama hit McCain on the Keating 5? – for several weeks. The timing, in the wake of clumsy attempts by GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin this past weekend to link Obama to a ’60s radical by way of a New York Times story that concluded that Obama and William Ayers did not have close ties, would not appear to be coincidental, and a report on Politico.com in which a senior McCain-Palin campaign official suggested that the ticket needed to “turn the page” on the ongoing focus on economic issues.
“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-Biden communications director Dan Pfeiffer said this morning.
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Chris Graham
