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The End of the End of the Bush Campaign
Sunday, February 20, 2000
From: Columbia, South Carolina
In the Filing Center
Well, there it is: The end of the end of the Bush campaign.
18 days after the Western world pronounced the Presidential campaign of George W Bush on life support after Senator John McCain walloped him by over 18 percentage points in New Hampshire, Bush returned the favor by scoring a 13 percentage point win here. Over 550,000 people voted - more than double the previous turnout.
It was the famed -or infamous - McCain temper which caused this defeat. Here is what I believe happened: The first Bush event in South Carolina following the New Hampshire thrashing, featured South Carolina veterans. One of them accused McCain, however unfairly, of turning his back on veterans as a Senator and as a Congressman.
McCain demanded Bush apologize which did not happen. McCain got angrier and angrier and made the commercial comparing Bush to Clinton. That was a mistake. After howls of protest, he had to take that ad down, but the only way to do it was to declare he was not going to engage in negative campaigning, thus unilaterally disarming his campaign.
If they had waited 24 hours they would have come to realize that ad was a mistake. Instead, they might have run an ad portraying McCain as the victim of an unwarranted, and unfair attack. From that point on, any negative ad; phone call; flyer; or mail piece put out by the Bush campaign would have been fodder for a "there you go again" response from McCain.
I don't know whether that strategy would have changed the outcome, but any time you get to use your opponent's strength against him - political judo - you are in good shape.
The net result was McCain lost South Carolina, will lose Michigan, will no doubt decline to compete in Virginia on the 29th and the best he can hope for on Super Tuesday is to simply stay afloat.
Bill McInturff, McCain's pollster and one of politics' genuinely good guys, pointed out that if you take away the religious right, McCain won everyone else by 54-46. That gives hope to the notion that McCain can appeal to voter groups which Bush can not or, at least here, did not.
Sam Attlesey, political writer for the Dallas Morning News, made this point: McCain, by appealing to independents and Democrats as well as Republicans, tried to turn South Carolina into a general election, rather than a primary. South Carolina, even in heavy Democratic years, votes for Republicans.
Both campaigns are using their press operations tactically - "did you see how many people we had at that last event?. They need to make strategic use of the press.
Yesterday, the McCain people were spinning their press corps on how negative the Bush campaign, and their allies, had been over the past few weeks. And it was working among the press covering McCain. But the press covering Bush didn't hear anything about it.
If I were advising the McCain campaign I would have sent someone to Columbia, SC to spin the Bush press on the negative campaigning issue. If I were advising the Bush campaign, I would have sent someone to Charleston, SC to spin the McCain press on how that issue was bogus.
The Mullmobile heads back north today.
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