Surge, or Purge???

The surge worked for Iraq, but it's not working for McCain. His move up in the polls from last weekend petered out during the week, and weekend numbers, which generally favor the Democrats, are showing a stalled race. The Real Clear Politics tally shows an average lead of 6.7% for Barack, and today's Rasmussen report remains at 5%.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday once again shows Barack Obama with 51% of the vote while John McCain is five points back at 46%. This is the 38th straight day that Obama’s support has stayed between 50% and 52% (see trends).

For the past seven days, Obama has been ahead by three to five points. For the month before that, the Democratic nominee was up by four to eight points every day.

A McCain win rests in the hands of some unforeseen circumstance - large numbers of voters who've been claiming falsely that they're planning to vote for Barack, a failure of the youth vote to get out of bed on Tuesday, or perhaps an electorate that's so excited by the race that McCain voters, who would normally be sitting the race out, show up to cast a ballot.

Obama is now viewed favorably by 55% of voters nationwide, McCain by 53% (see trends). Obama gets positive reviews from 88% of Democrats and 56% of unaffiliated voters. Ninety percent (90%) of Republicans and 55% of unaffiliateds say the same about McCain. Obama leads by ten among women but trails by two among men.

While McCain could still win on Tuesday, the odds tilted severely against him when the economic meltdown occurred in September.

The economy remains the top issue of Election 2008 for 46% of voters. Just 20% see national security as the top priority. The importance of the economic issue is highlighted by the fact that McCain was leading by three points in mid-September just before Lehman Brothers collapsed and made public the depth of Wall Street’s problems. Shortly after that, Obama moved ahead and has enjoyed a stable lead that has lasted into the final weekend of Election 2008.

I'm still expecting the country to come to its senses on Tuesday - I have trouble imagining people being dumb enough to vote the Democrats into total control - so we'll just have to wait and see.

Character Attack

Is McCain being fair?

"It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign," McCain said Tuesday in New Hampshire, in a line he’s been using regularly since.

That statement represents shorthand for an angle that is entirely accurate - attacking Barack's character for having contrived positions on the war to please liberal Democrats in order to outflank Hillary.

A former naval aviator and prisoner of war in Vietnam, McCain is pressing his case against a candidate with no military experience, and who—thanks in part to a subterranean smear campaign that’s tapped a nerve with some voters who because of it or even prior to it—don’t see him as entirely or all American.

Doubts about Barack - his background, his judgment, his patriotism - underpin his problems with mainstream voters. It is wise, and fair, for McCain to go for the jugular.

It’s a tempting line of attack, though, against Obama, who a recent poll found that 55 percent of voters thought was the “riskier” choice for president as against 35 percent who said McCain. It’s also an attack that tap into a major source of that unease, race, and is especially likely to pay dividends with a relative newcomer to the national stage such as Obama, whose public image is not yet as clearly defined.

Giving vague speeches like the one offered on the streets of Berlin only serves to fuel questions about who Barack is and what he truly believes.

"I'm not questioning his patriotism," McCain said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopolous. "I am saying that he made the decision [to oppose the surge], which was political, in order to help him get the nomination of his party.

Which is, of course, an attack on his patriotism. And one that is deserved.

Barack Defends Surge Position to Brokaw

Barack defends his surge position to Brokaw on Meet the Press Sunday.

McCain Outfoxed on War?

Did Barack kidnap the upper hand on Iraq from McCain this week? By shifting the focus to Afghanistan, and talking about escalating the war there while satisfying his base by talking about withdrawing from Iraq, Barack may have pulled off an incredible bait and switch, becoming the anti-war candidate who wants war!

Obama officials also say the push from Iraqi politicians for troop withdrawal schedules roughly in line with his (with the exception of Sunni chieftains who still fret about a rapid US exit). The language of “aspiration time horizons” agreed upon by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and the Bush White House also gave Obama a glide-path in Iraq on the question of troop movements and nothing on they trip, they believe undercut that opening advantage.

The foundation of Barack's trick, is, or course, the success of the surge, which Barack opposed. But McCain even found a way to muddle that point.

On July 23, McCain said the surge wasn’t really about more troops, but counter-insurgency tactics. And yet the political credit McCain seeks for the turn-around in Iraq is based principally on his advocacy if the surge - meaning more troops to carry out counter-insurgency missions. To say the surge wasn’t really about more troops undercuts much of McCain has tried to tell the public about what has changed in Iraq and why.

This is true, of course. What is known as the surge is a collection of tactical changes that have led to a dramatic success - but some argue that the least important of these was adding more troops to the mix. But why would McCain seek to cloud the issue he's worked so hard to highlight, making it possible for the left to argue this:

If you define “the surge” as broadly as he does here, you can no longer claim that Barack Obama opposed it. Obama, of course, has never been opposed to the use of more effective counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq. Indeed, from the moment Obama arrived in the Senate in 2004, he criticized the Bush administration for failing to appreciate that it was dealing with an insurgency and adopting appropriate counter-insurgency techniques. For example, in this 2005 speech Obama argued that we need to “focus our efforts on a more effective counter-insurgency strategy and take steam out of the insurgency.”

Surge Purge

When the Obama campaign purged his website Sunday night of his troop drawdown proposal for Iraq, it also purged his claims that the surge wouldn't work. If you're going to rewrite history, it's a good idea to delete the record, no? Here's the truth of Barack's poor analysis, in video, as compiled by Wake Up America.



And from the Top of the Ticket blog at the LA Times:

A funny thing happened over on the Barack Obama campaign website in the last few days.

The parts that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared. John McCain and Obama have been going at it heavily in recent days over the benefits of the surge.

The Arizona senator, who advocated the surge for years before the Bush administration employed it, says the resulting reduction in violence is proof it worked with progress on 15 of 18 political benchmarks and Obama's plan to withdraw troops by now would have resulted in surrender.

When President Bush ordered the surge in January, 2007, Obama said, "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse," a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year he acknowledged progress, but maintained his position that political progress was lacking.

Tuesday, while Obama gave a speech on foreign policy, the New York Daily News was first to notice the removal of parts of Obama's campaign site listing the Iraq troop surge as part of "The Problem." An Obama spokeswoman said it was just part of an "update" to "reflect changes in current events," as our colleague Frank James notes in the Swamp. The update includes a new section on the rise of al-Qaeda violence in Afghanistan.

It's Official - Barack Flips on Iraq

Welcome to visitors from sites like Instapundit, The Real Barack Obama, Small Dead Animals and Pundit Review. After you read this post, check out "Barack Lied, Hillary Died."

Barack's website has been updated - he is no longer calling for a blind withdrawal of troops from Iraq - the position that outflanked Hillary and won him the nomination.

Here's what his official position has been since before the primaries, as outlined on his website, without any caveats about talking to commanders or conditions on the ground:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.

Could you give that to us again, just to make sure no one is confused?

Obama has a plan to immediately begin withdrawing our troops engaged in combat operations at a pace of one or two brigades every month, to be completed by the end of next year.

Here's Barack's new position:

Barack Obama believes we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the Obama plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. He will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

Democrats were duped into dumping Hillary. Has a more malicious and manipulative politician ever walked the earth? It's hard to imagine.