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http://www.keatingeconomics.com/
This is great because now the press willneed to hash this all over.
Again, the Quote of the Day
"It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice. If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."
-- A top McCain strategist, quoted by the New York Daily News, on trying to change the subject.
McCain's campaign had a conference call to try and rebut the resurgance of this as an issue. I find it fascinating that on a day the Dow slides 5%, and the McCain campaign is on record wanting to not discuss this issue anymore (Economy) we now have Keating to chew over natioanlly.
the McCain Defense:
Says McCain was “completely open with both the public and the Senate” during the hearings. Emphasized he was not found to have violated any rule of the Senate or law of the U.S.
Thinks that the committee when too far in suggesting that McCain’s intervention with regulators was poor judgment.
Smart observations from around the blogs...
Marc Ambinder
One tangential thought: the Keating Five was a banking and financial scandal. So it fits better with the political environment than sudden attempts to re-raise Obama's associations with Ayers and Wright.
Americablog
The Keating Five Investigation was "a political smear job on John [McCain]." WTF? He called Howell Heflin, who led the hearings, a "stooge" of the Democratic machine out to get poor, innocent John McCain.
This opens up the entire question of McCain's supposed contrition. If McCain thinks he did nothing wrong, and that it was wrong for the Senate to scold him for his actions during the Keating Five Scandal, then he isn't contrite at all, he isn't sorry at all. He's learned nothing. You can't turn a new leaf when you don't think you did anything wrong. This is one hell of an admission.
Ben Smith
I'd always thought McCain's great strength in defending the Keating affair was that he'd acknolwedged making a huge mistake, and spent his career repenting by recasting himself as a reformer.
So when his campaign puts his lawyer on the line with reporters to contest the details of a congressional inquiry that, largely, let McCain off the hook, doesn't that cloud the sin-confession-atonement dynamic a bit?
In Halperin's account, McCain lawyer John Dowd described McCain's "former relationship with Charles Keating as 'social friends,'" and called the situation a "classic political smear job on John."
Dowd also "thinks that the committee went too far in suggesting that McCain’s intervention with regulators was poor judgment," Halperin writes.
But if so, what's this giant mistake that transformed McCain into a reformer?
It would seem that the Campaign has fumbled the response, at least initially, in its own end zone, making this issue that much fresher.