Some GREAT breaking stuff from Obama's town-hall meeting occuring now in Indiana. He opened up with remarks that took McCain to task even harder than he has in the past:
"Senator McCain’s energy plan reads like an early Christmas list for oil and gas lobbyists. And it’s no wonder – because many of his top advisors are former oil and gas lobbyists."
Love that he included the fact that his advisors were oil and gas lobbyists. It's as if Barack Obama suddenly woke up and realized all the material he had to work with in going after McCain. But there's much more great stuff:
Note: this is a mix of prepared remarks and paraphrasing as to what he actually said as it goes - I will continue to update with exact quotes as they come through, but I'm trying to make it as accurate to what Obama actually says:
Now, yesterday, Senator McCain started running a TV ad saying that Washington is broken. No kidding. It only took Senator McCain those 26 years in Washington to figure that out. But here’s the thing, Elkhart. I’m having a little trouble squaring that statement with Senator McCain’s declaration a few months ago that we’ve made "great progress economically" over the past eight years. Or his boast that he’s voted with President Bush over 90% of the time. Or his assertion that overall, the American people are better off now than they were when George W. Bush came into office.
So I know Senator McCain likes to call himself a maverick – and the fact is, there are times when he’s shown independence from his party in the past. But the price he paid for his party’s nomination was to reverse himself on position after position, and now he embraces the failed Bush policies and politics that helped break Washington in the first place – and that doesn’t exactly meet my definition of a maverick.
AND he doubles-down on the tire-inflation issue, Obama again hits McCain for mocking him on this. Then says:
Last night, after all that, Senator McCain agreed that keeping our tires inflated was a good idea. Which makes sense, because NASCAR, which knows something about tires, said the same thing, so did the AAA, so in the coming days it's going to be interesting to see this coming debate between John McCain and...John McCain!"
Man, I love it. That tire-inflation issue is starting to backfire in a big way on McCain, something I have to admit I didn't see coming.
There's more! He hits on the report that Iraq has a $80 billion energy surplus that's sitting in an American bank, while the taxpayers are paying for reconstruction efforts in Iraq. I'm glad he brought that up.
If we're going to solve the problems of the American people, we've got to have someone in Washington who's fighting for the American people.
Love that fighter reference.
Whomever replaced the Obama of the last couple weeks with this guy is doing us a huge favor.
Side Note: Bayh did a good job introducing Obama, smacking McCain for ignoring Indiana while Obama has paid a lot of attention to the state. He said that when they needed a comment on something in Indiana, they had to get a McCain employee from Michigan to call in. Then he said:
"Barack Obama is here with us today because he cared enough to come...it’s time we had a president that not only said it, but meant it, and Barack Obama will."
UPDATE: Video:
CROSS-POSTED AT STRATEGY '08