McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech about the kind of judges he would nominate planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.

Asheville Citizen-Times

I love how the author refers to those who have had reservations about McCain as the “far right.”

In any case, judges were a big issue with many conservatives concerned about what kind of judges McCain would nominate. I’m not too worried about it. The “Gang of 14″ that he forged to get Bush’s stalled nominees through, in hindsight was actually a decent idea on his behalf. I was critical of it at the time, but it allowed Bush to get some excellent judges through, like Janice Rogers Brown, whom we wouldn’t have been able to get if that hadn’t happened.

So, I’m not too concerned with McCain when it comes to judges, but quite honestly, I don’t know if it will be possible for him to get a pro-life judge through without cloture. Even in the best case scenario for Republicans this year we won’t have enough Senators to break a filibuster, which will definitely happen if the Democrats don’t think they can win an up or down vote.

I really don’t know why McCain felt the need to comment on this ad run by the North Carolina GOP. It wasn’t created for his benefit and has nothing to do with him at all. It’s aimed at helping the Republican gubernatorial candidates. Barack Obama is an extreme radical leftist and the two Democrats running for governor have endorsed him. Therefore, it’s fair to say they approve of his extreme radical leftist views. I don’t see the problem here.

The last Republican to win Massachusetts? Ronald Reagan. The last Republican before that? Dwight Eisenhower. Even George McGovern managed to carry Massachusetts in 1972, the one Democratic holdout in Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide.

Replace “McGovern” with “MoveOn.org” and you’ve seized the essence of the Obama candidacy. He’s the most liberal U.S. senator, advocating tax increases on the “wealthy” and enjoying the support of Gov. Deval Patrick, Sen. Ted Kennedy, The Boston Globe-Democrat and every 9/11 conspiracy kook in the People’s Republic of Cambridge. He’s got all the players in Massachusetts behind him except the ones who actually vote.

While Hillary Clinton soundly beats McCain in Massachusetts in the new SurveyUSA poll, 56 percent to 41 percent, the Obama/McCain number is 48 percent to 46 percent, well within the margin of error.

The Boston Herald

WASHINGTON (AP) — Growing numbers of people like what they see in John McCain, vaulting him into a tie with the two Democratic presidential contenders just a few months after Republicans faced a steep disadvantage.

The Arizona senator has made a race of the White House contest by attracting disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Thursday. About two-thirds of them have grown disenchanted with President Bush despite voting for him in 2004, including many GOP-leaning independents, while the remaining third usually support Democrats but like McCain anyway.

The AP

I said back around Super Tuesday that this would be one big advantage by having McCain as our nominee.  He wasn’t my first choice for a number of reasons, but I said he would bring back a lot of the disgruntled Reagan coalition that Bush has pissed off over the past seven years.  Bush has given conservatism a bad reputation and it may take someone moderate like McCain to take off the edginess that many Republican leaning voters are currently feeling.

PITTSBURGH — Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday called for a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax and several tax cuts as the likely presidential nominee sought to stem the public’s pain from a troubled economy.

Charlotte Observer

I think McCain knows as well as we all do that this is never going to happen, but it is a smart political move.  Gas prices are one of the top issues irritating voters this year and calling for a moratorium on the added price due to Federal taxation during the most heavily traveled months of the year isn’t going to earn him any enemies.

WASHINGTON — Democratic Party officials want a federal judge to order an investigation into whether Sen. John McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing, saying federal regulators are too weak to act on their own.A lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, to be filed today in U.S. District Court, questions the agency’s ability to enforce the law and review McCain’s decision to opt out of the system.

The Charlotte Observer

I don’t know if McCain is in violation or not, to be honest. He was approved for public financing, but I don’t believe he ever took the money. Technically, I believe he is supposed to get permission from the FEC to opt back out of it, but he has been unable to do so because there are not enough commissioners on the panel at this current time to hold a quorum and decide the matter. Ironically enough, the reason for this lack of commissioners is due to the Democrats blocking Bush’s nominees for the panel. It makes you wonder if this is an ulterior motive behind their actions.   Even more ironic would be if McCain actually gets smacked on a violation of campaign finance rules.

My thoughts on how McCain can win the presidency.

PRINCETON, NJ — A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

It would appear that Obama isn’t the great magnificent unifier that the media and his supporters claim him to be. As it gets closer to the election and more and more people begin to realize exactly how far to the left and out of touch with America this guy is he will be more and more vulnerable to defeat. Anyone who thinks he is going to ride some wave to victory is going to be sorely disappointed.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona said yesterday that a government bailout of banks should be based “solely on preventing systemic risk” and not on helping financial and property speculators.

“I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis,” McCain told a group of Hispanic small-business leaders in Santa Ana. “I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now.”

Winston-Salem Journal

Good.  They shouldn’t be bailed out.  These are multi billion dollar corporations that engaged in this risky behavior and they are now paying the price for it.  They need to sink and the market needs to correct itself naturally without government interference.  Bailing them out on this will only encourage this behavior in the future.

I’ve said many times, whatever policy differences I have with McCain, I have the utmost admiration for the way he has run his campaign. This video is absolutely brilliant.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Washington state voters finds John McCain and Barack Obama essentially tied in a general election match-up. McCain leads Obama 45% to 44%.

McCain tops Hillary Clinton 48% to 40% in the Evergreen State.

McCain also has a modest lead over both Democrats nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Rasmussen Reports

Wow! In heavily blue Washington. Let’s keep that momentum going!  If he is tying Obama and trouncing Hillary this could be one hell of an election.  This could also help put Dino Rossi over the top in his bid to win back the Governor’s mansion that was taken from him in 2004 in the REAL stolen election that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton never protested.

Update 10:36PM - It’s not been called, but I am fairly certain Clinton has won Ohio.  She has a sizable lead.  In Texas, her and Obama are neck and neck, each with 49% of the vote.

Update 9:40PM - Clinton has won Rhode Island.

Update 9:09PM - The Huckabee Campaign has announced that he will drop out of the race tonight. Maybe now someone can convince him to run for the Senate against Pryor. He would be the only one with a chance to beat him.

Update 9:00PM - McCain has been declared the winner of Texas and Rhode Island and that now gives him enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

Update 8:18PM - McCain and Obama have won Vermont. McCain has also won Ohio.

McCain is already our de facto nominee, but tonight could also decide the Democratic race. If Obama sweeps tonight’s primaries then Hillary is done. I don’t think that is going to be the case, though. My prediction for tonight is that Obama wins in Texas and Vermont and Hillary takes Ohio and Rhode Island. McCain wins all four.

I personally have no issue with anything Cunningham said. As far as I am concerned it’s all pretty accurate. However, McCain has the right to run his campaign how he sees fit and if he wants to do so without the rhetoric that’s his privilege. I think he showed a great deal of character apologizing publicly for what he felt were disparaging remarks by Cunningham. You would never see Clinton or Obama apologize for Moveon.org.

Apparently, Cunningham is angry about this now and said he is going to support Hillary.

ROCKY RIVER, Ohio — The Democratic Party filed a complaint against Sen. John McCain on Monday, calling on regulators to investigate the Republican presidential candidate’s decision to withdraw from the primary’s public financing system.

In a letter to the Federal Election Commission, the Democratic National Committee contends McCain cannot reject the public funds — and accompanying spending limits — because he faces questions over a loan he obtained last year.

McCain notified the commission early this month that he did not intend to accept $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary. That would free him from spending caps that would restrict his ability to campaign between now and the GOP national convention in September.

FEC Chairman David Mason, in a letter to McCain last week, said the senator must explain a $4 million line of credit he secured last year and get approval from four of the commission’s six members before withdrawing from the public financing system.

USA Today

The controversy here is that McCain’s campaign took a questionable loan out that the Democrats say fall under the umbrella of the public financing rules.  McCain could easily clear this up by getting a ruling from the FEC to allow him to withdraw from using public funds, but there are four vacancies on the FEC due to the Democrats holding up Bush’s nominations so there can be no quorum called.

It’s rather ironic that the man who authored McCain-Feingold is now getting smacked by similar campaign finance rules.

If the ballot was McCain and Clinton, 46 percent said they would choose McCain and 46 percent for Clinton.If the race was between McCain and Obama, the polls said McCain would have 44 percent and Obama 43 percent.

WGAL

Truth or smear, we don’t really know.  Personally, I think the alleged affair McCain is accused of in the New York Times is garbage.  Nonetheless, it might actually help him.  Apparently he has been able to use this to his advantage as a fund raising mechanism and it’s working.

Continuing in their effort to pit themselves as victims of a liberal media assault, John McCain’s campaign sent out a fundraising solicitation this afternoon based on the New York Times story.

“With John McCain leading a number of general-election polls against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, The New York Times knew the time to attack was now, and they did,” writes campaign manager Rick Davis in the email.

Stoking conservative mistrust of the Times, Davis alleges that the paper “gave MoveOn.org a sweetheart deal to run advertisements attacking General Petraeus.” He also quotes some of the conservative pundits who are rallying around McCain.

The Politico

And apparently several left wing bloggers have come out chastising the Times for their actions.

Greg Sargent, at TPM’s Horse’s Mouth, writes that the Times doesn’t “have the goods” and “shouldn’t have gone there.” Matthew Yglesias accuses the Times of “shameful” dealings in “innuendo,” though he’s interested in the sex-free, lobbying aspects of the story. Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft calls it “troubling” and bad for Democrats. Kevin Drum writes of the Times that “there’s no way that they ‘nailed’ anything.”

Other blogs — like MyDD, despite some passing glee; DailyKos; and, mostly, OpenLeft — are essentially ignoring the story. Carpetbagger Report seems almost alone in obsessing about it.

Fox News just declared him the winner.  He was widely expected to win the state so there is no shock here.

Even through the McCain campaign’s darkest days in 2007, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty remained a steadfast ally to the Arizona senator in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

As a result, with John McCain as the clear GOP front-runner and insider talk turning to speculation about his possible running mate, party insiders are now buzzing about the 47-year-old, second-term governor’s vice presidential prospects.

The Politico

The rumor mill is abuzz with talks of Tim Pawlenty in the VP slot for McCain’s presidency.  This has been speculation for some time and I think it would be a very logical choice.  Minnesota has stuck hard with the Democrats in presidential elections but it’s getting closer and closer to the Republicans’ grasp.  I don’t know if Pawlenty on the ticket would be enough to flip it this year, but hope springs eternal.

Republican presidential front-runner John McCain courted the wary conservative wing of his party Friday after winning the endorsement of former bitter White House rival Mitt Romney. “He and I share the same principles, values and goals,” McCain said of the former Massachusetts governor who two weeks ago was accusing him of campaign dirty tricks.

“He ran a tough campaign. He got millions of votes in the Republican primaries. And I hope that his endorsement will convince many of those Republican voters to support my candidacy,” McCain told CNN television late Thursday.

AP

On that evening round table discussion show that Brit Hume does on Fox News with William Kristol, Mort Kondrake, etc. there was discussion of Romney possibly becoming the VP selection for McCain despite the fighting back and forth they did during the race.