McCain Campaign: It’s Obama’s Fault

By Jason Horowitz 9/29/08 7:40pm

The McCain campaign just came out with a statement that blames Barack Obama for the defeat of the proposed bailout in the House today. While McCain’s decision to “suspend his campaign” to go to Washington seemed not to have had a helpful effect on the initial round of negotiations over a bill, his campaign nevertheless argues that the partisan attacks of Barack Obama, who kept a greater distance from the negotiations, have now put people at risk of losing their homes.

The McCain campaign also uses the Obama “phoned it in” attack again, presumably because Obama never announced a “suspension” of his campaign.

Here’s the statement from McCain-Palin senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin:

“From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.

“Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.

“Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.

“This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.”

UPDATE: The Obama response, from spokesman Bill Burton:

“This is a moment of national crisis, and today’s inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington. Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe. Every American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis.”

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topics: 2008 Financial Crisis, Barack Obama, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain, Politics Daily
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