The past two days we’ve come across articles/stories about Republican Governors praising Sen. Obama. Why? The gut reaction would be that these Governors clearly are breaking from the McCain team and going off-message. Some surely will write that these Governors are hurting their chances to become VP and that they better play ball. Some will say that McCain’s campaign needs to get the GOP message under control.
The Governors? Sarah Palin of Alaska and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. These two also happen to be two of the top three favorites to get McCain’s VP nod on Intrade.com.
Here is what Palin had to say on Tuesday:
“I am pleased to see Senator Obama acknowledge the huge potential Alaska’s natural gas reserves represent in terms of clean energy and sound jobs,” Palin says in the release. “The steps taken by the Alaska State Legislature this past week demonstrate that we are ready, willing and able to supply the energy our nation needs.”
And an article about what Pawlenty had to say today:
“Pawlenty said that Republicans such as Ronald Reagan had ideas, but he added that in recent years, ‘The Republican idea factory has seen a little stagnant.’
Pawlenty offered positive comments about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, saying ‘people gravitate when you have something positive to say.'”
Now the question is, why do we have two serious candidates for the VP nomination saying good things about Obama at a point when McCain has had his opponent on the ropes?
McCain’s people know the celebrity ad worked (1,687,677 views on youtube can’t be wrong). A good chunk of swing voters clearly were getting sick of Obama and this strategy finally put them over the edge…but these few voters will only stay away from Obama if McCain pulls them to his side.
So what does the McCain campaign do? They show GOPers as the good guys willing to play ball with the other side. This is a message that hits home with swing voters. They are hitting a couple singles to test the message with higher profile Governors working the message as discussed above…and McCain will now hit the swing voters with ads focusing on his independence from the Party line.
In other words: These two speaking out at this specific time about Obama was completely coordinated by the McCain campaign.
Glad to see the campaign running on all cylinders and with momentum into the media slowdown that will be the Olympics.
Awesome.
Update: An ad released today by the McCain campaign seems to validate an aspect of my theory, that his campaign must now pull out the stops to show his independence and attract the swing voters. Well there isn’t a much better way to do that than letting the opposing Party speak for itself.
