McCain Announces Finance Slots; Tries to Steal Giuliani’s Thunder

Rudy Giuliani has a fundraiser tonight. What does John McCain do? Same thing he did at the RGA meeting. He tries to steal the news/blog cycle by announcing his NY Finance Committee. This morning, before the announcement, McCain got people talking about his fundraising machine ("nearly 7 of 10 Bush 2004 donors are Straight Talk American donors") in the Arizona Republic this morning. All the gossip today is about John McCain’s fundraising. The news stories tomorrow will be about Giuliani’s big New York fundraiser and McCain’s great NY finance list.

As I’ve said earlier, the McCain campaign is simply following the "bracketing" strategy that the Bush campaign used so effectively against Kerry in 2004. Wherever Kerry went, Bush or someone got there one day ahead, to steal the headlines.

This is very clever. But it also demonstrates a much more well-oiled campaign than, for example, the Romney guys, who for 2 or 3 weeks now have totally lost control of the image of their guy. (One Redstate writer even said, regarding Romney’s candidacy, that the word "clown came to mind.") They’ve been planning, and now they are executing. They do their announcements when they need to. And they ruin other people’s. That’s very sophisticated. And it is very organized. And they are doing it in December 2006 for a 2008 election. Not bad.

And it is clear that this is what McCain is doing. As Weaver was quoted to the New York Times:

Asked whether it was a coincidence that Mr. McCain was issuing his list the same day that Mr. Giuliani was holding his lay-down-your-marker fund-raiser, Mr. Weaver responded, “There are no coincidences in life, but I would guess this would be one.” He laughed.