STATEMENT BY JOHN MCCAIN ON SENATOR OBAMA’S REMARKS ON CUBA

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain today issued the following statement on Senator Obama’s remarks on Cuba during last night’s Democratic debate:

“Not so along go Senator Obama favored complete normalization of relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Last night, he said that as president he’d meet with the imprisoned island’s new leader ‘without preconditions.’ So Raul Castro gets an audience with an American president, and all the prestige such a meeting confers, without having to release political prisoners, allow free media, political parties, and labor unions, or schedule internationally monitored free elections.”

“Instead, Senator Obama says he would meet Cuba’s dictator without any such steps in the hope that talk will make things better for Cuba’s oppressed people. Meet, talk, and hope may be a sound approach in a state legislature, but it is dangerously naive in international diplomacy where the oppressed look to America for hope and adversaries wish us ill.”

I will be calling into Blog Talk Radio Today this evening at 6:30PM Eastern so you can head me discuss the debate with Shaun Daily. I did want to toss up some thoughts about last nights debate ahead of time.

Incase you missed it, the debate was the first time Senator’s Clinton & Obama took the stage without anyone else in the spotlight. It was a significant moment for many reasons but most importantly because one of these two candidates will be the Democratic nominee. No offense to Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, Gravel & Edwards but this is the two-person race everyone predicted a long while ago and we are finally witnessing it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Media Bistro reports a record 4.9 Million tuned into last nights Democratic debate. That is a record for a primary debate aired on cable.

If you missed last nights Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach, you missed quite a show. If there were any doubts that bad blood has been spilled between Clinton & Obama, they were removed last night as the pair traded barbs that were emotionally charged and very personal. Edwards, as I noted last night, acted as a free agent spending most of the event attacking Senator Obama with Clinton but at the end he leveled some attacks at Clinton assuring that she wouldn’t walk away a victor.

Here are my thoughts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Too busy watching American Idol to check out the Democratic debate last night? CQPolitics compiled what it saw as the highlights.

Republicans and Democrats with both be sitting with Charlie Gibson tonight at a roundtable to square off ahead of the New Hampshire primary. Both should provide for some VERY interesting television and if there is going to be any earth shattering, poll shattering, election shattering gaffes or breakout moments to either reinforce or destroy the Iowa Caucus results, it could happen tonight.

With less candidates than we’ve seen in both “debates” this year, more time will be focused in on the candidates and more time could potentially be had to explore, god forbid, issues! Especially on the Democratic side where only five candidates will be at the round table discussion and where the last few debates have mostly focused on the Clinton-Obama back and fourth. If Gibson does his job right we could actually start pulling out what is DIFFERENT about these candidates not just on style but substance.

Having said all that, expect that we could potentially learn nothing at all and this “debate” will be as near useless as all the others.

On the Democratic side Kucinich & Gravel have been excluded from the list.

Current lineup for Democrats will be Obama, Clinton, Edwards & Richardson

On the Republican side Duncan Hunter has been excluded

Current lineup for Republicans will be Huckabee, McCain, Giuliani, Thompson, Romney and Paul

Charles Gibson will moderate both from Manchester New Hampshire.