With Deal's Collapse, the McCain Camp Attacks

To absolutely nobody's surprise, the McCain campaign is trying to blame Obama for the failure to pass the bailout bill yesterday:

So when the deal fell apart on the House floor Monday, in no small measure because most of the chamber’s Republicans balked at voting for it, the McCain campaign worked to contain the potential for damage. The first defense was to go on offense.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior McCain adviser, said “partisan attacks” by Senator Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress had caused some Republicans uncertain about the legislation to turn against it and so had “put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.” The Obama campaign immediately dismissed that response as “angry and hyperpartisan.”

Then, after Mr. Obama had urged Americans and the financial markets to “stay calm” in the wake of the rescue plan’s collapse, while prodding Congress to “get this done,” Mr. McCain hastily called a news conference here in which he, too, seemed to place some blame on Mr. Obama.

“Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process,” Mr. McCain said, before adding in almost the same breath: “Now is not the time to fix the blame. It’s time to fix the problem.”

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With Deal’s Collapse, the McCain Camp Attacks

By MICHAEL COOPER and JEFF ZELENY

Published: September 29, 2008

www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/us/politics/30campaign.html

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Besides stockholders whose portfolios were ravaged Monday afternoon, the one person with the most riding on the bailout bill that collapsed in Congress may have been Senator John McCain.