by Matthew Hay Brown

John McCain has taken advantage of the never-ending Democratic primary race to raise money and organize for the general election. But once Democrats unite behind a nominee, Sen. Mel Martinez says, "this is going to be a battle."

"I don't have any doubt that as soon as a nominee is named by the Democrats that that nominee is going to take a tremendous boost in the polls just because that's what happens," Martinez, the former general chairman of the Republican National Committee, tells America's Business with Mike Hambrick this week. "And then that's going to make it a very competitive race right into the fall."

The Florida Republican says "it's got to help that we have had some time for the McCain campaign to get its feet on the ground. He's raising money. Getting organization behind him. But it also remains a clear fact that the Democrats are going to unite and this is going to be a battle."

Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned this week of more Republican losses in November if the party doesn't follow his advice on charting "a bold new course of real change." Current Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she was confident of further Democratic gains.

Martinez says he likes the GOP's chances.

"With McCain at the top of the ticket I think it ... paints a very hopeful picture for what might happen in the down ballot races," he says. "I think in the Senate that we have a really good chance to hold our own or maybe keep any losses to one or two seats which I think would be really, really good in this environment. And I think in the House side we could make some gains actually. I don't think that we could count on taking control of either house this cycle but I think we have a really good shot to win the White House, make gains in the House, and hold our own in the Senate."

The cast of NBC Television's "The West Wing" with former Vice President Al Gore. Clockwise from Gore are Bradley Whitford, John Spencer, Richard Schiff, Allison Janney, Martin Sheen. (Photo: NBC handout.)

by Maeve Reston

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- It turns out that hobnobbing with liberal blogger Arianna Huffington and the cast of NBC's "The West Wing" on the left coast can be a risky proposition for a Republican with White House ambitions.

In Jersey City Friday morning, John McCain emphatically denied a report by Huffington on her blog that he confessed, during a Beverly Hills dinner party in 2001, that he had not voted for George W. Bush after his bitter defeat in 2000. But "West Wing" cast members -- who said in published reports they supported a Democratic ticket -- back up Huffington's story.

"It's nonsense," McCain said this morning when a reporter asked about the matter in the Liberty Science Center. "I voted, campaigned for, worked as hard as I could for President Bush's election in 2000 and 2004. I voted for President Bush. I said so at the time." And McCain is proud of what he saw as his help in getting Bush elected. "I know we're already in a silly season--but my record stands very clearly of campaigning all over this nation on behalf of the candidacy of President Bush," he said. "I think that some people believe that contributed to the fact that he won that election, and also in the 2004 election."

On Monday, Huffington posted an entry on her website asserting that McCain confessed during the 2001 party that he had not voted for the President. On the Huffington Post website, she explained her long silence by saying ...

... she "felt it was time to for me to tell what I knew," because the press was giving McCain "a pass."

by Frank James

If you want to show that you have a subtle understanding of the world economy, when asked why gas prices are high you might want to offer an answer that mentions world oil demand, the declining dollar etc.

But those weren't among the reasons Sen. John McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential lnominee, offered during his interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News Channel last night. It's the fault of the oil "cartel," meaning the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, he said.

"I think it's because of one fundamental problem. It's because you have a cartel that controls virtually all of the world's oil supply. And they, obviously, can set the price of oil to the highest level that can sustain it," McCain told O'Reilly.

Many problems with that answer. One, OPEC is responsible for about 40 percent of the world's oil exports, not "virtually all" the world's supply, as McCain said.

Also, as indicated earlier, economists place much of the blame for high oil prices on factors other than OPEC. There's demand in rapidly developing countries like China and India, for instance.

by Frank James

In his interview with Bill O'Reilly on FoxNews Channel last night, Sen. John McCain, right out the box, let loose the two charges he plans to hit Sen. Barack Obama hard with, 'inexperience' and 'judgment.'

It really wasn't anything different than what McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee, has said before about Obama.

It's significance is mainly in the fact that there's no message shift; it appears fixed. Polling has shown that Obama's relative inexperience in national politics is what most troubles many voters, particularly independents.

"What's his main weakness?" O'Reilly asked.

"Inexperience. I think inexperience and a lack of judgment and a record that shows that," McCain said.

His evidence? Obama's statement that he would sit down to talk with U.S. adversaries, including Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, Iran's president, and Obama's tax proposals, which, McCain charged, would raise taxes on 100 million Americans who pay capital-gains taxes.

A few minutes later, when he repeated what he thought Obama's main weaknesses to be, McCain through in "and vision" almost as an afterthought. He didn't have a chance to elaborate.

This last one may be the toughest for McCain to make stick. The "vision thing" is actually one of Obama's greatest strengths. He envisions a nation where his leadership, coupled grassroots pressure, gets Washington beyond the partisan logjam in order to address the country's numerous domestic and foreign problems. It may be idealistic. But it's certainly is a vision.

Sen. John McCain at Wake Forest University's Wait Chapel as wife Cindy watches May 6, 2008 in Winston-Salem, N.C. (Photo by Davis Turner/Getty Images)

by Frank James

Why do social conservatives insist on wringing promises from Republican presidential nominees that they will only appoint federal judges who will make conservatives happy when those promises have so often been broken?

Sen. John McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee, is the latest GOP presidential aspirant to have to try and win over his party's conservatives by promising to name strict constructionist judges (though he didn't use those words) to the Supreme Court and other federal courts. That was the purpose of his speech in Winston-Salem, N.C. today.

(Anticipating the speech, The Hill newspaper has a story today about McCain's efforts to get his party's most conservative members, people he's long had an uneasy relationship with, to hop onto the McCain bandwagon.)

But every GOP nominee since Ronald Reagan has promised to name justices and judges who would be satisfactory to the conservative right, only to disappoint and, yes, outrage them with some of their picks.

President Ronald Reagan, for instance, nominated Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy who provided the fifth vote in numerous Supreme Court cases that came out the wrong way, at least in the eyes of social conservatives.

President George H.W. Bush nominated Justice David Souter, a reliably liberal vote on the court, a fact for which social conservatives have never forgiven the forty first president.

The current President Bush, of course, nominated his legal counsel, Harriet Miers, before he was forced to withdraw her name, in part because of an outcry from social conservatives.

by Frank James

The Democratic National Commitee ad that attacks Sen. John McCain for his 100-years-in-Iraq remark seemed to have the desired effect with some of the all-important voters who see it, making those voters look less favorably on the senator from Arizona.

That's one conclusion to draw from a study of how some voters reacted to the DNC ad that edited snippets of McCain with video of violence in Iraq.

HCD Reseach Inc., a market research company, found that independent voters went from 50 pecent who saw McCain in a "mostly favorable" light before they saw the ad, to 40 percent after they viewed the ad.

The use by Democrats of the statement McCain made at a town-hall meeting before the New Hampshire primary has been the subject of much controversy.

What McCain was saying in context was that he didn't believe Americans minded how long U.S. troops stayed in Iraq so long as they weren't being killed or maimed. For support, he cited long the decades' long presence of U.S. troops in Japan and Germany.

by Aamer Madhani

The lawmakers and veterans' advocates who gathered behind Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) this afternoon for a Capitol Hill rally to promote an overhaul of educational benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan vets were an A-list lot.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), gushed about the importance of doing right by the current crop of veterans. And Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), a Korean War and a World War II veteran, reminded the crowd that it was unlikely that he would have become a senator if it weren't for the fact that the GI Bill paid for his undergraduate and law school tuition.

Even the actor that played the head of NBC on Seinfeld showed up to cast his support for the Webb-Hagel proposal.

Just a few months ago, Webb's and Hagel's call to modernize the bill was hardly registering with their colleagues. They repeatedly pointed out to their colleagues that service members serving in a war time were receiving a GI Bill that had been last updated with a peace time standard, while the administration expressed concern that an overhaul could push active-duty troops to ditch the military for college.

As of today, their proposal now has 58 sponsors in the Senate and 249 in the House.

Despite President Bush again today calling on Congress to send him a $108 billion war spending bill free of extraneous programs, Democratic leaders will likely include the proposal in the upcoming supplemental war spending bill, a senior Democratic aide said.

by Frank James

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is calling Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain out on the controversial North Carolina GOP ad which tries to link two Democratic candidates in the state to Democrat Sen. Barack Obama's by now infamous preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Dean is framing it as a test of McCain's leadership, basically saying, if he can't get people affiliated with his presidential campaign in North Carolina to not run an ad, how can he run the country?

It's an interesting question which will no doubt generate an equally interesting answer.

Here's the DNC press release:

Dean: McCain Needs to Show Real Leadership on North Carolina Ad

Washington, DC - According to reports, the chair of the state Republican Party in North Carolina is planning to move forward with its plans to air its racially divisive campaign ad despite John McCain's emailed complaints. While the McCain campaign made a show of protesting the ad, McCain made no mention of the fact that key officials in the North Carolina GOP are members of McCain's state steering committee and McCain donors.

by Jill Zuckman

Few Republicans were more caustic when it came to John McCain's candidacy in the GOP presidential primary than former Sen. Rick Santorum.

He castigated McCain on the issues - immigration, global warming, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research, to name just a few. And he complained about McCain's style - "he plays rough in the sandbox," was his euphemistic way of calling McCain mean.

Today, however, Santorum makes the case in the Philadelphia Inquirer for why conservatives should support McCain.

While acknowledging his "serious reservations" about McCain, Santorum cites the presumptive Republican nominee's knowledge about the military.

Sen. John McCain delivers an economic speech during a campaign event at Carnegie Mellon University, Tuesday, April 15, 2008, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

by Frank James

One of the big ideas out of Sen. John McCain's Carnegie-Mellon University speech today was his idea for a tax holiday from the 18.4 cents federal gas tax for essentially the entire summer driving season.

It's a great populist notion. Who doesn't want to pay lower prices at the pump, especially with gas prices hovering near $4 a gallon in some places?

But there are obvious problems. For instance, what would stop gas retailers from just hiking their prices to capture the savings?

And if the gas-tax holiday led consumers to drive more, the entire benefit of suspending the gas tax could easily be lost to the price pressures that would come from higher demand.

The gas tax also funds the highway trust fund which pays for the building and repair of interstate highways and bridges. Given the aging state of the nation's infrastructure, it wouldn't seem like the best time to reduce the funds available for road projects.

Then there's the pressure that comes from global oil prices, which crossed the $114 a barrel threshold today. Such upward pressures would likely erase any relief afforded by a gas tax holiday.

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog has a useful posting by Stephen Powers on what generally happens to Washington proposals for gas-tax holidays. In short, they go nowhere, evaporating like gas vapors on a summer day.

by Whitney Blair Wyckoff

As the battle between the remaining Democratic presidential hopefuls wages on, it looks like John McCain might be lending former rival Rudy Giuliani a helping hand.

According to Washington Wire, the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau blog, McCain’s people are talking about helping get Giuliani’s campaign out of the red.

Washington Wire reports:

Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is not known for its fund raising prowess so it’s unusual that the Arizona senator is using his all-but-certain nominee status to raise money for former rival Rudy Giuliani.

“The Giuliani campaign is trying to retire the debt they incurred during the primary campaign. As the leadership of this campaign, the Senator and I are asking you to help in this effort,” wrote Davis, who praised the former New York City mayor as “a national hero” and thanked him for his “dedicated support” of McCain.

Sen. John McCain greets the crowd in Memphis Friday, April 4, 2008 (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer.)

by Frank James

Perhaps being shot down over enemy territory and spending years as a prisoner of war makes Sen. John McCain less intimidated than other politicians at the thought of speaking to unfriendly audiences. After all, what's a little heckling after you've endured years of North Vietnamese tormenters.

That thought crossed my mind as I watched McCain speak last week in Memphis to an African-American crowd gathered outside the Lorraine Motel, the site of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr'.s 1968 assassination.

The venue was certainly well beyond the typical suburban comfort zone of Republican presidential candidates. And it was especially hot spot for McCain who voted against the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, a historic fact that drew boos from some in the audience when he mentioned it.

But there he was.

And as John Dickerson of Slate writes, it's part of a McCain campaign strategy that will find him visiting inner city and poor rural areas, places Republicans usually write off as too Democratic to waste precious campaign time in.

by Frank James

Sen. John McCain was the first of the remaining three presidential candidates to get a crack at Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker today, as the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain's opening statement distilled points he's made on the campaign trail in recent weeks and months, mainly that there's been progress in the security situation in Iraq and that it would be a critical strategic mistake for the U.S. to withdraw its forces from Iraq as his Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have advocated.

In his questions to Petraeus and Crocker, McCain sounded very much like a commander-in-chief asking his top field commander for a battlefield assessment. That likely was no accident on McCain's part.

But unlike some of his fellow Republicans, McCain also was clearly critical of problems in Iraq. McCain has campaigned heavily on having opposed many aspects of how the Bush Administration conducted the war before the U.S. security surge began last year. His questions today suggested he planned to keep a certain distance from President Bush on Iraq.

For instance, McCain picked up on a line of questioning stated by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin's who asked Petraeus about reports that the recent Basra violence triggered by the Iraqi government's assault on Shiite forces there was a precipitous action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki which caught U.S. officials by surprise.

The senator from Arizona, the winner of the Republican presidential primaries, also asked about the failure of 1,000 of the Iraqi security forces to persevere in that fighting; about al Qaeda in Iraq, and recent attacks on the Green Zone, home to the U.S. embassy.

Here's McCain's exchange with Petraeus and Crocker.

SEN. MCCAIN: General Petraeus, again, news reports said that Prime Minister Maliki only informed you shortly before the operation -- is that correct -- in Basra?

GEN. PETRAEUS: It is, Senator. We had a heads-up in a Friday night meeting where we in fact were planning to resource operations in Basra on a longer-term basis. The following Saturday we had a meeting during which he laid out the plan that he was going to deploy forces,laid out the objectives, the lines of operations that he was going to operate along, and stated that he was moving there on Friday himself -- or on Monday himself.

SEN. MCCAIN: And it was not something that you had recommended.

GEN. PETRAEUS: It was not something I recommended, no, sir.

SEN. MCCAIN: News reports indicate that over a thousand Iraqi army and police deserted or underperformed during that operation. This is four months after Basra achieved provincial Iraqi control, meaning that all provincial security had been transferred to Iraqi security forces. What's the lesson that we're to draw from that, that a thousand Iraqi army and police deserted or underperformed?

by Frank James

Sen. John McCain got unwanted attention recently when, during a visit to the Middle East, he said that Iran, a nation of Shiite Muslims, was providing aid and comfort to the Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group.

His friend, Sen. Joe Lieberman had to famously whisper in his ear to correct him. This allowed McCain's two Democratic presidential rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to criticize McCain for his mistake, which came in the area that's supposed to be in his wheelhouse, national security and foreign policy.

At today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, McCain once again seemed to make a muddle of the whole Shiite-Al Qaeda thing. It came in this exchange with Gen. David Petraeus.

SEN. MCCAIN: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?
GEN. PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.

SEN. MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi'ites, all overall, or Sunnis or anybody else.

Good thing he quickly threw Sunnis in there. At least he didn't need Lieberman to bail him out this time.

McCain may want to work on this obvious weakness in his Iraq fund of knowledge. Maybe flash cards would help.

by Frank James

Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are now in the packed Senate hearing room where they will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the situation in Iraq.

As with past Petraeus hearings, there's been great anticipation, indeed hype, associated with his report. Today differs from past hearings, of course, because it will provide a stage for the 2008 presidential race, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.,) the winner of the Republican presidential primaries, expected to be the focus of much attention, as will Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) who's fighing Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for the Democratic nomination. Obama, is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before which Petraeus and Crocker will testify this afternoon.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.,) chair of the Armed Services panel, has just opened the hearing. We''ll be updating with additional posts through the morning. Keep watching The Swamp as this story unfold. As always, we welcome your thoughtful, often provocative comments.

by Aamer Madhani Updated with RNC comment
With Gen. David Petraeus' and Amb. Ryan Crocker's visit to Capitol Hill only two days away, Democrats threw jabs on Iraq at presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain and President Bush this morning over Iraq policy.

And it appears the "100-year war" debate is not about to go away.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John Kerry, who once considered picking McCain as a running mate in his own 2004 run for the White House, criticized the presumptive Republican nominee for being inconsistent with his comments about a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq.

McCain, as has been well reported, cut off a New Hampshire voter at a campaign back in January who talked about President Bush's seeming willingess to keep troops in Iraq for 50 years with his own opinion about a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq.

McCain chimed in:"Maybe a hundred." The Arizona senator then added that U.S. troops have kept a presence in Germany and Korea for decades.

The campaigns of Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have seized on the comment as evidence that if McCain were elected the U.S. would be mired in an endless war in Iraq, while the McCain campaign has retorted that his opponents knowingly mischaracterized what he said on the trail.

But Kerry noted today that last fall in an interview on The Charlie Rose Show McCain discounted the Korea-German model for Iraq.

"But I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws," McCain said on Charlie Rose.

Kerry said today about McCain's comments on Charlie Rose that "He got it right then. He's getingt it wrong now."

AP/Getty Images

by Aamer Madhani

A group of social conservatives launched an advertising campaign today warning Sen. John McCain not to chose Mitt Romney as his running mate.

The advertisements, which are set to run in 20 newspapers in areas where McCain will be campaigning in the coming weeks, were paid for by the Government is Not God-PAC. Among those behind the ad, which is displayed as an open letter to McCain, is Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Moral Majority. Another singer of the advertisement is Stephen Strang, a prominent Evangelical publisher who was an early supporter of Gov. Mike Huckabee's run for the Republican nomination.

"If Governor Romney is on your ticket, many social conservative voters will consider their values repudiated by the Republican Party and will either stay away from the polls this November or only vote down ticket. For the sake of your election, the health of your party, and the future of America you must not allow the obvious electoral consequences of that to occur," reads the text of the ad addressed to McCain.

Weyrich previously supported Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts was a supporter of abortion rights and was an advocate of gay rights. Romney changed his views on both issues before announcing his presidential ambitions. Weyrich later said he regretted supporting Romney.

McCain and Romney were fierce competitors before Romney withdrew from his race for the White House following a poor showing in the Super Tuesday contests in February. More recently, Romney and McCain appeared together on the campaign trail, and Romney even said he would be happy to serve as McCain's running mate.

The full page ran today for the first time in the Daily Courier of Prescott, Ariz., where McCain is campaigning.