McCain addresses a truly Western issue and threatens to start a water war

Open up the 1922 Colorado River Compact? Fighting words!

This is probably the best piece on the implications of McCain;s statement.
Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
McCain’s Water Woes

“For a Senator from a Western state, John McCain is showing some serious disconnectedness from the issues that matter out here. Is he really running for President of the United States, or President of Arizona?”

-more

McCain stirs up water spat. He says the Colorado River Compact needs renegotiating, causing an uproar in the West. By Patty Henetz. The Salt Lake Tribune.

Republican senator Enzi ‘will be teaching’ McCain about water. Casper Star Tribune.

Gov. Freudenthal douses McCain’s water remark. Casper Star Tribune.

McCain: “To the rear, march!” by Bob Ewegen. Denver Post.

Fallout from McCain’s river compact comments. By Wally Edge. PolitikerCo.com


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Comments

  1. vicki Avatar
    vicki

    This is testimony to McCrock’s true intentions and priorities. He is a Bush Jr. disaster in the making. Vote no!!!!

  2. JB Avatar
    JB

    As an aside, I just watched in horror as the Today Show ran a story about how McCain had “cut Obama’s lead in half.” The two polls they cited had Obama at 47 then 45, and McCain at 41 then 42. At the top of the screen, in tiny print, was the margin of error: 3.1 percentage points. That’s right, the two numbers cited for the polls are exactly the same, statistically speaking. Meanwhile, NBC is telling everyone that McCain is making a comeback and consulting with all sorts of political experts trying to figure out why.

  3. Alan Avatar

    Too bad tere’s not another “Frank Church” out there.

  4. Monty Avatar

    JB, I am very pessimistic about Obama’s chances for winning the election. The American public wants cheap, simple and quickie solutions to our mounting array of problems. They believe that all problems can be solved without sacrifice or excessive cost with ‘ginned up” short term answers.

  5. TPageCO Avatar
    TPageCO

    The comments round-up by Wally Edge is illuminating. For upper basin (CO, WY, UT, NM) residents, it’s a given that renegotiation of the contract will result in a worse deal than they currently have.

    One (the only?) good thing Gale Norton did in a forgettable term as Interior Secretary was force California to live up to its compact allocation. This move help spur the complementary agreement that was signed last year.

  6. vicki Avatar
    vicki

    If Obama runs with Hillary Clinton, he will win. This stuff goes back and forth for a while, and then some one has scandal, or something changes. If we want change, we have got to push it at state level, no matter who is elected. It is smaller scale, more easy to guage results, and will be an easier forum to make your voice heard.
    The whole election suc.., errr stinks, as no one has a definitive course of action to make things progress in a more energy efficient way. If McCain does win, it will be only a short time before the economy is in such ruin that we will see people screaming for him to go away. That doesn’t help before the next election.
    One of Obama’s mistakes was to bash republicans because he had some of the more liberal republicans swinging their vote his way, he may have alienated them with negative ads.
    However, we may see Obama’s standing improve after his acceptance speech, people want to be inspired…he is a great public speaker.
    Either way, we need to change the atmosphere in the legislature….they are far more powerful that a republican token president would be.

  7. Ralph Maughan Avatar

    I think McCain may have really stepped in it yesterday when he couldn’t remember how many houses he and Cindy owned.

    For good or ill, the balance in a close presidential election is held by the least informed voters. These voters are hard to reach, but easy to move if you can reach them. Something like this is what the least interested can pick up on and understand.

  8. kim kaiser Avatar

    “he is a great public speaker.”\\

    so was hitler!! and look what he did with all his inspiration,,,

  9. Ralph Maughan Avatar

    I think it is likely to be a close election.

    I believe that the general strategy for an election is

    1. firm up your base and stir up enthusiasm there (that means money and turnout).
    2. sway the weak partisans, undecideds, independents
    3. lastly try to convert the opposition (only happens in landslides)

    Right now both McCain and Obama have fired up their bases despite continual media stories of problems there. The media likes the stories of dissension, but large amounts of dissension are not really there. Yes, their base could come undone, but that has rarely happened in the past once it became firm.

    The independents are closely divided, but currently with a slight preference for Obama.

    The balance of issues favor Obama

    The image people hold of the candidates is in flux (based on the polls I read today), but it looks to me like both men are about tied in image for now.

    I think the current facts favor Obama because the number of self-professed Democrats (the Democratic base) has grown in the last 4 years.

    Obama also has that slight issue advantage.

    McCain’s chance comes from the possibility he will eventually project a significantly better image than Obama. That’s possible, but the odds are against him gaining a big advantage.

    So, a close victory for Obama.

  10. JB Avatar
    JB

    Ralph,

    I think the Obama campaign has taken a lesson from Jesse Ventura’s success in Minnesota: they have an amazing job recruiting new, younger voters. This was evident even in the primaries, and if they are voting in the primaries…

    This younger group is harder to reach (they don’t often have LAN lines, they move more frequently) and so are often not reached in polls. This group is also discounted through statistical weighting procedures as they are generally less likely to vote. If these folks turn out for the election, I think Obama’s margin of victory could be considerable.

    JB

  11. Ralph Maughan Avatar

    JB,

    You certainly brought up a key question.

    I’ll bet when the various polls start to apply the “screens” they use to estimate turnout and the direction of the vote for the various groupings of their respondents, the polls’ results could be all over the place, conflicting with each other, giving an impression of instability and contradiction of who is ahead when the reality is simple and quite stable.

  12. Buffaloed Avatar

    Gee Ralph,

    Were you a political science professor or something? 😉

Author

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.

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