Did McCain misfire by not using gun issues more? NRA wants Election Day papers to go in its ad bag

One of John McCain's biggest mistakes has been failing "to exploit issues that Republicans usually do well with," such as guns, Roger Simon writes on Politico: "Considering that the McCain/Palin ticket is now battling for its life in small town and rural America, you would think the McCain campaign would be out there talking about guns every day."

Sarah Palin, in her speech at the Republican convention, referred to Obama's comment about "bitter" small-town voters clinging to guns or religion and "widened the issue to one of elitism and trust," Simon writes, quoting her: "In small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening."

Obama's choice of Joe Biden for vice president also played into the GOP's hands, because "Biden is despised by the gun lobby," wrote the assault-weapons ban and said in July, “We should be working with law enforcement, right now, to make sure that we protect people against people who are not capable of knowing what to do with a gun because they’re either mentally imbalanced and/or because they have a criminal record.” Simon notes, "Some gun owners get scared when they hear talk like that."

The National Rifle Association is running its own ads agains Obama, but Simon asks, "Where are the McCain ads, lending his voice to this issue?" He argues that guns "had a lot to do" with Al Gore losing West Virginia, Arkansas and his home state of Tennessee in 2000. "Gun owners simply didn’t believe Gore when he said he was not going to take their guns away," Simon writes. "They did believe Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 when he said the same thing, but Clinton sold his 'Bubba' image effectively and was far more trusted in small-town and rural America." (Read more)

Meanwhile, the NRA is trying to pay newspapers to put their Election Day print editions in a plastic bag that reads "Vote for Freedom ... Defeat Obama." Four Kentucky dailies and three in Indiana have accepted the ads, which will also promote U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, both Republicans. But only one of the seven papers, the Times of Northwest Indiana, will use the bags on Election Day, Nov. 4, reports Jack Brammer of the Lexington Herald-Leader. His paper will use the bags on Nov. 3 because it limits specialty political advertising on election days, Publisher Tim Kelly said. Teresa Revlett, sales director for the Kentucky Press Association, which sold the ads, said some papers refused them but she declined to say how many.

The two largest newspapers in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, rejected the ads, reports the latter paper's Julian Walker. The Pilot's business development manager, Alan Levenstein, said it takes several weeks to print the bags, so allowing one advertiser that format "could deny a group with an opposing view a chance to buy the same space before the election," Walker writes. Levenstein added, "We want to make sure that we don't look, as a newspaper, that we're endorsing one viewpoint or another." (Read more)