The NYT's widely-read blog The Caucus asks if McCain and surrogates like Nicole Wallace and Mitt Romney are still on the campaign trail, in what sense is the campaign suspended?
Has the McCain-Palin campaign really been put on hold?
Questions have emerged over the extent to which Senator John McCain is actually shutting down his campaign — as he indicated he would on Wednesday — to deal with the negotiations over the government’s economic bailout package.
A local Philadelphia NBC News affiliate was reporting Thursday morning that Mr. McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was to hold a rally at the airport in Philadelphia upon her arrival there this afternoon.
The most recent official schedule for Ms. Palin, which the campaign distributed late Tuesday night, did not include an airport event. And the McCain campaign said Ms. Palin’s arrival should not be construed as a “rally,” merely “an arrival.”
Also, McCain surrogate Mitt Romney was scheduled to speak to business leaders in Detroit on Thursday, according to a Michigan newspaper. Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, was expected to speak with reporters after the closed-press meeting.
(We’re seeking more details from the campaign about Ms. Palin’s arrival and the event with Mr. Romney.)
As for Mr. McCain, he went ahead, as he said he would, with his speech in New York City at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative today. And parts of it sounded like his campaign speeches.
At a meeting with reporters in Washington, Robert Gibbs, an Obama campaign senior adviser, questioned how fully Mr. McCain applied the brakes to his campaign.
“I was on TV with Nicole Wallace today,” Mr. Gibbs said referring to a McCain spokeswoman who made the rounds on several morning shows on Thursday, “If they suspended her, she didn’t get the memo.”
