Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiThe revival of John McCain's presidential candidacy, now expected to carry him through to his party's nomination, can be interpreted as either proof of the judgment of Republican primary voters or evidence of the paucity of alternative choices. Certainly, it confirms the wisdom of betting against the predictions of the national press corps, which produced so many sorrowful postmortems on his campaign.
Very soon, if not instantly, the same pundits who wrote off McCain's chances will be assuring us that the recent has-been is now an electoral juggernaut. They will describe him as resplendent in political valor, reforming zeal and militant patriotism, and of course brimming with "straight talk." Of such shiny publicity has the Arizona senator's image been built over the past decade or so.
What remains to be seen is whether his admirable image will withstand fresh scrutiny, if and when he becomes the presumptive nominee-and how independents, Democrats and conservative Republicans will respond to an updated portrait of him. The price of his victory may well be measured in principles dropped, and in positions flipped and flopped.
He has quietly walked away from his former allies on campaign finance reform. He has run away from his own immigration reform legislation. He has sold away the commitment to economic fairness and fiscal discipline that once led him to oppose the skewed Bush tax cuts.
On at least one issue, however, he remains absolutely consistent. As he said not long ago, he favors dispatching generations of American soldiers to Iraq for a hundred years or more, while spending trillions of borrowed dollars not only on that war, but others to come in unspecified countries. "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" is the mindless motto of the McCain foreign policy.
In an election year when voters say they are demanding change from the failures and follies of the Bush years, this political profile could create serious problems for any candidate. For McCain, the dangers may be even greater, because while he resolutely upholds an unpopular war, he has forfeited the single issue that could most easily inflame the Republican base as well as many independents.
Any other Republican running against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would quickly put the Democrats on the defensive over their refusal to promise that millions of undocumented workers and their families will be deported someday soon, or ever. Any other Republican would be able to portray the Democratic Party as advocates of unrestricted immigration and "amnesty" for immigrants who have entered the United States illegally. It is simple to conjure a negative ad showing dark, frightening foreigners, with a script bemoaning lost jobs, rising crime and welfare costs, even the threat of terrorism. Stimulating fear has become a tradition in American elections.
But McCain cannot benefit from that kind of demagogic commercial. After all, he was for amnesty before he was against it, as his conservative critics might put it. And much as he may now wish to pretend that the issue is moot, his name remains on the reform bill sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Advisers to McCain may plan to mount a different brand of fear-based attack, much as former White House adviser Karl Rove did so successfully during the 2002 and 2004 elections. That campaign would feature ads assaulting the Democrats as disloyal and timid, for daring to voice even the mildest objection to the Bush administration's surveillance and torture policies.
Dramatic commercials might steal a page from television, with a president trying to decide how to interrogate a suspect who knows where to find the nuclear suitcase bomb. Could we count on a Democrat to authorize the waterboarding in time? Yet that scary scenario won't work for McCain, either, because he has stood forthrightly against torture, to the great dismay of many detractors in his own party.
The war in Iraq will afford him the chance to draw sharp distinctions with his Democratic opponent, but that difference will place him on the wrong side of the electorate. He will win points, perhaps, for sticking with the unpopular position. But with the prospect of recession growing each day, his devotion to military solutions and neglect of economic concerns may make him appear not only dangerous, but also irrelevant.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.
© 2008 TruthDig.com
26 Comments so far
Show AllI was thinking the same thing after reading an article on Obama and Clinton "sparring..." I hope we end up with a candidate that is not too bruised to win the actual election!
The thought of McCain at the helm give me goosebumps... I saw a trailer for a new independent movie that's coming to DVD where a guy moves to Canada in response to Kerry's defeat in '04. Any takers if the GOP takes capital hill again?
For more who knows, maybe the movie will inspire a whole new breed of border jumpers if the country goes red again...
You can check out the trailer at http://www.bluestatemovie.com
There is an online petition asking the DNC to choose the candidate with the most votes and delegates rather than take the chance on a secret backroom deal.
Please sign the petition and pass it on to your friends.
Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/Superdel/petition.html
One hell of an "opposition party" we got here:
Economic Stimulus Act of 2008
Obama (D-IL), Not Voting
Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Just in: Bend-over_crats cave in on the "Stimulus Package" and vote overwhelming to approve the White House version of the bill after they failed to overcome a fillibuster against the Democratic version. It passed by a vote of 81 to 16 in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The House voted by 380-34 for the Senate version and sent the measure to the White House for Bush's signature.
Obama (D-IL), Not Voting
Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Have you noticed that even when RepubliNazis are in the minority they still get their way because invariable the craven Bend-over_crats crumble and appease. Check out this link if you want to read about it:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/stim-f09.shtml
locust February 8th, 2008 12:43 pm
"...instead of uniting and hammering the Republicans for the next 9 months."
When was the last time a Bend-over_crat hammered a Republican instead of bending over and getting hammered?
On the stolen election in 2000?
During stolen election in 2004?
How about the illegal invasion/war/occupation?
During the time billions of dollars disappeared or got squandered in Iraq?
Perhaps during Katrina?
How about leaking the names of CIA operatives?
How about spying on US citizens?
Well, and what did they do about breaking Geneva Conventions?
During the time Habeas Corpus disappeared?
How about when bush declared that waterboarding torture is legal?
How about when they helped confirm the scum bucket Mukasey?
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY: did not vote.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill: did not vote.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn: did not vote.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del: did not vote.
I would like to know exactly what it is you expect the Bend-over_crats to do about anything based on their record and not based on the lies they speak and you Obamist and Clintonist swallow, that are designed strictly to put them in office. Then they will betray those that believed them.
While claiming to be against the war why did they always vote to fund it? Why did Obama remove the only speech against the war he delivered from his web site once he became a senator? Why do the Bend-over_crats refuse to commit to bringing the troops home immediately and closing the bases? To ask the question is to answer it, because they are sell-outs. If they weren't they would have never gotten this far. If either of the O'Billarys were seen as any threat to the establishment the establishment wouldn't have poured millions of dollars into them.
All progressive-thinking people need to break with the sold out party formally known as the Democratics that has morphed in the Democratic-Republican party of greed, war and big business.
Dump the Dims, ain't worth a bucket of warm spit. Go Greens or Socialists!
Bumper sticker #2: "Honk if you want another 100 years in lraq"
Thanx RSJ
Great post, Mary Lou. Yes, McCain has been trying to play this down in the past ten years, as if he wasn't involved. I believe he even tried to spin it at one time as him being the 'whistleblower' on Keating.
I hope the Dem candidate, whoever it is, doesn't forget this slip from rails of Mr. Straight Talk Express.
from wikipedia:
The Keating Five (or Keating Five Scandal) refers to a Congressional scandal related to the collapse of most of the Savings and Loan institutions in the United States in the late 1980s.
Following the deregulation of the banking industry in the 1980s, savings and loan associations (also known as thrifts) were given the flexibility to invest their depositors' funds in commercial real estate. (Previously, they had been restricted to investing in residential real estate.) Many savings and loan associations began making risky investments. As a result, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the federal agency that regulates the industry, tried to clamp down on the trend. In so doing, however, the FHLBB clashed with the Reagan administration, whose policy was deregulation of many industries, including the thrift industry. The administration declined to submit budgets to Congress that would request more funding for the FHLBB's regulatory efforts.
In 1989, the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, Calif., collapsed. Lincoln's chairman, Charles H. Keating Jr., was faulted for the thrift's failure. Keating, however, told the House Banking Committee that the FHLBB and its former chief Edwin J. Gray were pursuing a vendetta against him. Gray testified that several U.S. senators had approached him and requested that he ease off on the Lincoln investigation. It came out that these senators had been beneficiaries of $1.3 million (collective total) in campaign contributions from Keating.
This allegation set off a series of investigations by the California government, the United States Department of Justice, and the Senate Ethics Committee. The ethics committee's investigation focused on five senators: Alan Cranston (D-CA); Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ); John Glenn (D-OH); John McCain (R-AZ); and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (D-MI), who became known as the Keating Five.
Clyde Paige wrote: "McCain would butcher Obama starting with why did you in the Illinois House vote present 118 times?That's 118 times taking a stand on nothing.Hillary will win if nominated and will be a very good president because she know's what to do and will try harder."
Kristina40 has it right -- a 'present' vote in the Illinois Senate can show a senator has problems with the bill and enough of those votes will send the bill back for amending or rewording rather than killing it completely.
Let McCain go ahead and bring that up -- and then Obama can ask why McCain missed so many votes in the US Senate while running for president that the National Journal couldn't rate his voting record.
I'm not that worried about McCain: He's connected to he loathed Bush at the hip on foreign policy and the economy, which will be the two major issues this year and I've seen his speeches on C-Span and not just the clips the Big Media show: in debate with Hillary or Obama, the first time McCain goes blank and his jaw goes slack like Grandpa Simpson as he tries to recall the topic, it will be all over but the shouting. Besides, the man doesn't look healthy. McCain has divided the GOP -- already some Republicans are talking about writing off this election -- and he has nothing to offer the majority in the general election except more Bush, the worst president in history.
Hillary would probably be a very good Republican president, just like her husband. If that's what you want, vote for her.
That said, she'd be better than McCain, but Obama would be better than either one of them.
LOL, Earl Simmins.
locust, remember the Demoks can't hammer the Repuks cuz they will be labeled "soft on terra". Instead the Demoks have to let the Repuks destroy themselves and everything that gets in their way while top Demok gladiators claw each other's eyes out, all on camera of course. Meanwhile the lame ducks work feverishly to take away more civil rights, privatize more public institutions, construct more frontier outposts, intensify energy addiction, and sell more WMDs to rogue states.
Bumper sticker in my 55+ community " l'm spending my children's inheritence.. i'm voting Republican"
Have a look at tonight's counterpunch.org. John McCain is your next George Bush. Long live Dick Cheney.
McCain is a very dangerous man; perhaps the most dangerous man on the planet. He understands Cuba because he was in a plane on an aircraft carrier in 1963, he says, and he promises to not be a passive bystander with regard to Cuba now. His remarks on Iran and Iraq are well known, but he also, like his Democratic rivals, wants to do something about Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. He admits he is a war criminal, but this does not concern his supporters or many so called independents who believe he is a straight shooter. He is a shooter all right, but speaks with a forked tounge, as the old westerns use to protray Indians saying of the duplicity of the white man. But do not underestimate the stupidity of the American people, and go get William Appleman William's, EMPIRE AS A WAY OF LIFE, and you will understand quite well how it is not only possible, but probable, that his man will be the next president of the U.S. He is only marginally more intelligent than Bush, and in many ways, a lot more dangerous; and we know what that means.
While I have nothing but contempt for the Democrats and their supporters (Daniel David comes to mind) I have to admit Daniel Davids analysis above is accurate and he has it down on this.
DD
choosing Hucky as a running mate would be an extreme example of poor judgement.
Eeep, I guess you're right. It'll be a McCan(fight forever, find an enemy if you need to) and Huckster(theocracy is good for me) ticket.
As a foreigner I'd say either Clinton or Obama would be better than bush, beyond that... We'll see.
locust February 8th, 2008 12:43 pm:
"The Democrats could easily win this November.
All Clinton has to do is drop out, admit that Obama is just as good a choice as her and for the unity and future of the party and country she's stepping down."
Or Obama could do the same, "But that would be putting the country before" his "own political fortune.
Can't have that."
Of course in your scenario Obama is the answer, the "hope" of "progressives" , and Clinton is the selfish opportunist who only cares for power.
It is no never mind to me, I will not likely vote for either of them. But as far as I can tell there is no real difference in how they govern. And I still think Clinton is more electable in the General Election against McCain than Obama. But the "hopeful" don't want to hear that.
Oh well, leave it to the Democrats to blow a gimme election. Y'all should have gotten behind John Edwards when you had the chance, he was the closest to a sure thin the Dems had going.
What will McCain do now (soon)? He'll pick Huckabee as the running mate, because evangelicals will DEMAND it, and John's a go-along guy. (Or then again, maybe he won't---because John is also noted for poor judgement of any situation, even his own election.)
The better question is what will Democrats do. The very astute (but not electable) Howard Dean knows very well that the Obama/Clinton drama needs to end within about 6 weeks from now. The chorus from CD might do well to start singing for Hillary to drop out for the good of the party and the country. May not work, but it's worth a try. After all, a lot of things of much lesser importance are dwelt on here all the time.
If I were the McCain team I'd start thinking of ways to neutralize his wikipedia biography, notably his terrible temper, his maverick judgment, his penchant for crashing planes and his Pensacola affair with an exotic dancer named Marie, the Flame of Florida. Somebody is bound to locate some naughty pictures of her and spread them all over the internet, as the French have done with those hot photos of Carla Bruni. This will present a real dilemma for the abstinence-only crowd, and will also confuse the family values people. It's a shame he's not in France, actually, where a healthy libido makes you politically competitive.
clydepaige, I am a woman and would love to see a woman as POTUS, just not that woman. National polls already show Obama beats McCain and Hillary loses to him. Go ahead, vote for Hillary, what's another 100 years in Iraq? We can afford it, right?
Also, those "present" votes in Illinois are quite common. They are used when there is an issue with legality or wording of the bill. If you break down the amount of times he voted compared to his "present" votes you come up with 4% of the issues he voted present on...Whoopdedo...
The media will lay off McCain for a while and will continue to use Clinton and Obama just like they use Britney Spears and Michael Jackson.
Hoa binh
The really horrible thing (and Joe Conason knows this)is that even when the Republicans lose an election, they continue right on their merry way with their deep-pockets billionaire funders, now captive corporate media and talk-radio nutcase friends and their think tanks like Cato, Heritage, Manhattan Institute ad nauseum. So, if anyone thinks that merely electing a Democrat to the White House or gaining some slim majority in Congress will save our country, it is a mistaken notion. The Democratic Congress of 2007 has shown itself to be servile and weak in calling things by their real names and pushing for impeachment of those deserving of impeachment in the Republican administration.
Locust: if you could get over your hating Hillary long enough to check out Obama you might change your mind or are you one who can't stand a brilliant woman?McCain would butcher Obama starting with why did you in the Illinois House vote present 118 times?That's 118 times taking a stand on nothing.Hillary will win if nominated and will be a very good president because she know's what to do and will try harder.
The ecomony is the number one concern of American's. McCain has stated that he is not very good on the ecomony so why are people even considering him much less voting for him?.This republican party must be the dumbest party in history as is their president.
The Democrats could easily win this November.
All Clinton has to do is drop out, admit that Obama is just as good a choice as her and for the unity and future of the party and country she's stepping down.
But that would be putting the country before her own political fortune.
Can't have that. When we most need statesmen/women we get politicos at their worst.
We'll have Clinton and Obama tearing each other up until August, instead of uniting and hammering the Republicans for the next 9 months.
And of course, after Clinton is anointed and then loses the election we'll have our favorite Democrat apologistas blaming the Progressives for the next 4 years.
Well, at least someone will have a job.
Clever, these Republicrats. They're going to go into "sleep mode" for a while, marshalling their reserves, saving money, watching and cheering (and perhaps surreptitiously helping) while Obama and Hillary tear each other apart. They'll be united, fresh, rested, and ready for a fight by the time the convention rolls around.
"I belong to no organized political party; I'm a Democrat." -- Will Rodgers
McCain -- Straight Talk Express or Right Wing Local?
The answer, of course, is the latter, no matter that the shrill shills of the right have been calling him a Rino or worse over the past couple of months -- which might (that's MIGHT) be Rovian tactics designed to make McCain more palatable to independents and conservative-to-moderate Democrats.
Why the answer is the latter is evident in what's presented at http://www.mytown.ca/green-dog/ or at http://tinyurl.com/2t8wu6