The prospect of defeat has unleashed what insiders describe as an "every man for himself" culture within the McCain campaign, with aides in a "circular firing squad" as blame is assigned.
More profoundly, it sparked the first salvoes in a Republican civil war....
October 26, 2008
If there is an Obama landslide, how will the GOP retool?
Some people have moved on to that question:
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The question is premature on any number of levels. So like the Ashley Todd affair, lets wait to see what happens.
"Unleashed" an "every man for himself" culture in the McCain camp?
HA! The McCain camp was BORN in an "every man for himself" culture. It is the McCain camp's much ballyhooed maverickism, where he attacks his friends and sleeps with his enemies, thinking that he and they know better than anyone else in the world, it is their supremely self-centered arrogance, having contempt for others, that has got him where he is now.
Is it now and will it continue to be the party of Schiavo?
Or, is it now and will it continue to be a bigger tent with a Schiavo base?
Or, some combination?
I don't like the GOP being so heavily controlled by the evangelical right.
Ironically, I'm about to head out to my Assemblies of God church. Odd.
This is a weird election, the weirdest I've ever witnessed, or personally experienced. And I do know how I'd like to see the GOP retool, though I can't say I think it's anymore likely than McCain pulling it out. But who knows? As I said, this is a weird election.
And no one posts any more on the schism in the Democrat party. The DLC, the nutroots, the PUMA's, etc. Soros and the nutroots are ascendant today,but the battle brewing looks much more deadly than that on the right.
Anchorage Daily News endorsement:
"Obama for President"
Ha.
"If there is an Obama landslide, how will the GOP retool?"
If there is a McCain victory, how will the Democratic Party apologize to Hillary?
A better question might be how will the MSM retool. When Obama screws something up they won't be able to blame Bush.
I don't think the Republicans will really need to retool. Have the Democrats retooled since 2004? I don't think so. They simpled stumbled onto a candidate with enough star power to unite their disparate elements. And the Republicans have worn out their welcome, especially by not being more statesmanlike than the Democrats they replaced before.
These things go in cycles. After the Johnson landslide in 1964, the Republicans were thought to be dead. Well, that didn't last. And by 1996 we had welfare reform to boot! The Republicans will come back in a few years after the Democrats make their entirely predictable mess.
How will the GOP retool? By kicking out the tools in it and going back to a real conservative platform without any of the bullshit feel-good crap in it. Then when it comes time, find a real candidate that is a real conservative that can be unabashed and unashamed in their conservatism. If they have the balls to do such a thing people will come out for someone like that just out of the sheer desperation of what an Obama presidency will do to this country after this empty suit is done with it.
Bah!!! What am I thinking. The GOP will just tuck tail, run and hide after getting assaulted with the moniker of the Racist Party and letting these low-brow Mr. Barely sycophants do it to them too.
A better question might be how will the MSM retool. When Obama screws something up they won't be able to blame Bush.
Steel youself for 8 years of positive, uplifting coverage of our wonderfully competent government and Dear Leader Obama.
Utopia is just around the corner! Anyone who says diffeent is just a wingnut hater.
If there is an Obama landslide, how will the GOP retool?
I really hate to be one of those jerks who say “I told you so.”
But they wouldn’t be having these sorts of problems today if everyone had taken my advice in 1992 and voted for Ross Perot.
After the Democrats manage to offend Middle America in '09, either the Republicans will find a new Gingrich to retool the party and seize Congress in '10 in a repeat of '94, or Bobby Jindal will get to decide how the Republicans are going to run in '12.
[What if the Democrats don't offend Middle America? Not a chance. Obama has charisma with voters, sure. But he has neither a legislative machine nor the sort of personal authority that will allow him to destroy the careers of same-party Congressmen. With neither, the Congressional Democrats will run wild . . . and these are the same Democrats that control the current Congress with a 17% approve, 70% disapprove rating.]
No there is not an Obama landslide.
I have an idea that will put Mccain/Palin over with a resounding victory.
Here it is.
Sarah calls a press conference, she has her baby in her arms, the baby cries, Sarah violently rips her blouse off and begins feeding the baby, she then proceeds to squirt any of the reporters when they ask bad questions.
By the end off the press conference all of the reporters will want some food and be pursing their lips to be fed.
It will cause a firestorm and the country will back this amazing woman.
"If there is an Obama landslide, how will the GOP retool?"
There's a high probability it may not matter what the Republicans do.
If Obama truly is as far left as many think and his track record of choosing associates holds to any degree, his far-left, activist administration will 'retool' the United States.
The US will become one big Chicago Democratic Machine.
Bobby Jindal for 2012. A new kind of repubican. A creationist, from a southern state.
Terry has got it right. The question isn't how will the GOP retool, but how will the country recover from an Obama presidency supported by a Pelosi-Reid Congress.
God help us!
It won't make any difference what the GOP does. If Obama wins, this is the last (somewhat) real election. What the GOP does afterward is irrelevant.
If, perchance, the GOP pulls this one out, they'll slap each other on the back, congratulate each other and tell themselves how clever they are. Retool for what?
Hope I'm wrong.
DD
Olympia Snowe 2012.
Love her to death.
A northeast republican who is pro choice, loves the gays but is a hawk. Can't get much better than that. Althouse would be salivating at the thought of the big O.
Also, she is thin and fabulous.
HA! The McCain camp was BORN in an "every man for himself" culture. It is the McCain camp's much ballyhooed maverickism, where he attacks his friends and sleeps with his enemies, thinking that he and they know better than anyone else in the world, it is their supremely self-centered arrogance, having contempt for others, that has got him where he is now.
Ouch. True. And has nothing to do with Sarah Palin, thankfully. I do believe, if they lose, she will emerge pretty unscathed. Too many conservatives like her and trust her.
Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin's brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.
That's a crap sandwich.
Whenever people are given the choice of voting for a republican masquerading as a democrat and a bigger government, higher taxes democrat they will vote for the real democrat every time.
MaCain represents a rejection of me too republican.
McCain has never been a real conservative. If anything McCain is just the candidate Frum, Noonan and Brooks have desired for years. A MSM darling.
If McCain looses, it will be because McCain did not believe in the brand, and didn't sell it. Whereas the competition believed in theirs. They believed in it so much they have not been afraid to say so.
We are going to spread the wealth around.
"Bobby Jindal for 2012. A new kind of repubican. A creationist, from a southern state."
Easy there, Titus. Jindal is a person of color, and as such you are no longer permitted to raise any questions about him or (Goddess forbid) make fun of him in any way. You're being racist. And no, this comment is not off-topic.
The Hartford Courant has got a howler today on "Unconscious Racism"
God help us!
Obama will find it very difficult to outspend Bush.
Even with both houses, the money will not be there.
Obama will react and raise taxes exacerbating the economic downturn.
The republican massage has allays been we are the alternative that works, because socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried.
Thats a fact, its not spin.
If they are going to retool, they will have to do it in reeducation camps.
Here are some ideas:
1. Stop riding the social conservatism train. It has not been a winner for a while, and will look irrelevant in the new economic environment.
2. Come out strongly in favor of MORE immigration. Let the democrats piss off the hispanics.
3. Stop taking bribes and having smutty talk with Congressional pages.
4. Consider proposing a phased reduction (over 20 years) of American military power from the Middle East. Tell the Europeans and Chinese that they will have to do their part to keep oil flowing.
5. Go for a major energy drive in the Western Hemisphere. Drill, drill, drill. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Coal, coal, coal. Nukes, nukes, nukes. Energy will be king.
6. Go full bore for the Hispanic voter. Without them (assuming that blacks will remain politically weak because of their lockstep support of democrats) Republicans will continue to decline.
7. Fine new blood everywhere for candidates, especially among military vets. The democratic leadership in Congress is already old and tired, and the Obama bloom will fade as he governs and the press goes into its usual kill mode.
8. Jindal, Jindal, Jindal. That may work.
How about starting with adherence to some principles and ethics about the government size, balance budgets, porkbarreling as well as cultivating an ethos of voluntary term limits.
Educate and scare the shit out of the public with the true size of US government debt, the long-term implications of such debt and how it is being financed by foreign governments.
So... how did that Contract With America ever work out??
Government reform
On the first day of their majority, the Republicans promised to hold floor votes on eight reforms of government operations:
.require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
.select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
.cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
.limit the terms of all committee chairs;
.ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
.require committee meetings to be open to the public;
.require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
and implement a zero base-line budgeting process for the annual Federal Budget.
Titus - Jindal is not a creationist. He is a Catholic.
I hate to say it, but I agree with 1jbp on one element of the Republican wreck - the Fundie flat-earthers scare the crap out of most of the country and the Hispanics..
1jpb said...
Is it now and will it continue to be the party of Schiavo?
Or, is it now and will it continue to be a bigger tent with a Schiavo base?
Or, some combination?
I don't like the GOP being so heavily controlled by the evangelical right.
Ironically, I'm about to head out to my Assemblies of God church. Odd.
The Schiavo Affair combined with a number of evangelicals getting caught crushing on young boy pages and deep in the Tom DeLay corruption were the final straws.
But the retooling has to be deeper than jettisoning the anti-science, religiously intolerant, " we must love Israel", theocrats.
The other problems:
1. They cannot just dump the Southern Fundies to reclaim the rest of the country as competitive again by taking the Libertarians as they are - the libertarians have some major screws loose on Terrorist Rights, blocking cities from building modern industry and infrastructure.
2. They must also purge out the poison of the Neocons. The concept that Republicans want an endless set of wars fought, not for our vital interests, but to "liberate freedom-lovers" who aren't up to liberating themselves...Or the "we owe it" sentiments - as in "We owe it to Israel to defend it." "We owe the Georgians, the Iraqis, the noble Afghan people...we owe the Cubans help, and poor Sudan and Haiti, too...".
3. They cannot afford to remain to be seen as only the Party of the Rich. Nor the Corporatists that want Open Borders and full Globalization.
4. They have to be honest about the Bush disaster. What they will do differently than the clueless bastard that grew gov't bigger than LBJ did. The fool that borrowed nearly 5 trillion dollars our children and children's children will pay off to China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, France...
5. Worse, they have to confront the Cult of Saint Reagan. After 30 years, we know that supply side theory was a fraud, "trickledown" from favoring the rich over other Americans never happened, dereg was a nightmare, the "free markets" have killed us on having competitive trade and health care - and Reagan was dead wrong about trusting the greedy people on Wall Street with having much brains, or any ethics..You don't reinvigorate a Party by saying we need to stick with 30-year old politics.
And it is worse than that because the Cult of Reagan has spawned "True Believer" Right-Wingers who believe that they must be doctrinally "purer" and even further right-wing than the guy who was an FDR Democrat, signed the most liberal abortion law in the nation, and the guy surrounded by old gay and liberal friends - was...
6. Remember that the old wedge issues of welfare, crime, and gun control are gone or in abeyance. And abortion was all but lost as an issue through ID of it as the thing that drives the crazy Christian Talibani.
And "more tax cuts for Wall Street Moguls, no death taxes on multimillionaire financiers!" has ---err---lost it's appeal, for some reason.
7. And since 2006, the Republicans that best fit the mood of the voters are successful RINOs like Arnold, The Maine Ladies, Charlie Christ. If the Republicans try to organize as Fundie Cult Of Reagan people, around Pastor Huckleberry and Fundie Fertility Goddess Palin they are screwed. And except for Newt, simply because he is such a compelling theoretician - Neocons and symbols of the corrupted past and failure of the 1994 Revolution like DeLay, Ted Stevens, Hastert, Trent Lott - should have no place at the Table.
Better they start from the old core of security, government out of jobs the private sector can do, and fiscal responsibility. That means organizing around moderate to center-right candidates - Romney, Jindal, Pawlentey, ex-military, Reformers like Tom Coburn and Jeff Flake. Toss in a few "pure" conservatives who have not been too badly contaminated by alignment to Bush II, the Fundies, the Neocons.
And wait for the Democrats to screw up. They will. Perhaps not as badly as Bush did - but they will - either on a security failure or expanding the Nanny State or failure to get America back on it's feet after Bush II let China whip us economically and made us near-beggers, fiscally.
I do like the term 'retool', as it clearly implies that they were tools in the past, an will be tools again in the future.
Sorry Jindal believes in teaching creationism in school.
Also, he is butt ugly.
If McCain loses in a landslide, it will be because of the most sustained, intense, shameless campaign by the MSM to get a candidate elected, no matter what, I've ever witnessed. The fact that it's still so close, in a year like this, is nothing short of a miracle. Republicans are, truly, incredibly flawed as a party-- but no more so than the Democrats.
A postmortem on this election that "blames the Republicans" is like blaming a boxer for losing a rigged fight.
And to the "but, Bush!" objection: Bush won despite, against, the MSM-imposed disadvantage (cf. Evan Thomas's admission). And if, say, Rather & Mapes had gotten their way, it might have gone differently. (That we were in the middle of a war, that now people feel all but won, was probably decisive here.) That Republicans win-- or, this year, come conceivably close to winning-- in this environment, to me says more about the quality of the Democratic candidates than the Republicans.
In any case, the MSM's behavior during Bush vs. Kerry is as nothing, indeed was positively admirable, compared to this election-- when it's gone way beyond bias to the realm of actual disinformation & cover-up perpetrated by the MSM (not to mention harassment--not of candidates but an ordinary citizen, for asking an inconvenient question). All for the sake of Obama. For god's sake. I should be inured to this by now, but I find it, every day, genuinely shocking, distressing, and repulsive (I say that as a citizen, not a Republican).
Anyway, it's not over til it's over. The continual trumpeting of inevitability by the MSM is itself part of the game here. Given the extreme unreliability of the polls (wackier than ever this year, fluctuating wildly etc.), I believe McCain still has a real chance. Incredibly.
Landslide, yes, but not for Obama. Scott Ott has the scenario:
"McCain Plans Chain of Obama Recovery Centers:
"John McCain reportedly has already laid plans to heal the nation’s political wounds, and to offer new hope to countless journalists and other liberals whose faith will have been shattered by the defeat of Barack Obama at the polls on November 4."
Yeah, we need to get rid the social conservative issues. Y'know like McCain did this election.
Except for abortion, I don't remember him mentioning one social issue during the debates.
Ford,Dole and Bush I didn't care about social issues either. So yeah, lets drop all those nasty social issues - then we'll get all those soccer moms - all 100,000 of them.
And lets be even more for open borders, amnesty, affirmative action, and multi-culturalism because that worked so well for Bush and McCain.
As has been said; drop the social conservative crap because far too many social conservatives are simply pro-life liberals.
Return to solid fiscal conservatism and a respect for the constitution. McCain is part of the problem, not part of the solution. His complete inability to articulate fiscal conservative principles is both telling and at the core of his failure as a candidate. (If he wins it will be because of anti-Obama votes like mine; I detest McCain, but find Obama far worse.)
On top of that, McCain's contempt for the first amendment is vile.
This election will determine if the Gramscian "long march through the institutions" has sufficiently metastasized and we have officially and irretrievably lost the cold war.
A great piano player and good friend I work with a lot was born and raised in the Soviet Union. He understood Obama immediately. He's seen it all before, and he's dumbstruck at the stupidity of America. I tell him that freedom and prosperity are so taken for granted, and the leftist crisis media has so brainwashed people that they actually think things are as bad as they can get. Naturally a charismatic demagogue promising to change the world appeals to these deluded magical thinkers.
Obama is going to change the world. He's truthful about that. He is going to put the final nail in the coffin of American democratic capitalism and the creed of individual liberty. The end result, however long it takes, will be identical to every other experiment with socialism.
TitusonlyTops said...
"Olympia Snowe 2012."
Doesn't work. I floated it three years ago.
The pundits, who have repeatedly been wrong about almost everything this season, are going to squeal that Sarah Palin was the problem; that's a ridiculous claim, given that Palin resusciated the party's chances and brought us from a rout to striking distance of victory.
The assignment of blame is the easy part. The reason we're in this mess is George W. Bush and the Congressional GOP's pork for votes corruption. Bush is a self-correcting problem: he's gone forever in a few weeks. As to Congress: I honestly don't care if we lose every seat in the House. Every single one. I don't care if Nancy's caucus and the committee of the whole house become synonymous for two years. And the only reason I don't feel the same about the Senate is because the Senate is just too important (although I doubt that the Senate GOP now has the courage to filibuster Obama's juicial nominees). We'd lose some good meat with the fat, but the fat has to go. Those who were any good can come back and try again in two years.
The worst possible advice, with all due respect to Sir David, is to remake the party in the image of the Democratic party. They're the ones who're wrong; that the country, in a drunken stupor, is about to stagger against a lamppost and vomit a Democratic government is no reason for us to imbibe too. When the country wakes up with a hangover and a dry mouth, we should be there with a glass of water and and an asprin, not a bottle of vodka.
Joe said...
"As has been said; drop the social conservative crap...."
That's a great idea. Of course the quickest way to get back into the game is to fire half your players.
David, your list has internal contradictions:
The final item, "Jindal, Jindal, Jindal" won't work with:
1. Stop riding the social conservatism train. (Jindal would driving the conservatism train, full-steam ahead.)
2. Come out strongly in favor of MORE immigration. Let the democrats piss off the hispanics. (When Jindal ran for governor he somehow managed to pull in anti-immigration, secure the borders, build a wall around Texas into it. He's not going to do anything to help the GOP with this issue.)
6. Go full bore for the Hispanic voter. (see above)
"The pundits, who have repeatedly been wrong about almost everything this season, are going to squeal that Sarah Palin was the problem; that's a ridiculous claim, given that Palin resusciated the party's chances and brought us from a rout to striking distance of victory."
They are ALREADY squealing this. Matthews, Simon, and Brooks, have already blamed Palin. The facts tell a different story.
By July 1st McCain was behind by 5 percentage points, by August 28, he was behind by 6 percentage points. Palin's pick rocketed him by Sept 9th into a 2 point lead. Then came his late September campaign suspension, support for the bailout and the first debate. Now he's down by 7-8 points per RCP.
It's poli sci 101: fight for the center. The electorate even provided a huge hint. The GOP primary race attracted centrist candidates, centrists were front runners, and a centrist won the nod. And with an opponent staking out the far left (a supposition I don't necessarily agree with), there should have been more center to which to appeal.
Instead, as the VP pick so clearly illustrated, McCain pandered right.
The ideal retooling would be for the GOP to split in two: fundies and the socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Fundies could still have some power as deal breakers. But given the insurmountable institutional barriers to third+ parties, that just isn't going to happen.
spice
jimspice said...
"Instead, as the VP pick so clearly illustrated, McCain pandered right."
Even accepting your framing of it, dubitante, McCain's difficulty in choosing a veep was that he had to hit a lot of targets with one shot, one of which was unifying the party behind him and injecting some morale and momentum. Palin was the only person who could do that.
I don't accept your framing, however, because while Palin could do the foregoing, serendipitously she fitted like a glove with McCain's self-image of a maverick reformer who takes on special interests, and she could also appeal to the middle. That, as I see it, is precisely why the media instantly mobilized to destroy her: they recognized the threat to The One and set out to neutralize it. So far, it's looking as it it might have worked.
I agree with Simon here.
The Republicans came to power in Congress running against Congressional corruption of 60 years of almost continuous Democratic rule there. For a short period of time, the Republicans in the House kept the faith. But then, the DeLays and Hastarts in the House and Lotts and Stevens in the Senate took over, and the Republicans became Democrats light. It was DeLay who led the belief that it was the Republicans' turn at the head of the trough.
So, number one is clean government, esp. in Congress.
Two is moving from the party of the wealthy to the party of the middle and working middle class.
Three I think is less emphasis on abortion.
The candidate for #1 and #2 is Sarah Palin. She would be better placed for #3 if she hadn't gotten pregnant the last time.
I don't think it is going to be that difficult. The Democrats are going to overplay their hand, and many of the things that the Republicans were warning about are likely to come true. When you combine this with Obama buying the election, and the MSM actively aiding and abetting it, much of the work will be done.
The GOP needs to figure out how to counter the MSM megaphone for the Dems. Of course the MSM does seem to be on a path to be quite a bit less in 2010.
One nice thing, I think, is that a lot of the "moderates" who have swung behind Obama for the election will not have much of a voice here. These are primarily the party elites, and they have too much in common with the bicoastal elites running the Democratic party. Much of the Rockefeller/ country club wing of the party has already jumped ship, and they are not the future of the party.
The GOP needs to figure out how to counter the MSM megaphone for the Dems. Of course the MSM does seem to be on a path to be quite a bit less in 2010.
The MSM that has been in the tank to avidly this election is putting themselves out of business. When much of what the Republicans were saying about Obama, Reid, and Pelosi turns out to be true, they are going to lose even more credibility and, more importantly, profitability.
Let me suggest though that this is one of the reasons that the Democrats are so avid to reimpose the "Fairness" doctrine on radio, and likely only radio (though the Red Lion argument is much more persuasive with broadcast TV).
The movement is going to continue to be away from traditional print and broadcast media, and one big reason is just this, that they did so much to hide what was going on in this election and to carry water for Obama and the Democrats. It is frankly preposterous that we know more about Joe the Plumber than we do Obama the front running presidential candidate. We still don't have his medical records, his college transcripts, bar record, etc. And the MSM doesn't care.
Republicans have to stand for more than avarice and controlling others' sexual behavior.
We'll have to wait and see if McCain pulls it out, but regardless, the GOP should have done better in choosing a nominee. The fault for that lies with conservative leaders and primary voters. We got too big for our britches and thought it wouldn't be enough to have a conservative standard bearer, the nominee had to be our flavor of conservative too. So we split between Huckabee for evangelicals, Romney for business and Thompson for movement conservatives. I say this as a former Fredhead.
Ironically, we conservatives are probably McCain's biggest supporters now, especially post-Palin, because we are the least likely to flip for Obama. We should have figured out who we were rallying against in the primary season too!
The GOP will retool the way we have re-tooled for the last 30 years or so. Once we're out in the cold long enough, the Washington elite will see that they have to play ball with heartland conservatives and conservatives will realize that an appealing figure who is mostly conservative and who wins is better than our dream candidate if he loses - the way we came to W after Bush I and Dole.
On a side note, I think that if we want to reach across the aisle, we should look for a conservative who grew up a Democrat or apolitical with a slightly liberal sensibility. When we go for a moderate, we make it a choice between Democrat and Democrat lite, which doesn't get us anywhere. I suspect Reagan got all those Reagan Democrats because where a lifelong Republican - even a moderate one - see a political enemy, Reagan saw his former self and thus a friend who could be rallied to the cause.
Reagan got a lot of Democrat votes from people who felt the Democratic party had left them. They had signed up for Scoop Jackson-JFK-Truman & got McGovern, Carter, and Ted Kennedy.
Further, Reagan won by being a populist-conservative. The establishment hated him, and thought he was a Right-wing extremist, who wouldn't attract moderates.
BTW, fifty percent of the people in this country have taxable incomes of less than $31K a year. You're not get them by talking about "Free Trade" and "Reducing corporate Tax Rates".
Ann,
I have already started on the re-tooling of the CA GOP in a series of my posts on my Blog called "The California Encyclicals"
And as I told you at the LA Meetup, I am writing a book looking forward to 2010 and 2012.
As far as compalints about the MSM?
I been saying, "Remember 1992?" If the MSM want to hold onto their jobs, it is there job to say "What happened?" not "We want this to happen..."
Beth, of course my list has internal contradictions. We're talking politics here.
Jindal is not anti-immigration. He is against ILLEGAL immigration. His stated first priority is to enforce the laws we have. Do you think we should not enforce these laws?
Once you show you can enforce the laws, then you reevaluate the laws.
Jindal, as a first generation American, is the perfect person to lead a charge to a more rational (and open) immigration policy.
But you don't do this by first declaring to the world that you are unwilling to enforce your laws.
A big plus is Obama is elected is that Rush will be great, for as long as the fairness doctrine doesn't reappear anyway.
McCain will just give rise to more Rush bitching shows.
gbarto said...
"[T]he GOP should have done better in choosing a nominee. The fault for that lies with conservative leaders and primary voters."
This is a seductive view, but a dubious one. This was a very difficult election environment for the GOP, and none of the available candidates were ideal. The reason that Thompson was so anticipated was that he alone among the field seemed to show the promise of unifying the party and being able to reach out to the middle. But he just never seemed to want it enough - never seemed to get in gear, and it's hard to blame primary voters for concluding that if he didn't want the nomination badly enough, mabe he wouldn't want the Presidency badly enough, and would underperform for the main event.
As I see it, choosing McCain wasn't irrational; it may even have been the best option we had available. He he just hasn't been willing or able perform at the level that's necessary; he can't debate, he doesn't seem to be able to campaign, and he seems constrained by a horrible fear of "I can't hit these guys too hard because if I lose I have to go back and work with them." He won't go all in, he won't go all out, and we're left wondering: either he has an ace in the hole, or he's been a failure. Maybe he'll get lucky and fluke it in anyway, but unless he has a last-minute surprise - in which case, it's almost too late to deploy it, he and his staff are a failure. Palin is the only thing that has kept this ticket afloat.
rhhardin said...
"A big plus is Obama is elected is that Rush will be great, for as long as the fairness doctrine doesn't reappear anyway."
I give it approximately fourteen months.
For starters, remember that there are more Democrats than Republicans. We always seem to forget that.
That means that we need to do a MUCH better job of getting the centrist votes.
And stop being such babies if our particular person doesn't get chosen as the nominee.
I'll play.
Say the premise of the question actually truly comes to pass. Why in no time at all the Republicans in Washington will find it in their best interests to unilaterally disarm. They will realize that Unity is the Change we need. If they don't realize it they will be made to realize it. They will realize that true Hope comes from One Party Unified under the Inspired Leadership of Barack Obama.
Barack will say that is the change we need. Change America. One party. Unity. Hope America.
By the way, since we're looking to the future, I can't emphasize enough that we can't just give them a two year reign of free rein. A period of intramural introspection is appropriate, inevitable, and, regardless of what happens, desirable even. But we can multitask and shouldn't take our eye off job one: using every available tool to limit the damage that is done. Everything an Obama administration does that can be legitimately challenged via judicial or administrative procedures should be. Senate Republicans should make judicious use of any procedural tools available to delay (or better yet, sink) legislative initiatives.
Bottom line: watch the federal register like hawks, and get to know your neighbors and the ins and outs of the APA, my friends.
Hey Simon, what is the APA?
Oxbay - the Administrative Procedure Act.
Hmm, something like 3% of the US population is Atheist? Clearly the Republican should completely divest itself of religion and go hard after that 3%. That's the key!
Seriously, that's one of the big disconnects between elites/pundits and the rest of the country. Most people are still religious in some form or another, and that doesn't make you a "flat earther" or whatever.
That doesn't make you a Republican, either, actually. Neither does being a social conservative - blacks are among the most socially conservative people (religious, too), yet they vote overwhelmingly democrat.
Anyway, politics really isn't about message, it's about charisma. Obama has it. McCain doesn't. Bush didn't really have it (he had some moments, though), but his opponents were even worse.
My prediction:
The Palin faction wins. They tighten the circle. They get angry. The conspiracy theories swirl around Obama, like they did around the Clintons the late 90s. Obama & ACORN will have stolen the election. The demographics of this year's GOP are the REAL America. The media control the country. We lost Iraq because of Obama. We lost Afghanistan because of Obama.
The party will define itself by what it is against:
Obama / the government
the media / cultural elites*
muliticulturalism/immigration*
China
Islam
gays*
atheists/secularism*
environmentalists*
academics*
the courts
and of course, abortion.
That's where it seems to be heading, but that doesn't look like a political winner to me. That's a shrinking demographic, and one that looks like a bunch of crazy crackers to those not in it.
____
If I were a GOP strategist, I'd do my best to dump the starred targets. You aren't going to be able to build a successful coalition based on distaste for 'metropolitan' people. Be libertarian, both economically and socially. Stop appearing to take pride in ignorance. You'll reclaim many professionals, who would benefit from your economic policies.
Denial of environmental responsibility is going to become more and more of an albatross.
Stop picking on gays and "defending marriage". It's the only way you're going to make inroads to people born after 1975. Plus, you have the "christian right" in your pocket as long as you pay them some pro-life lip service in your platform.
Open the borders. Learn Spanish. Become the party of Mexican immigrants. You'll lose part of your base, but they'll be immediately replaced. Plus, it is the single best weapon you have against big federal entitlement programs. The democrats can't have it both ways. Business will love you for it.
The longer you cling to the idea of America as a white Christian nation, the longer you'll be out of power.
This was an opportune year for the Republican Party to retool.
In fact, it was a necessity.
And John McCain was the ideal candidate to do that retooling, moving the GOP back to more conventional conservative issues like limited government, a concern for human and civil rights, and responsible spending, all of it wed to his long-standing penchant for pragmatic compromise.
But McCain made the mistake of playing too much to a "base" that would not have abandoned him this fall anyway. The result: The genuine maverick presenting himself as a neocon to an electorate dismayed with the neocon orthodoxies of the Laffer Curve and Wilsonian interventionism. And even many evangelical Christians are sickened by the identification of their faith with the Republican Party.
But the number one cause of failure is success. Politicians tend to ride one winning set of strategies until their irrelevance lead to defeat. Parties seem to lack the agility or the common sense to apply their principles in new, creative ways to new circumstances. They're like generals fighting the last war. The GOP has been aping Ronald Reagan with no apparent notion that things change. And McCain has allowed himself to be seduced by the idea that, in spite of Iraq and what has happened with the economy, parroting the same conventions that won in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004, will work again.
The result is predictable. Just as Democrats who insisted on being the party of the New Deal for decades after FDR's death and eventually lost their formerly unquestioned domination of US national politics, the Republicans are about to do the same.
If McCain had been McCain, the losses he and his party are about to suffer, in spite of the conditions overwhelmingly favoring Democrats in 2008, might not have happened.
The GOP doesn't need to retool, they need to get their incumbents out of office. The next two years, if we don't go full blown socialist in the mean time, need to be spent cultivating the local talent that has good reps and promoting them to replace the incumbents. It's time to replace the Washington insiders with some new blood. The republican incumbents that are doing the best in this season are the ones that have never abandoned their principles and the platforms that put them in office.
Keeping your word and doing no more than you pledged are big draws to the conservative, classical liberal voter.
The mantra is that incumbents grow in office. We don't want growth. We want frugality and common sense. We want you to be who you are and not become immersed in the Washington mind set.
The problem is in finding honorable people who have good heads on their shoulders that don't become overwhelmed with the office and the power of it.
Mark Daniels said...
"[McCain] mov[ed] the GOP back to more conventional conservative issues like limited government...."
Uh... What? Which race have you been watching? What exactly in McCain's election season record suggests a believer in limited government?
Roost on the Moon said...
"Stop appearing to take pride in ignorance."
I have no idea what this means, and it bugs me beause it's very similar to the accusation that's made of Palin being "anti-intellectual." How is Palin "anti-intellectual"? It surely can't just be because she sounds folksy. Is it just that she's a person of faith? Or is there some credible point to be made?
As to gay marriage, I really don't care about that issue all that much, but a lot of the party does, and it's one of the few issues where the public at large is 110% behind the GOP. I hate to break this to liberals, but with but one exception, every time the issue has gone to the people, the people - including self-identified Democrats - have said they don't want gay marriage. In a week or so, California, the most liberal state in the union, is going to vote overwhelmingly for Obama, and at the same time, will vote to ban gay marriage. Why would the GOP drop the issue? Because liberals who aren't voting for us anyway don't like it? People born after 1975 are more often than not just kids. (Ahem. I was born in 1980,) Give them time and they'll grow up.
By the way, thank you Simon. I love Althouse (for many reasons, beyond politics-- re the latter, I've always identified with her idiosyncratic political positioning, though at the moment we've come down on opposite, very opposite, sides), and love many of her commenters (special soft spot for cockroach... is he related to Archy? and would that make Ann Mehitabel?). But today, at this particular moment in time, I'd like to say thank you to you, for articulating (so much better than I ever could) so many of the things I'm thinking, and would like to retort, in these very strange circumstances, in a very strange election year. In which I've been forced to admit that, despite my still clinging to the "independent" banner, I find myself more at home among the GOP, & will probably continue to do so, for the foreseeable future. Thanks for articulating them here, with unfailing civility, in one of my very favorite blogs. Anyway, I so often want to second your comments (but just don't have the energy), so I just wanted to say thanks.
(While I'm at it, I'm also really glad Titus is back, yay from me! He will never vote for someone like Palin, but he still recognizes so many of the qualities that make her fabulous, absolutely fabulous. And I adore him for being so free of bitterness... when I'm feeling all too bitter myself.)
Simon, thanks for the info and the link.
In that same post where you mentioned the APA the general advice you give is similar to what the Democrats did to Bush when they didn't have the majority.
The GOP needs to send the Bush-ite hacks into exile for 1000 years.
Meanwhile, Obama will self-destruct because the looney left members of Congress will have no restraint.
Are there any real conservatives left? Conservatives who want to balance the budget and minimize government? Many a few in some remote areas.
Dudley,
I'm not just hoping you're wrong, I'm fairly certain you are.
The "last (somewhat) real election"? That's an interesting assertion, but if you want us to go with you it would be helpful if you could spell out a bit of the mechanism by which you think that will happen.
And as far as Republicans retooling, I couldn't care less about the party per se, but we do desparately need some vehicle around which the more-conservative/more-libertarian among us can coalesce to oppose the left-leaning tendencies of the current Democrats. So if that's going to be their direction, count me in--and if the reorganization manages to leave Cedarford outside the tent pissing in, so much the better. (I hear Mr. Buchanan needs company these days.)
Simon,
Here is a recent one, pretty frustrating for geneticists, I would think. And another from a few weeks back.
Real arguments for cutting these programs aren't offered. That they might seem silly to Joe Six-Pack is enough.
Fruit Flies! How Absurd!
And in Paris, France! Pfffff!
Another that springs to mind is when she contrasted worldliness with having worked hard.
"I'm not one of those who maybe come from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduated college and their parents get them a passport and a backpack and say, 'Go off and travel the world.' Noooo. I worked all my life."
So she answers a question about her limited experience outside of Alaska by drumming up resentment of "college kids". It rubs a lot people the wrong way. Lots of potential republicans, I would think.
Then on the gay marriage issue:
Give them time and they'll grow up.
Just like those kids in the sixties grew out of that silly racial equality fad? People may generally become more economically conservative as they age, but it doesn't happen with the social issues. A 25 year-old who is fine with gay marriage isn't going to "grow up" to be a supporter of gay marriage bans.
That tide has turned. There will be fewer and fewer homophobes in the voting rolls every year from now to the foreseeable future. If it's an issue the GOP wants to stick with, it's going to cost them more and more as the years go by.
Agree with Roost -- 30 years from now, being against gay marriage is going to be as socially unacceptable as being against racial integration. It's a losing issue for the GOP as time goes by.
Simon:
You ask which race I've been watching. My reference was to McCain's pre--2008, most particularly his pre-2004, career.
Mark
You know, it was his best “zinger” in the last debate, but really, if McCain wanted to run against Bush, he should have run in 2004.
Go for the hispanic vote full-bore? Heh, no way. The hispanic vote will be a locked-in 80 to 85 percent Democratic vote for the next century. No, the only route to GOP electoral competitiveness is winning 70 plus percent of the white, non jewish vote, and, yes, that's possible.
How? Class warfare, but class warfare not of the poor against the right, but of the middleclass against BOTH the poor and the rich.
Education: beginning at 6th grade give SAT-like standardized tests, and immediately expel the bottom 10 to 15 percent of the distribution. What you're doing is removing individuals of low cognitive ability (i.e. low IQ) on whom educational resources are wasted anyways.
National healthcare: a multi-tier system where people who have a long-term consistent record of contributing get the top tier. At the bottom would be the people who are worthless to society, and they would be entirely excluded from receiving any healthcare.
Family law: middleclass family creation is where the GOP lives or dies. Level the playing field between men and women in divorce cases.
Abortion: federal funding. The more abortions had by poor, single and low IQ women the better.
Roe v Wade for men: a man would never be forced to be on a birth certificate. Any woman who got pregnant (except inside a marriage contract) would have to beg the man to be on the BC. This would greatly increase the number of abortions had by single women (see above).
Military: I'm hawkish, but the era of foreign adventuring is over. The majority of voters no longer tie in their own personal well being with the extension of US military power across the globe. Note, that this is not a "moral" but a completely practical stance.
Public housing/crime: the underclass needs to be warehoused as far as possible from the rest of the population. Any public housing needs to be placed in deep rural areas with controlled acesss, basically concentration camps lite.
Science: rigorously fund scientific research into the genetic origins of crime and poverty: low IQ, anti and asocial personality disorders, substance abuse.
Immigration: every single immigrant into the US would have to provide evidence of benefit to existing residents, as a whole. BTW, I suspect that this alone would almost get the GOP to 70 percent of the white vote. The goal is to stabilize the ethnic groups at roughly their current share of the population so that the US can reform around a unitary-cultural but multiethnic body politic.
Head Tax: huge numbers of current residents pay no net tax, and thus have no interested in good governance. Institute a $2000/person head tax. Anyone not wanting to pay the tax could work on government projects, such as cleaning up highways or building roads/hopitals/etc. at $10/hour. As Joe Biden says, the more you pay the more patriotic you are, and a lot of people pay nothing.
Finally, I cannot stress this enough: class warfare, class warfare, class warfare. Class warfare FOR the middleclass and AGAINST the overclasses and underclasses
Basically, it's socialism, but rightwing socialism, not leftwing socialism.
Wow. I don't know where Asher is coming from (I'm 98% sure this is some kind of sick joke/ parody/ mobyism-- and if it isn't, it's sick anyway), but-- and this should be obvious-- all of that is completely alien & antithetical to the GOP and (American) conservatism. Yes, that is indeed socialism-- socialism of the so-called "right" variety, i.e. what one might call fascism: which just goes to show that fascism and socialism are not opposed, as the left might like to think, but siblings. And this "socialism" has nothing to do with the American right-wing (by practically any definition of it one might think of). As opposed to some strands of the European "right-wing" (but here "right" ceases to have any consistent meaning).
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