Is it too late for the Republicans to dump McCain?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

They can't say I didn't warn them. But do they listen to me? No, they don't. If they had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.

I'm talking about the leaders of the national Republican Party. Way back in 1999, I warned them they should find someone other than a certain George W. Bush to run for president.

And now I fear I must resurrect that warning as regards John McCain. As bad as Bush has been in undermining virtually every traditional Republican principle of good governance, I fear McCain would be worse. If he wins, that is. I fear the Straight Talk Express is going to run off the rails if the driver doesn't get his foot out of his mouth and onto the brake pedal.

Since winning the nomination, McCain has uttered a nonstop string of gaffes. His many statements on Iraq, for example, amount to an admission that he has no idea who the enemy is there and why we're fighting there.

Having proved himself incompetent on foreign policy, McCain has moved on to economics. The man who has confessed on several occasions that he doesn't know much about economics went on to prove it by proposing a summer gas-tax holiday that was ridiculed by every economist who heard of it -- and then laughed at some more after Hillary Clinton picked it up and tried to sell it to the Democrats.

And then there was that statement last week in which McCain seemed to attribute the war in Iraq to our dependence on that same imported oil he wants drivers burning up on their summer vacations. Here, the man from the Straight Talk Express made the mistake of actually talking straight. "I will have an energy policy, that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East," he said. "That will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."

Of course the reason we're in Iraq is oil. But politicians aren't supposed to say so. They're supposed to say we're fighting for peace and democracy -- so we can get more oil.

McCain tried to spin that remark by saying he was talking about the first President Bush's war in Iraq, not the second. But in the run-up to that war, a certain senator from Arizona warned that the U.S. should mind its own business as regards the Mideast. McCain even went so far as to say, "We have to the weigh the risk of the continued existence of Saudi Arabia vs. the risk of the U.S. becoming entangled."

That quote is cited in Matt Welch's new book, "McCain: The Myth of a Maverick." In it, Welch, the editor of the libertarian Reason Magazine, traces McCain's transition from traditional conservative foreign policy views to the neoconservative nuttiness he now embraces.

"Since about 1997 or 1998, he has lost all skepticism of the use of U.S. military power, period," said Welch when I got him on the phone yesterday. "He has been totally consistent since then that the answer to any military question is more boots on the grounds."

To that end, McCain wants to increase the size of the military overall by 150,000 troops and of course wants to "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," as he so musically put it. But McCain has no idea how to pay for all this so he can get his mug on Mount Rushmore alongside his hero Teddy Roosevelt.

On domestic affairs as well, says Welch, the earlier version of McCain was a lot more reasonable. As late as his 2000 campaign for president, he was arguing that the next president should deal with such prosaic problems as the debts for Social Security and Medicare.

"McCain would have been more suited to the time of 2000 and might not have done many of the things Bush did," says Welch. "Maybe his tenor was the tenor we were looking for after Sept. 11, 2001. But I don't think it's the tenor we're looking for after 2008."

The funny part, as Welch notes, is that it wasn't really Republicans who nominated McCain. He failed to win even a plurality of Republican votes in the crucial early primaries. The votes of Democrats and independents gave him that insurmountable lead in a crowded field.

And now the Republicans are stuck with him, just as they've been stuck with a string of unimpressive candidates ever since Ronald Reagan went into retirement. There has to be a better way to pick presidential candidates. And I suspect the Republicans are going to start looking for it if McCain can't get his loafers out from between his lips pretty soon.

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/....xml&coll=1

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The funny part, as Welch notes, is that it wasn't really Republicans who nominated McCain. He failed to win even a plurality of Republican votes in the crucial early primaries. The votes of Democrats and independents gave him that insurmountable lead in a crowded field.

A silent operation chaos from the other side? Never thought of that.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

A silent operation chaos from the other side? Never thought of that.

It really wasn't that silent.

From dailykos:

With a history of meddling in our primaries, why don't we try and return the favor. Next Tuesday, January 15th, Michigan will hold its primary. Michigan Democrats should vote for Mitt Romney, because if Mitt wins, Democrats win. How so?

For Michigan Democrats, the Democratic primary is meaningless since the DNC stripped the state of all its delegates (at least temporarily) for violating party rules. Hillary Clinton is alone on the ballot.

But on the GOP side, this primary will be fiercely contested. John McCain is currently enjoying the afterglow of media love since his New Hamsphire victory, while Iowa winner Mike Huckabee is poised to do well in South Carolina.

Meanwhile, poor Mitt Romney, who’s suffered back-to-back losses in the last week, desperately needs to win Michigan in order to keep his campaign afloat. Bottom line, if Romney loses Michigan, he's out. If he wins, he stays in.

And we want Romney in, because the more Republican candidates we have fighting it out, trashing each other with negative ads and spending tons of money, the better it is for us. We want Mitt to stay in the race, and to do that, we need him to win in Michigan.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/10/2713/87225/55/434206

[chri'stina 190]

These article writers exaggerate everything. Why do they think their opinions are so important?

I am glad to have a Repub candidate closer to center. I voted for him and so did a lot of Repubs I know. Supposedly we all hate him.