joefromchicago wrote:An interesting (and admittedly quite liberal) take on the three leading Republican contenders can be found
here. One particularly piquant excerpt:
Then there's McCain. To the kind of liberal who spent 2002 fantasizing about McCain beating Bush in '04 on the Democratic ticket, his pathetic decline is probably a sad story. To me, it's more like a funny one -- like when that guy slipped and fell down a flight of stairs and it all looked very painful but he was a huge jerk anyway. McCain is [i]old[/i]. And sick. And obviously so. He has the misfortune of being both the most conservative candidate in the race and the one most hated by conservatives. His website makes it look like he's campaigning for [i]Führer[/i]. Worst of all, George W. Bush's Iraq policy is so crazy that it's managed to ruin McCain's devilishly clever positioning on Iraq.
What clever positioning am I talking about? A little while back, McCain faced an apparent problem -- his demented, run-amok militarism clashes with the national mood at a moment when Iraq is becoming a horrible millstone around Republican necks. McCain, however, had a way around this -- simply advocate the one policy [i]so crazy nobody would ever possibly do it[/i], namely throwing [i]more[/i] troops into the war. That way, things would continue to go downhill, congressional Democrats would surely force some kind of de-escalation, and McCain could campaign not on an unpopular pledge to actually send more troops, but simply on an in-retrospect observation that more troops should have been sent. But then -- because sometimes the strangest things happen -- Bush decided that he agreed with McCain and was going to implement a "surge." And with that, the once promising Cult of John McCain began to fall apart.
I think that is about right, and it highlights how Bush has completely destroyed McCain as a presidential contender, first as a rival and then as a friend.
Admittedly quite liberal...
Oh no! Liberals who hoped McCain might beat Bush for the Republican nomination are now unable to throw their support to him in '08!
Like they ever would have.
If McCain gets 3 liberal votes in '08 that's 3 more than any other Republican candidate might expect.
News Flash - McCain is not seeking liberal votes. He doesn't really care if you no longer think of him as the least degenerate conservative.
Every four years political junkies blather about whether or not a candidate might hurt his chances in the general elections by pandering to the extremes of his party in the primaries. The fact, sad or otherwise, is that only political junkies follow the primaries and their minds were made up well before then. Democratic candidates can pander to the Left and then make the shift to the center in the general election without much fallout at all. Ditto Republican candidates.
Primary candidates have to get through the primaries. The more extreme base of the parties vote in the primaries. Candidates who want to get to the general election need to appeal to the more extreme base of their parties.
The simple fact of the matter is that it is fairly easy to appeal to the extreme base of one's party in a way that will not hurt one in the general election. It is done every four years!
McCain must have conservative voters to win, just as Clinton, Obama, or Edwards must have liberal voters to win. The contest then comes down to the swing vote in the middle. This swing vote is not, necessarily, appalled by ideological positions of the right or the left. If they were, they would not be swing votes.
It is utterly ridiculous to count any candidate out at this stage, and even more so because they have voiced a position that is ideologically 180 degrees from one's own.
The swing voters are not paying attention to what is happening now. Unless a candidate makes a major screw-up (a la Gary Hart) they will not be influenced by the soundbites of 24 hr cable news Election 2008!
The would-be Republican nominee doesn't give a rat's ass what liberals think of him, just as the would-be Democratic nominee couldn't care less what conservatives think about him or her.
