I have cooked up an alternative theory on why the CPAC right is doing their best to sabotage the McCain candidacy, and I think I may have an alternative working theory for what is going on. Some quick facts:
1.) Large numbers of Republican congressmen are leaving Congress to “spend more time with their family,” choosing to get the hell out rather than gut it out and rebuild. The most recent retirement is Rep. John Shadegg, and I can not express how bad this is for the GOP. As recently as Summer 2006, Shadegg was pinned as one of the few remaining true conservatives, and received the support of Red State for his bid for Majority Leader.
2.) Bush’s polls numbers are somewhere in between the clap and the plague.
3.) Conservative ideas are being manifestly rejected, and Democrats are now the trusted party.
4.) There are a number of looming crises, none of which are going to be easy to deal with. We are more than likely already in a recession, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, Iraq is the same-old same-old, the subprime mess is really starting to heat up and we haven’t even hit the Option A (or Alt A or whatever it is) mess the commenters here assure me is going to blow the sub-prime mess out of the water, Bush’s budget predicts deficits as far as the eye can see, and so on.
5.) Democrats are well-funded and enthusiastic, and there are two very viable candidates that more than likely can beat anything the Republicans throw at them.
So here is why they are sabotaging McCain- they want him to lose, or at the very least are hedging their bets. They want and need to paint him as not conservative, not pure enough to really represent the wildly successful (in their minds) conservatism that makes up the Bush dead-enders. That way, when they are blown out of the water in 2008, they don’t have to do any reflection, they don’t have to assess, re-prioritize, or re-think their policies. They can simply pin it all on McCain, claim he lost because he didn’t offer the voters a “real” conservative alternative, and get back to championing the end of the “death tax” and other important issues without skipping a beat.
In other words, McCain is the fall guy, and they are just distancing themselves from him.
Fe E
That sounds like a reasonable theory, but what is the difference between repriotizing, or re-thinking prioritiess? ;)
John Cole
LOL. That second priority was supposed to be policy.
Buck
I wish I could be as confident as you are that McCain is going to lose.
charles
Wait, so it’s a battle between Bill Clinton and the “base” Republicans to see who can sabotage their candidate most effectively?
pharniel
wow. that’s just so horribly genious.
then they get to play the ‘stabed int he back’ card against both democrats and anyone in The Party who happened to be inconvienent or int he way during the ‘resurgance’
we need a new party for limited government, low spending and a regulated market…like, stat.
(i can, in fact, see substantive differnces amongst the democratic canidates and mass, but for now i’ll settle on up in the big tent. but eventually they’ll be a reckoning where some senitors and reps from clifornia are just going to have to get beaten. copyrite police force my ass)
cleek
sure. and then the Dems will have to clean up Bush’s disaster. the Republicans will be back to take credit for everything, in a few years. you know… like they always do.
also, they know he’s going to lose (though i felt differently just a couple of weeks ago), and they’re preemptively defending the good name of Republicanism™ from being associated with a loser.
JR
I think that’s correct–the goal isn’t to keep the White House. Hell, they’ve got two young Supreme Court justices on the bench and a shitload of their agenda accomplished, and they can wait for a better candidate. More important for them SoCons and NeoCons is to maintain their dominance within the GOP. If the Paleos regain the helm, they might not get it back for another 20-30 years. If the Paleos get painted as the wrong kind of conservatives and lose, though, they’ll be diminished enough to protect the current order of things for a few more cycles at least.
p-rex
i’ve been saying for a while that the plan for the republicans is akin to pointing a car at a cliff, jamming the gas pedal down and then offering to let the passenger drive.
because republicans do have an inherent trust in their belief that the average american voter is extremely stupid and has no memory whatsoever. so when it’s a democratic president and congress at the wheel when we do go over that cliff, republicans can say, “see, this is what happens when democrats are in charge…”
one must remember that many republicans are bound and determined to prove the government doesn’t work, even if it means sabotaging it.
the only question is: will the public fall for it?
Alan
What’s funny too is hearing Rush Limbaugh go after old budget deficit hawks like Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman because they support McCain.
GSD
The GOP is engaging in “Slash and Burn and Cut and Run” and they’ll snipe from the sidlelines and do what they can to try to destroy the Democrats while the Democrats to to put the flaming turd out.
I said long ago that Bush and the hard right GOP incarnation would kick over the chessboard if they saw they were going to lose.
That’s just what they are doing.
-GSD
Fe E
It seems like the real test would’ve been what “the base” would’ve done had Fred Thompson or MItt Romney gotten the nod. Would the Limbaughs and Coulters have painted them with the same shade they are applying to McCain?
Because for your theory to completely explain it, they needed to be farsighted enough to know that McCain was always going to win the nomination. And having excess foresight isn’t one of the right wings larger vices.
Billy K
Nice thinking, John, but it really doesn’t require a 5-point deconstruction. It’s more Lizard-brain than that.
jenniebee
Or it could be that movement conservatives (who aren’t really conservative at all) have been grinding their teeth at the Goldwater conservative holdovers for about thirty years now. And McCain is a Goldwater conservative, to the core of him.
He’s the enemy because he actually means what they spout as rhetoric and
won’tmight not, it’s hard to tell, do the seriously crazy shit that they don’t think the voters need to know the details about.p-rex
i’m wondering if john ever noticed that when the republican party began to get a bit too odious, the libertarian party would suffer.
i used to be a member of the libertarian party in georgia, and i began to notice the membership swelling with disgruntled republicans. it was interesting and obnoxious all at the same time, because many of them weren’t exactly ready to abandon their socially conservative views (which don’t exactly fit in the lp), but were attracted to libertarianism because of the issue of limiting government. that, and more than a few of them were very favorable of the administration’s foreign policy misadventures.
i finally had to quit when one of the more prominent members forwarded me an email from the charlie daniels mailing list that was essentially a nationalistic, xenophobic rant.
Elvis Elvisberg
I don’t see how this gets around the null hypothesis: movement conservatives are batshit insane.
Hatreds fed to them by the right-wing para-media have created the impulses that compel them to do the things they do.
I don’t see how strategy enters the equation.
Jen
John, you’re making it sound like they believe, irrationally and contrary to all evidence whatsoever, that people just want a real Conservative(tm) in office and if they choose a Democrat it’s only because the Republican wasn’t Conservative(tm) enough. You’re make it sound like they live in some weird ideological bizarro world bubble or something!
Does it feel good outside the bubble, btw? I imagine the air must be a little fresher.
W.E.B. Adamant
I’m quoting you on the clap and the plague, by the way.
I’m not into conspiracy theories, but what you’ve said makes a lot of sense. However, I still lean toward the reasoning that conservatives are just so damn hard to please.
Jen
Whoa, a Charlie Daniels as in “Devil went down to Georgia” mailing list?
Ed Drone
If this is the plan of the rigid right, it exposes them to even more losses in the future if the Democrats can govern successfully. I agree that the mess they’re leaving is hard to deal with, and painful methods are likely. But if the blame is constantly drilled into the fixes — “I know you don’t like living within your means, America, but your last husband spent your life savings and your kids’ college fund, too, so until we can get him to start paying support, you’ll just have to lump it, and keep blaming him.” We need to show that the rigid radical right “base” of the Republican Party is the cause of all that’s wrong in America, as it is.
Yes, I know the media will not go along with telling the truth, since the “if you don’t like it, it’s the fault of the guys in power” theme is so much more interesting, but if we keep banging the gong that Republicans can’t be trusted with money, power, or sharp objects, then maybe we can beat radical rigid conservatism back down to the nuisance it actually represents.
The one thing I worry about with Obama’s message of “we need to change the system” is that part of the change will be “forgive and forget,” and that’s exactly what we cannot do — never forget!
We will need cooperative action, but that will mean separating the good wood from the rotted stump that is the Republican plank, and making sure the edifice we build is solid clear through.
It will take cooperation, but not capitulation.
Ed
MattF
Part of McCain’s problem is that ‘Democrats are for amnesty’ was the only right-wing theme that had even a small chance of success, and he’s a heretic on that.
Cyrus
I knew it all along. Admittedly, that phrase is about as common as “pass the salt,” but still. Everyone I regularly read or talk to seems to agree that the odds are strongly in favor of any Democratic candidate at all winning in November. McCain is probably a good enough candidate (maverick status, blah blah blah) to prevent a McGovernesque blowout, but partisan Republicans don’t like him much. And he’s run before and been loyal to the party (in some ways, at least) and it’s his “turn.”
So if he gets the nomination and loses, then their nuts are confirmed in their beliefs, the Democrats will have had to work for their win, and the party establishment won’t have to deal with him running again anyway.
More worryingly, I read someone (August Pollack, maybe?) comparing Mitt Romney today to Reagan in 1976. A governor of a liberal state who does well in the Republican Party primary but not well enough to win, in a year in which the deck is stacked against the Republicans anyway. The parallel breaks down as soon as you look outside the Republican Party, but still…
Zifnab
Meh. After 7 years of continuous clusterfucks, I think you give the conservative “masterminds” way too much credit.
Republicans see the writing on the wall every day and it doesn’t change their views on global warming, evolution, Iraq, budgetary constraints, the economy, the health care crisis, the mortgage crisis, social security, or anything they can slap a “liberal” label on that they don’t want to look at. The party is pissed at itself. We got to see all three wings of the Republican base spin off into self-centered candidates as the Big Tent collapsed on itself. You’ve got the Ron Paul insurgency claiming what remains of the Republican youth vote. Money and support are hemorrhaging like a pair of Titanics. Lobbyists jumped ship a long time ago. The party is floundering and the party faithful are lashing out at whatever scapegoat they can find, just like they always do. Twenty years of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove have taught the base how to vilify very well and think as little as possible.
This is a classic “reap what you sow” moment. As much as we’d all like to believe that Republicans can’t be so stupid as to knife their own best chance at the White House in the back, history seems to indicate quite the opposite.
There isn’t a grand plan or master strategy here. Republicans are just fucking up.
In four or eight or twelve or twenty years, when Democrats have had the opportunity to indulge in similar acts of power mad hubris, Republicans will seep back in through the cracks claiming they planned this all along. Kinda like how they claim Martin Luther King opposed affirmative action, Ronnie Raygun secretly defeated the Communists, and George Bush Jr saved us from a million 9/11s.
Jen
Here’s the thing, though. Where has Obama capitulated? Even George Will has discussed his ability to make wingers think he is a Good Guy despite what George Will called his “parsimonious” deviations from “liberal orthodoxy.” There’s a weird philosophy that I never really shared (and it was absolutely maddening when people said it about Bush) that was along the lines of, “well, I don’t agree with him on anything, but I like him because you know where he stands.”
That’s kind of illogical to me, but I do think Obama has a better chance than most of exploiting that. Have you read about the police interrogation legislation he got passed unanimously, first in the country I believe, and overcoming tremendous opposition? It’s just a great story. I’m not saying he’d necessarily be able to do as President, that, exactly. But we know how the Clintons are “bipartisan”, and it’s through compromise and triangulation and NAFTA and welfare reform and so on. He at least represents an opportunity to be “bipartisan” in the sense of, “if you’d like to leave the nuthouse for a while, you can always come over here.”
p-rex
yep, jen, it’s that charlie daniels, political guru extraordinaire. he went from playin’ the fiddle to being an super-nationalist ultrapatriot.
he even has a section for political rants on his website called “soapbox“.
empty
I think your taxonomy is way off. The paleos have been calling McCain a neocon, with quite a bit of justification, from way back. This months The American Conservative is devoted to attacking John McCain. Patrick Buchanan leads off by pointing out McCain’s (initial) opposition to the Bush tax cuts and membership in the gang of fourteen which he feels blocked the republicans in their struggle to nominate “real” conservative judges.
Quoth he:
“On the two issues where Bush has been the best, taxes and judges, McCain has sided against him. On the three issues that have ravaged the Bush presidency – the misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America’s borders, and the trade policy that has destroyed the dollar, de-industrialized the country and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America – McCain has sided with Bush”
And this article is followed by one by Justin Raimondo entitled The Madness of John McCain.
I am pretty sure this means the paleos don’t want McCain.
Z
What we need is Wingnut Welfare Reform!
rawshark
The goal is to rescind the New Deal. If they have to crash the system to do it they will. They survived the last depression they can survive the next one. Especially if we aren’t taxing the fuckers. For all the stupid ass things Bush has done he is getting them closer to their goal so they love him and they tell us we’re not conservative if we don’t also love him. Bush is not conservative, Romney is not conservative, Reagan was not conservative but if the party says it, then 2+2 does equal 5.
Jake
Seconding Zifnab. I’d ask you to show me ane shred of evidence that the anti-McCainiacs are capable of coherent thought, but that would be a waste of your time even if you had nothing but time.
Here’s a much simpler explanation: They decided to back Shoulders Romney. That meant they had to hate all Non-Roms with the heat of a thousand bags of microwavable pork rinds. Now Rombot is out.
Given past experience is it reasonable to expect these morons to say “Oh well, we were wrong, better get behind McCain”?
Bwahahahaa!
J. Michael Neal
Assuming that John’s idea is correct, and this goes along with it, the Ridiculous Right might be stabbing itself in the back. A very similar band of yahoos didn’t support Herbert Hoover in 1932, and probably thought that, if they couldn’t get the exact set of policies they wanted, they might as well saddle the Democrats with the Depression.
How’d that work out for them?
Punchy
Nope. BO barely beats McCain in the latest poll taken for hypothetical candys. Barely. I find this unf’inbelievable. After all the unreal shit the Rs have put this country in, he may barely win.
WTF is wrong with my fellow Americans?
empty
Wishful thinking?
J. Michael Neal
These polls are just as meaningful as the ones back in December that showed Clinton ahead by 20 points, and Giuliani ahead by 15. In other words, they’re worthless, and getting excited about them is a waste of time. Drawing any meaning from that at all, including whether Clinton or Obama would run more effectively, is pointless.
Arsenio Billingham
Option A? I must have missed this. Anyone have a link to the thread John’s referring to?
empty
As is the triumphalism that seems to be infecting the Democrats regarding their chances in November.
Carol
Considering McCain’s age and probable health, perhaps writing off this year and waiting until someone younger comes along may not be all that irrational. If he wins, the Republicans are saddled with an ill incumbent who may actually try for a second term, which means no chance for that younger Republican until 2016, when they may face the VP of another successful 2-term democrat. That Democrat could well be (if we go the Reagan age route) Dean or Sebelius. There are younger Dems who might give it a go too if there’s an opening as well.
Carol
Considering McCain’s age and probable health, perhaps writing off this year and waiting until someone younger comes along may not be all that irrational. If he wins, the Republicans are saddled with an ill incumbent who may actually try for a second term, which means no chance for that younger Republican until 2020, after McCain’s VP runs and as usual, loses. Blowing this one with McCain means a better candidate in 2012 running against an incumbent Democrat.
Svensker
I’m an Obamagirl, and hope you’re right. But one of the talking points for GWB back in 1999 was that he had been able to work with the Dems in the Texas legislature, and he’d continue his bipartisanship once in the WH. Ha ha ha ha ha. That worked out real good.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
They’ve still have to shake off the sleepiness from the years of Bush telling them that going to the mall fights terrorism.
Obama has the right idea. He’ll douse them with some
mescalineundirected hope and then adk “what do you wanna do to improve your life?”.People line up for projects, especially when they’re involved. His numbers will improve.
Jesus Christ, Empty, what the hell gets you up in the morning? “Man, I can’t wait to remind people that entropy exists, systems break down, the Sun will burn down, and the Earth will go cold”.
We’ll put in the Pony without your help, kthxGTFO.
CaseyL
Svensker, as Governor of Texas, all W had to do was make a phone call now and then. He never got down in the trenches and actually negotiated with anyone.
Obama has done exactly that – the hard work of talking, arguing, finding consensus, talking arguing, etc. – ever since he was a street organizer.
Jen
What always went unsaid about that was:
Texas Democrats = not exactly Ted Kennedy
I mean, how hard is it really for a Republican to work with a pro-bidness, anti-evolution, anti-global warming Democrat? It was transparently silly. Whereas the police videotaping story is pretty damn cool.
Here’s my $.02 about the polling for the general. It’s *mostly* meaningless, but weak data is better than contrary data. Intuitively, I’d say that both HRC and McCain are pretty close to their ceilings. There aren’t a lot of people who haven’t heard of them. I wouldn’t really see their head-to-head numbers changing dramatically over time, and I would predict a pretty close election that would depend mainly on turnout rather than on swing voters. Whereas there still are people who don’t know much about Obama, and his support is kind of unpredictable. It could go down and he could lose to McCain, but on the other hand I think he also stands a better chance than Hillary of scoring a total wipeout. I think it would be a much more interesting and energizing season.
(But, of course, that is based on what makes sense to me, and if I’ve learned anything it’s that the way things play out is almost never the way it would make sense to me.)
Punchy
I think he meant Alt-A. Peeps here are wicked smart on this. I have no link, but eventually someone will come along to explain it.
Z
Svensker,
Seriously, no comparison can be made between Obama and W. Texas Governors are some of the weakest in the States (in terms having any state constitutional power) and even the Dems in Texas were VERY conservative.
Illinois is a completely different animal. Chicago is uber-liberal and down-state Illinois is VERY conservative. To bring both sides together, in a state like that, is a real accomplishment.
The Other Steve
I’m fairly certain the Republicans expect to lose in November, which explains why they had such a terrible field of candidates.
But there is a lot of back biting going on. Republicans aren’t well known for reflection. The problem is, I don’t think the pundit wing is going to win. I think it’s going to be the Huckabee/evangelical wing. Especially if they try to marganilize Huckabee like they did in Washington.
Why do I say that? Because the business wing of the party has already been hedging their bets and sinking money into the Clinton campaign. Now I’m not sure what they do with Obama, but… I doubt they care too much if the Republicans lose, and they may just stay out of the party for a while if things go well with a Democrat in office.
Just like they did with FDR.
Freak
If you think they are going to be vicious blaming McCain for the loss, wait til you see them blame the democrats for the loss in Iraq that is coming, for the failure in Afghanistan, and for the deficits and failures of the federal government. All of this will have originated under GOP rule, but the bills will come due after 20Jan09 and the sheep will buy it. I almost, almost, wish that the dems would just withdraw and say, “hey, your mess, you clean it up.” But despite my optimistic thought that the GOP couldn’t make the current situation any worse, I know that they could.
Tsulagi
Accurate observations; good post.
Yeah, I’ve seen some of that in the side diaries at RedState and elsewher. Brilliant deep thinkers. Some actually want Hillary to win because they just know then the entire nation would see the unalienable truth The Democrats are Always Worse.
The nation then fully awakened to that truth by another Clinton, in 2012 a new and even shinier Reagan will rise from the ashes or descend from the clouds. Whichever way God polls as more dramatic. This new messiah will then lead them to the promised ConservativeLand the prophet Reagan foretold. It’s all written down in the Party of Bush Book of Revelations.
Basically they’re praying for a new messiah, or the Rapture, whichever comes first. Win/win. They see the big picture.
empty
No you won’t Duke. Or should I say Pardner, and then spit. Or, should I.. shit I forgot how to do the tough guy routine. Hi yo Silver?
Arsenio Billingham
Thanks, Punchy. Googled it and shit my pants accordingly.
jrg
Makes perfect sense to me. With 7+ years of failed leadership, what else are they going to do? Their chance of winning in November is slim (but anything is possible).
Some of them are blaming the recession on the chance that a Dem might get elected this year. All these Cons can do is blame others for their failed policies. It’s the only thing these people are capable of doing right.
I’ve still got hope, though. After ~10 years of complaining about Clenis, none of their arguments are compelling in the face of the disaster that is the GOP.
I can promise you that they will come up with plenty of things to whine about in 2012, but it’s not going to matter.
Once you label someone as a traitor, and get thousands of Americans killed for a war based on lies, there is no going back. People remember that sort of thing.
These a-holes have burned too many bridges. People will remember. If people don’t remember, the bloggers will remind us. Hyperlinks, bitches!
Innocent Bystander
The Conservative Manifesto hinges on the idea that government can’t work. Then they steal the office and prove it. They are hard wired to be outsiders/back benchers who wail against the Democratic initiatives, the ones that actually help our economy and society. Lucky for them, they’ve convinced the undecideds that they aren’t to be trusted running this country. It’s really amazing how a relatively small cadre of zealots can wreck a country within a decade.
Xoebe
[quote]In other words, McCain is the fall guy, and they are just distancing themselves from him.[/quote]
I was wondering how long it would take yall to figure it out.
Makes me feel sad for McCain, but – there is the outside possibility he could win the General Election. That would be the worst case scenario for the neocons. The moderate wing of the GOP would get a big boost. Subsequently, the neocons could not blame 4 or 8 years of liberal big-governmentism on the Democrats.
This election is interesting. Just wait until 2012, or 2016. Things could get really, really interesting. The far right still has a lot of life left in them, and it could be a couple of decades for the steam to be let out of them.
Oh, and Iraq will still be an issue in 2016. Maybe by 2024 it won’t. Maybe.
Gus
I find your theory interesting, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. I think you hit on something, John. The deal with “conservatives” is that their theories are perfect in their eyes. If someone they help to elect is a fuckup, well it’s not the fault of conservative policies, it’s because the person wasn’t conservative enough. Anything less than the non-existent platonic ideal of conservatism, and the individual can be blamed. Somehow Reagan is able to avoid the criticism despite raising taxes, “cutting and running” in Lebanon, and selling arms to our mortal enemy Iran. Must have been the glorious military victory over the mighty Grenadan menace.
jcricket
+1(000). I think everyone is spinning, jockeying and otherwise pressing their case with no more facts than the other team right now.
As much as I hate to admit it, something could happen that makes McCain blow Obama or Clinton out of the water, come November.
Just as likely right now is that some sh*t really hits the fan for Republicans (scandals really unfold, wars get worse, economy goes in the crapper) and despite Hillary’s “high negatives”, she blows McCain out of the water.
Or Obama squeaks one out b/c of all the factors people have already mentioned.
Frankly, I really hope Dems can keep their eyes on the prize and come out of what’s likely to be another 2-3 months of campaigning without bitterness. If Obama keeps the momentum going and gets wins or near wins in OH, TX and then PA, great for him, he’s got the clear “case” for being the nominee. But if Hillary pulls out those contests and the super-delegates give her the edge, Obama people better not just go home.
No Dem better just sit at home this time around. That’s what will ultimately make the difference, not polling or faux “electability” contests.
jcricket
And I think Republicans are just adopting Wittgenstein’s “meaning as use” concept regarding the word conservative. They do love relativism, don’t they?
Wait… that might not be right.
Tillman Fan
I think that “gus” explained only part of the issue. It’s not just that the “conservatives” view their theories as perfect, but that literally nothing will change their minds about their correctness. In Iraq, for example, for 3 years all we heard was that the media were denying the facts and failing to report the “good news.” But when Bush finally admitted the obvious and began the surge because of how poorly things were going, not one Bush apologist conceded that they were wrong, after all. Instead, they focused on a new argument — that the media were denying the success of the surge, etc.
A major problem is that the “conservatives” tend to define the issues in a way that they can’t be shown to be wrong. In the “war on terror,” for example, the fact that we haven’t suffered a second terrorist attack for the past 6+ years “proves” that Bush’s tactics and strategy are working, and shouldn’t be changed or questioned. However, if we suffer another attack tomorrow, that will “prove” that we need to redouble Bush’s efforts to conduct warrantless surveillance, hold American citizens indefinitely without charges, and wage pre-emptive wars.
I hope that the American public doesn’t buy it, but when the economy goes into the shitter after Bush leaves office the “conservatives” will do their best to persuade the public that it’s the fault of the new (presumably Democratic) administration.
As someone who voted reliably Republican until 2002, I’m with John Cole in wishing for the destruction of the Republican Party.
binzinerator
I heard on the radio the other night an interview with some conservative buttplug who was at CPAC. He was explaining to the reporter in a nice modulated voice how McCain came there trying to be concillatory, and that the CPAC conservatives thought he wasn’t making enough of an effort, which was why he got booed, and that McCain should have tried harder because — now speaking in a voice of utter conviction — he absolutely must have the support of those conservatives.
I laughed my ass off. Too bad the reporter didn’t tell him “Yo, dumbfuck, McCain didn’t give you CPAC freaks a rusty trombone because he didn’t need to. People in this country made him the GOP front runner precisely because of the middle finger he represents to you CPAC fucktards.”
At least the reporter asked the CPAC buttplug to explain why McCain got booed. She (the reporter) pointed out that McCain was conservative on a bunch of things — and she listed them! I loved his response: The ‘plug stammered, said a couple of um’s and ah’s and then tried to sidestep by saying “Ah, well, um, it’s kind of complex…”
I laughed my ass off again! Hell yes it’s “kind of complex” to explain. Explaining his own lizardbrain fucktardedness to an intelligent rational person is damn impossible without making it obvious the CPAC right is a bunch of lizardbrain fucktards.
He finally said McCain got booed because he was willing to reach across the aisle, because he didn’t vote for a marriage amendment, because of the McCain/Feingold act, and because he was willing to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens after paying a fine. (‘Dammit! We CPACer’s want those mexicans waterboarded! Now! Or at a minimum imprisoned for months then shipped home in their own dung.’)
Really fucking stupid stuff to be turned into ‘Most Important Issues in America’, and even a majority of goper America thinks there are more important issues.
That’s why CPAC right wants to sabatoge McCain. They are seriously pissed at him because they lost control of the message. They hate him because he just proved their moronic pet issues are not what concerns most Americans right now. The CPAC right wants to destroy McCain because he doesn’t need them.
NeoOstrakon
Exactly, I have thought this for a while and it was confirmed when Rush slammed him. Remember, conservatism can’t fail, you can only fail conservatism.
DougL
Absolutely not. I know quite a few otherwise reasonable people who argued along those lines in favor of voting for Bush for a second term.
Johnny Coelacanth
“They can simply pin it all on McCain, claim he lost because he didn’t offer the voters a “real” conservative alternative, and get back to championing the end of the “death tax” and other important issues without skipping a beat.”
Right. As someone smarter than me said, “Conservatism can never fail, it can only BE failed.” There’s nothing wrong with the model, it’s just that the implementation is bad. Kind of like communism, right?
goatchowder
McCain 2008.
Dole 1996.
Mondale 1984.
If Obama wins, then McCain is being a good soldier and taking one for the team this year. He’ll get his ass kicked, and get rewarded by the party establishment afterwards. They have to run *someone*, after all.
If Clinton wins, then I’m not so sure he’ll get beat up. She’s good, but not the kind of inspirational campaigner who can build a movement that would cause a landslide. Obama has that; Clinton doesn’t. If she squeaks a victory out of the Democrats, she’ll squeak one out of the general electorate too.