Dan Bartlett, in December:
That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
The Washington Times, today:
Even as talk radio was brutalizing Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential primaries, conservative bloggers reached a respectful truce with the Arizona senator over touchy issues and gave him what the campaign called a “tremendous positive psychological” boost.
I suppose it is only natural to go to a forum where you can be asked the truly pressing questions. Things like- “Who is less patriotic, Obama or Hillary?” Or, “Will the Democrats be content to lose the war in Iraq, or will they try to turn the US into a province of Iran.” Or, “Do you think you can be as great a President as Bush?”
I mean, I fully understand why McCain would seek refuge within the confines of right-wing blogs.
rob!
“Senator McCain, do you think the country is ready for someone as youthful and forthright as you for President?”
Zifnab
To be fair, the right-wing radio hosts were spewing the exact same drivel. They just threw a bit of “… and why won’t you build a giant laser-powered chainsaw welding death cannon on our border? If you like Mexicans so much, you should just go get gay married to them …” on top.
Wingnut blogs with piddling viewerships and meager incomes also know how to toe the line much faster than hundred million dollar / year radio jockies. There’s a reason they call the site “Townhall” and not “McMansion”. McCain’s campaign knew who he could dazzle with star power. And since even the radio jockey demagogues need to cater to the flavor of the month, McCain was able to corral Limbaugh/Hannity/et al back line simply by winning. No one wants to associate with a loser, so Romney eventually became palpable even to the true believers.
McCain is pulling from both the Rove and the Dean playbook, which is both good and bad.
Wilfred
John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
jake
And that’s all you need to know about McCane.
Normal people would not get a “‘tremendous positive psychological’ boost” from the support of cretins like K-Load and Confederate Wankee. Normal people would retire to a cave and not emerge until they’d figured out what the hell they had done wrong.
As for the Bloggoreah from the Brown Squirts, of course they’re calling a truce (not to be confused with surrender), with the man they hated with the heat of a million supernovas. Parrotting the propaganda allows them to maintain the illusion that they have jackshit to do with the way this country is run. “Heh. Fearless Leader said black is white and so I said black is white so it means we think the same way. It’s almost like he listens to me!”
Pathetic. But also fun to watch.
Notorious P.A.T.
Why do the wingnut diehards dislike McCain? I don’t get it. He wants to bomb brown people, invade oil-rich countries, let the big financian institutions do whatever the heck they want. . .
Is it the immigration thing?
smiley
That and McCain/Feingold. Probably other stuff also.
joe
Mr. Cole, you used to be a wingnut blogger.
Did you regurgitate talking points? If so, from whom?
John Cole
Not knowingly.
croatoan
Dan Bartlett’s still under the age ceiling for enlistments. Why the fuck isn’t he serving in Iraq? He was a strong booster of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, where lots of guys older than he is have served and died. Many of them had wives and families, too.
dbrown
When did being taken prisoner by the enemy and surviving the torture and imprisonment make you a war hero? Many thousands of Americans endured far, far worse in Korea and WWII as well as Vietnam. I am not saying he wasn’t brave but how does that make you a hero? I respect his sacrifice but he is not a hero except in the ‘every one who serves’ is a hero (they too got shot at, many suffered terrible hardships and endure terrible agony from wounds – some that never fully healed – are they not hero’s simply for enduring the pain like he did?). A hero, in the military, generally has saved others and /or helped in a major way win a battle/war – which McCain did neither.
When the term is used for every one who suffered in any war, then what is a hero who fits the normal definition?
A super hero? Or should I say a hero who is really a hero but not the normal hero that the regular heroes are; or a hero’s hero or a hero that was formally known as a hero but is now known as a bigger hero with some extra words of praise to mark their hero status in a way that differs from a hero that does not have this status but is still a hero in the sense that all hero’s are hero’s except some hero’s are more heroic without reducing the importance’s of the hero’s that are hero’s that differ from hero’s that hero’s know are the hero’s that aren’t the hero’s we mean as hero’s but are truly hero’s in the way we mean without changing the meaning of hero’s relative to hero’s that we generally talk about.
Lets confuse the language and call McCain a hero – otherwise, I get a headache thinking about this stupid idea of calling a prisoner of war a hero simply for surviving the ordeal.
merlallen
I have often wondered how being a failure makes one a hero also. A Japanese flyer would have killed himself by crashing his plane into the missile battery that shot him down, not give up.