John McCain reels in a pathetic 26 percent in Washington, loses Kansas, and loses Louisiana. It's not going to stop him from winning the nomination, but obviously conservatives haven't quite reconciled themselves to the Straight Talk Era. Conservatives not feeling the McMentum is, I believem going to be one of my topics on Fox News today at 12:50 PM. Be there (and as long as I'm self-promoting, buy the book).
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Buyer's Remorse
10 Feb 2008 11:03 am
Comments (28)
Buyers remorse? The evangelical base of the GOP never "bought" McCain in the first place. All you've managed to prove is that many conservatives aren't a fan of McCain. Wow Matt, how insightful!
Seriously, your anti-McCain streak is OBNOXIOUS. The way you enthusiastically post anything that could possibly be construed as a detriment to McCain, even if its the most obvious thing in the entire world. Please let it go already. We get it. You don't like John McCain.
Nevermind the fact that everything in politics is acceptable - lies, deceit, etc, when Hillary Clinton does it. But as soon as McCain is able to construct a (largely false?) positive persona of himself in the national media, via the same methods that Clinton might use, you are up in arms.
When do we get the last 13% of the precincts from the Washington GOP?
Mac is back! Sorta-kinda, maybe. I'd be interested in seeing speculation from WA residents why McCain got so humiliated there. You'd think a moderate state would be fertile ground for him. Is it that only true Kool-Aid drinkers turned out for the R caucus?
If Huckabee is the VP choice and Obama ends up as the Dem nominee, the "no foreign policy experience" attack will become a lot less viable for McCain.
Seems unlikely to me - McCain must realize that he'll have to defend his running mate's suitability for the presidency.
With McCain at the top of the ticket, and Huck as his running mate, here is one (leaning Dem) voter who most certainly will be voting for ANYONE else and damn happy about it. McCain is too much the geezer these days to allow someone like Huckabee to have a realistic shot at the keys to the kingdom.
I think McCain will pick an economic guru for VP. That is an area that he is weak, and an issue that will be extremely important for the election.
Thats why if I had to guess between Huckabee or Romney as VP, I'd say he'd pick Romney. But I suspect it'll be someone that has been out of the picture.
Matt,
One of your fellow Fox News contributers, Karl Rove, just pointed out that the number of Republicans who actually voted in Kansas was only about 13,000. Say hi to him if he's still there when you get to the station. I've heard he's a nice guy in person.
Nick,
Maybe he should pick Kudlow for Veep
Matt, none of us are enthusiastic about McCain, but I think all would agree you got a serious hard-on for him. What's the deal? Steal an old girlfriend? Pee in your cornflakes? You can't end a McCain post without a jab at him.
Um, this is a liberal blog. McCain is a conservative presidential candidate. I don't quite understand why anybody is surprised that Matt's posts on McCain are hostile.
I love the hot-house Republican flowers posting here (Nick and Klug). As if the past seven years hadn't happened. If only I had one of McArdle's 2X4's.
I'm watching your appearance right now and I'm reminded of why I hate left vs. right talking points battles.
Kalkin, Savage: Don't you agree MY holds special dislike for McCain? I'm no fan, but I'd like to know why MY really, really doesn't like him. It's like hating David Broder. /sarcasm
Who goes to a caucus in general? People who like politics way too much. Not folks with kids, or who work for a living. Hence Obama wins caucuses.
So why should we be surprised that the Republican caucuses look a little strange this week? The race is over, so only people with nothing better to do turned out.
I don't know what a "special" dislike is. I dislike McCain because he's a war-monger, a hypocrit, a cypher, and has disdain for substantive policy debate. McCain is essentially GWB with a slightly better resume (from his youth). The only thing that I can see that separates GWB and McCain is that GWB can violate standard conservative tenets with impunity but McCain can't. Perhaps MY shares that view and posts accordingly.
I have asked the following question repeatedly on right-wing blogs: What is the difference between McCain 2000 and McCain 2008 other than his age and the alternatives? I have never received an answer.
I don't like McCain by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think what you see is "dislike" for John McCain. What animates me every time I see his ugly, scarred up old face is sneering schadenfreude for the "movement" conservatives.
Anyone who considers themselves part of the right wing of this country who is thumping for John McCain isn't even worthy of sneering at. You would have to be such a complete and total tool of the RNC that you would be beneath contemplation.
Two words: Bob Dole.
I rarely read NRO's The Corner, but I followed Matt's link over there. The weired thing is that they only mention the results from Kansas yesterday. There's no mention of LA or WA. It's like it never happened.
Maybe in the fantasy conservative mind, zombie Reagan has risen from the grave and is getting 99% of every primary. Having John "Agents of Intolerance" McCain and Mike "I didn't evolve from no monkey" Huckabee as the front runners must be too much to handle.
SavageView, you have a point. In 2000, Republican voters preferred George W Bush to John McCain by a large margin. I suspect that they still do.
Savage: What's the difference? The right dislikes him more, now.
CN brings up a great point: who's looking for the Clinton's to dust off the '96 playbook? Look for McCain-defining ads during the summer that play up his resistance to Social Security and Medicare. "Gingrich-McCain"?
RE Klug's "Don't you agree MY holds special dislike for McCain? I'm no fan, but I'd like to know why MY really, really doesn't like him "
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The conservative Newsmax is passing around this column by UK Independent's Johann Hari:
I liked this item:
[Right up to his twenties, he [McCain] remained a strikingly violent man, "ready to fight at the drop of a hat", according to his biographer Robert Timberg. This rage seems to be at the core of his personality: describing his own childhood, McCain has written: "At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out."]
Just the guy to put in charge of thousands of nuclear warheads.
In that Matt is a liberal blogger, sure I expect him to go after McCain. But he has been doing this long before McCain was even the front runner.
And frankly, McCain is not nearly as bad as other republicans. Romney wants to "expand Guantanamo". Romney refused to rule out a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran. In fact, they all refused to rule out nukes except for McCain and Paul. McCain has the best immigration policy among GOP. The only one who addresses global warming. One of the few that believes in evolution.
Do I want McCain to win? Of course not. I'm obviously pulling for Obama. But if a republican had to be president, would I want it to be McCain? Absolutely. Being honest about that doesn't make me a closet right winger.
P.S. Another reason I've pulled for McCain is because he poses a great threat to Hillary, but not to Obama. Democrats will see that, and it will make it more probable that Obama gets the nomination.
I gotta say I'm going to love it if the Republicans get into an intramural legal battle over counting all the votes in one of their own primaries/caucuses. Which now looks like it may happen in WA.
This is good from so many angles.
The GOP is resigned to McCain but depressed. There's still plenty of time for a turnaround, but the longer this moaning phase gets drawn out, the more time Democrats have to finish their primary and get going on November fundraising.
Huckabee and Paul have supporters who are still eager to get their candidate in the spotlight, and they're getting their wish. But in the end, it's a lose-lose situation. McCain can't pick either as his running mate without pissing off most of the party. And when he doesn't pick either, their supporters will feel snubbed.
Right now I can't see this possibly playing out any better for the Democrats.
N: "If Huckabee is the VP choice and Obama ends up as the Dem nominee, the "no foreign policy experience" attack will become a lot less viable for McCain. Seems unlikely to me - McCain must realize that he'll have to defend his running mate's suitability for the presidency."
I'm not so sure. Why would McCain have to spend a lot of time defending his VICE-President's take on foreign policy?
Other than the fact that we got Cheney with Bush, most VP's are the "silent type", and don't control or have much influence over foreign policy.
So while Obama might be able to attack McCain on that basis by pointing to Huckabee, it really doesn't limit McCain's ability to point at Obama on the same basis.
But frankly, given McCain's militarism, I think Obama will have a field day pointing out McCain's lack of foreign policy smarts. And for McCain to claim he knows more than Obama about foreign policy is going to strike everybody outside of McCain's base as pretty hollow.
"What is the difference between McCain 2000 and McCain 2008 other than his age and the alternatives?"
Essentially, the distribution of winner take all vs proportional representation states. This time around McCain won mostly the former, and lost mostly the latter, which accounts for his overwhelming lead in delegates, while he was hardly ahead of Romney at all in actual votes. Had they all been proportional representation, or all winner take all, the race would have remained competitive, and McCain would have tanked when he reached the caucuses where only Republicans could vote, just as he did in 2000. If the distribution had been reversed, he'd have been absolutely slaughtered.
A remarkable instance of gerrymandering achieved it; When somebody figures out how it was accomplished, it's going to be a dynamite expose.
remarkable instance of gerrymandering achieved it; When somebody figures out how it was accomplished, it's going to be a dynamite expose.
I don't know if this was meant to be serious. But I just assumed it was luck. Pre-Iowa I knew this was a race between Romney and McCain. I didn't know what the breakdown would look like, but McCain was certainly well served.
Comments closed February 24, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
This just guarantees Huck will be VP, and he is scary good.
Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | February 10, 2008 11:13 AM