Posted on 02/07/2008 9:06:50 PM PST by freespirited
I just finished reading Howard Dean's latest fundraising appeal, and it looks like the Democrats will have trouble against John McCain in the fall. Why? Dean's letter attempts to portray a McCain presidency as a third term for George W. Bush. But it doesn't hold up. Dean actually writes that McCain "looked the other way as Jack Abramoff bought and paid for the Republican Party and the Culture of Corruption." Um, I wrote an entire book in which McCain was one of the few Republican heroes in the Abramoff affair. Besides which, whether you agree with the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, and I don't, you can't really argue that McCain is trying to make lobbyists' lives easier. Quite the contrary.
Next comes immigration, an issue on which Dean says McCain has aligned himself "with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party." Has Dean not been paying attention to American politics for the last two years?
After immigration is Iraq. Here Dean attacks McCain's distorted comment that American troops might remain in Iraq for up to a century. Democrats interpret this as meaning McCain wants the war to go on for a century. This is silliness, of course. As McCain has explained, American troops have remained in Germany and Japan since the end of World War II, Korea since the cease-fire, and the Balkans since the 1990s. It's not American presence in Iraq that's the problem, McCain argues, it's American casualties in Iraq. And McCain has a more plausible claim than most when he says he pushed for a change in strategy which reduced American casualties and led to the slow, tenuous progress we see today in Iraq.
On abortion, Dean accuses McCain of promising to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. McCain hasn't said this, either. What McCain has said is that he would appoint judges in the mold of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas - jurists who strictly interpret the constitution. This is the conservative position on the judiciary. And it is a winning one.
Finally, Dean dredges up a quote in which McCain admits he doesn't know a whole lot about economics. This is true, and McCain, as the likely nominee of the incumbent party, is vulnerable in the midst of an economic slowdown and possible recession. But McCain has plenty of time in which to straighten out his economic policies and rhetoric.
Then there are the issues which Dean doesn't mention. He doesn't mention McCain's popular stances on Guantanamo Bay and interrogations, on climate change, on pork-barrel spending. Dean does not mention these issues because they are issues on which McCain and independents and Democrats align.
Best part of Dean's letter: When he correctly identifies McCain as a "media darling." This from the spokesman of a party who has benefited from media "cocooning" for decades. Political justice is sweet, isn't it?
We have Democrat Lite McCain.
Good luck to the GOP trying to off sent the structural advantages the Democrats hold with a guy half their base does not trust.
Is this before or after the drive bys drop McAmnesty on his head and start pushing the too old and out of touch line?
The Weekly Standard is angling to be the “house organ” of the McCain presidency, much like the New Republic under Wilson or Foreign Affairs under JFK. This is our true enemy, the entertainment-government industrial complex. Their goal is to make a bigger welfare state seem at least as fun as an episode of American Idol.
If McCain is smart, he’ll choose Ron Paul for VP and then out-liberal the liberals.
Won’t that be a hoot.
Either way, I say to the DNC/Clinton Political Machine and the Liberal Main-Stream-Media...”SIC ‘EM”.
The Conservatives DO NOT CARE!
No mention of Norman Hsu - OR William Jefferson D-La.? Dang...
Dean is right then. Any judge who feels at all obliged to follow anything close to the Constitution must overturn that absurdity.
As soon as McCain’s media party is through using him to bash their old enemy Rush and conservative talk radio, they will throw him away. The only difference between McCain and other Republican candidates that have been attacked by the old media will be that McCain deserves it. He won’t win in November.
Popular with whom?
Why don’t we just call this election on account of stupidity, on both sides, and try again next year.
That won’t happen. McCain wins Texas hands down.
The rat pundits must have gotten faxed the Dean memo...Thier all using it.
You got my vote. Time for a do over.
But conveniently ignores that a Hillary presidency WOULD be a third term for Bill Clinton. Dr. Demento strikes (out)again.
I understand that McCain has three times as many lobbyists involved in his campaign as any of the other Republican candidates. But of course this will all change since the establishment has crowned him the nominee.
Just wait until that fool McCain’s MSM “friends” rip him six ways from Sunday for the next nine months. He’ll end up where he belongs — in a straight jacket.
Yeah, I agree with you. My wife though, who is of Mexican ancestry, refuses to vote for Mr. McCain. She doesn’t want to see the U.S. turn in to that over-sized port-o-john they call Mexico. She joined the military to earn her citizenship and can’t understand why our Republican party would nominate someone who supports a blanket amnesty. Due to the fact that she is some what of a subject matter expert on this issue, I think I’ll have a hard time convincing her to vote McCain. I personnaly will hold my nose and send in my absentee ballot for the dude, as he is the lesser of whatever evil the dems produce. However, I’ll not be contributing any money to the campaign or the Republican party until they get their asses in gear.
The Democrats in trouble?! As in, what will they do with the house, senate and the executive office when they get it?
What an industrial-strength doofus!
More like a third Clinton term without the soggy cigar and the "I Dodged The Draft" T-shirt.
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