[Cicero's]"Media Plays McCain Like Fiddle"

The transcript of Rush's commentary is copied below. I will preface it with Cicero's commentary. It fits with RINOS like McCain, the MSM, and MOST of todays' DemocRATS:

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

RUSH: Howard Fineman 1:28 this afternoon posted at MSNBC.com: "McCain's Moment -- the maverick Arizona senator is everywhere in Washington these days. Could an independent run for the White House be in the works? Here in your nation’s capital, three parties roam the landscape these days: Dobson-Rove Republicans, Reid-Pelosi Democrats and McCain-Media Independents. At least for now, the McCain-Medias control the game. Going forward..."

Here's Fineman admitting that the media is his own party, which he's done before.

"Going forward, the question isn’t so much whether the leader of the MMs can win the presidency, but whether he will try to do so as an independent or a Republican. If Sen. Hillary Rodham [Rodham] hopes to win in ‘08, by the way, she’d better hope McCain chooses the MM route. It’s her best chance."

Now, stick with me on this, because as I say, my buddy Mark Levin wrote about this very scenario last September. I'll get to that here in a second. Just a couple more excerpts from Fineman.

"So here’s the question: Why is this McCain’s moment? There are lots of reasons. For one and this is not a new observation we in the so-called Mainstream Media can’t get enough of the guy. He’s got an inspiring personal story, of course, but that’s only part of it. McCain, quite simply, is good copy. He knows precisely where to stand on which issues to generate publicity. Battered between right and left, the Mainstream Media is drawn to him because he’s unpredictable..."

You think he's unpredictable pause because he always agrees with you and your buddies in the media, but he's utterly predictable, utterly predictable.

The "Media is drawn to him because he’s unpredictable, because he is alternately and equally critical of both parties..."

Both parties? Un-uh. Un-uh, Howard. This is your Democrat bias showing up. He may say one thing a month about the Democrats and you consider it criticism. He lives criticizing Republicans.

At any rate, "McCain can take it either way. If he can’t get the Dobson-Rove Republicans if Dr. James Dobson is able to successfully shout 'no!' from his mountaintop in Colorado then McCain could run as an independent. Were he to do so, he would probably siphon more votes from the Republican nominee than the Democrat good news for any Democratic nominee, but especially for a divisive figure such as Hillary Rodham [Rodham]. Remember 1992? And if the Reid-Pelosi Democrats do nominate Hillary, plenty of conservative Democrats would be tempted to join McCain. The shape of a possible MM administration is clear: Lieberman as vice president, Graham as attorney general, Sen. Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense..."

So I don't know how much Fineman is tweaking us on this or goosing us on this, but I want to share with you what Levin wrote at National Review Online September 8th, 2004.

He said, "I look for something close to a rerun of the 1912 presidential election in 2008. President William Howard Taft was the incumbent Republican. Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, a good big-government progressive, was unhappy with his successor, so he decided to challenge Taft in the Republican primary. Roosevelt lost. He was popular, but he was also controversial within the party. Roosevelt then bolted the Republican Party, formed the Bull Moose Party, and, of course, ran for president. Woodrow Wilson wound up the unexpected nominee of the Democratic Party. Wilson won the presidency with 42 percent of the vote, with Roosevelt coming in second in the popular vote, and Taft last.

John McCain fancies himself another Teddy Roosevelt. He invokes TR's name all the time to justify his anti-free-speech, anti-free-enterprise liberalism. I am convinced that his media schtick (which the press loves) is part of McCain's strategy to eventually lead his own revolt, at which time he'll need and receive their help. And look at the rest of McCain's behavior.

He campaigns for George Bush, but he will not criticize John Kerry. In fact, he says Kerry would be a good commander-in-chief, which no Republican believes (except, perhaps, for David Gergen). He has positioned himself as a so-called independent and progressive, and a self-proclaimed figure of unity and bipartisanship. And McCain has spent years in the Senate attacking the structure of the political parties the primary target of the so-called 'reforms' of the McCain-Feingold bill, which undermined severely the parties' ability to raise funds..."

"I believe McCain is and has been planning another run for the presidency. He cannot win the Republican nomination, which is a lesson he learned in 2000. But he is far better positioned to run as a third-party candidate than Ross Perot was, and Perot got 19% of the vote in 1992."

Levin predicts that "McCain will either seek the Republican nomination in 2008, or bolt from the party and announce an independent candidacy (like his hero Teddy Roosevelt) or he will skip that process altogether and start out as an independent," which Levin thinks is "less likely." "In any event, in 2008 McCain will run as the unity candidate. Republicans, beware," and as Howard Fineman says, he'll have the media with him.

But I'm going to tell you what I think is going on here, folks, because I know the media, Mr. Fineman. I know you see guys better than McCain knows you.

McCain thinks he's playing you guys like a fiddle but it's the other way around: You're playing McCain like a fiddle because Mr. Fineman, you can't convince me that in a race that came down to John McCain and Hillary Clinton you're going McCain.

You just can't convince me of that. In fact, I know exactly what this is. If there is any strategery here -- and I'm not alleging it now, but if something is going on -- what it is, is this. The Mainstream Media Party, quote, unquote, Howard Fineman, is stroking McCain, promoting him at had he ever turn to encourage the very third-party candidacy that is speculated here, so as precisely to split the Republican vote à la Perot did in '92 and swish Hillary Clinton into the White House.

In that case, the media could make the case that they're for both McCain and Hillary because it would do nothing but split the Republicans. That's the theory.

The theory is: Get McCain and just get him so stroked up; play him like a violin, and he could bolt, do a third-party candidacy and that greases skids for Hillary.

Now, I also might deviate from that a bit. Because, folks, I am not convinced that a McCain third-party candidacy hurts the Republicans as much as people might think. He has lost the Republican base. He's totally just slapped them. He's made it clear that he has no use for them and doesn't care what they think about him.

So if McCain goes third party, with as whacked out as the Democrats are -- and I'll tell you something, if Hillary Clinton, if she doesn't become an anti-war Democrat she's going to have trouble with the Democratic Party, maybe not the nomination but she's going to have trouble. Let me tell you something: This party is anti-war. This is an anti-war party and she's out there pro-war. If she doesn't become the anti-war candidate, she's going to have some problems keeping the Democrats unified, and if McCain's in the race, he provides an outlet for Democrats unhappy with Hillary that they might look at as a sellout because she's not anti-war enough to go right to McCain.

I'm not convinced that McCain as a third-party candidate will destroy the Republican chances. If anything, it's just as likely that he could damage Hillary, or whoever the Democrat nominee is by going third party. But the idea that he might win the presidency as a third party? Not even Howard Fineman thinks that's possible.

Remember, this is all about splitting the Republican Party. That's what the Mainstream Media Party and the Democrats are all about, splitting up the Republican Party, thereby weakening it. That's the objective here. They're the ones playing McCain like a fiddle.

More Cicero comments that fit:

"Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; the beasts, by nature." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

MSNBC: McCain's Moment - Howard Fineman

NRO: Bull (Moose) Expect McCain to replay 1912 - Mark Levin

IMHO the real media play is to get McCain the nomination, then half beat him to death and half watch as he commits suicide.

In case no one noticed, McCain showed in 2000 he does not have the toughness to deal with the elbows Hilary will be throwing.

And the media isn't mentioning it now, but McCain's cancer will be used brutally to make him appear as an unacceptable health risk. McCain will sit aroud trying to be a nice guy to all his media buddies, while they slit his throat for Hilary.

McCain is highly useful to the media because he is a "Republican," a "conservative," and a "war hero." I've put all those items in scare quotes, because many of us would question them. But the media can pretend they are all genuine.

Like Jim Jeffords, the media will only have a use for McCain as long as he remains in the Republican party and betrays it from within, so the can say, "Look, a conservative Republican war hero is saying these things." If McCain openly jumps ship and becomes an independent candidate, he will get huge headlines for about six months, and then he will vanish into obscurity just like Jumping Jim. I'm not sure if he's smart enough to see that.

It remains to be seen whether McCain as a third party candidate could siphon off enough Republican votes to elect hillary. The Perot experience disillusioned a lot of voters from voting on a third-party ticket. But who knows?

In any case, hillary and the MSM would be the only possible beneficiaries of such a move.

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