“The far right extremists who are sneering at McCain”
Spoken like a true-blue lib. You are an old timer around here so I know that is not the case. I also suspect that you know that just because one has vomit rising in the back of their throat at the thought of the “choice” we have this year, doesn’t make them an extremist of any sort. Juanito is going to give this nation a royal buggering....it doesn’t lessen the trauma just because he has an “R” after his name.
There is nothing new under the sun.
People have always been more conservative than other people. GW Bush had positions very clearly in his repertoire in 2000 that were leftward of many FR preferences, but rightward of Gore and Kerry.
So FR supported him. He wasn’t Gore. Nor was he Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes or Steve Forbes. But FR still supported him. McCain wasn’t Romney, or Keyes. But he wasn’t Guilliani either. And he’s not Obama.
We always vote for the rightward most viable option. There is nothing different about this year from any other year in that regard.
And don’t think the right wing has a monopoly on this discomfort. We are about to see some PROFOUNDLY rightward motion on the part of Obama in his sprint for the center. He’s already saber rattling at Iran to polish up his CINC imagery. Rest assured we’ll hear him find a way to embrace a “long term security arrangement with Iraq” — perhaps with a “special team of diplomats” rather than military. Anything, ANYTHING, to move him towards the middle.
KOS and DU will be very angry. But they won’t splinter. They won’t abandon him. He is their leftward most viable option.
The middle is what wins. That’s why Bush added compassionate to conservatism and that’s why McCain’s odds are very good. He doesn’t have to sprint anywhere near as far for the center as Obama does.
If there is a desire in FR to move the center rightward, you do it with incrementalism. You don’t do it with extremism. It is not a party that has to move. It is a center.
The folks here that want the center to move rightward should spend their time on DU moderating them. Why doesn’t that happen? Because of instinct. There is instinctive understanding that a Democrat left of center moderate, similar to McCain being a right of center moderate, can win elections — so one most decidedly does not want to encourage that.