I think his principal mistake was to go for Federal financing. That limited him to $80m. Reagan couldn't have won, if he had only had 1/8 of his opponent's funding. Remember the movie "300"? In real life and on-screen, the "300" lost. They gave a good account of themselves, but they *lost*. Note that I'm no McCain fan, but the first principle of post-mortems is to figure out which one of these things is different from the usual run of things. In this case, it was the money. Bush raised $600m to win against Kerry. McCain tried to do it with $80m. It was a bridge too far.
I am under the impression that both candidates were going to take only public financing and that Obama suckered McCain by signing a pledge then not honoring it.
Yep, just another sign of his naivety. He actually believed Bozo would keep his work about taking public funding. I saw that as a trap as soon as the news came out. I couldn't believe he didn't see through that ploy. Even after that he insisted on "taking the high road". His stupidity cost him the election, including his voting for the bailout, one of his biggest mistakes.
the question is: could any republican win after Bush? The reason why he even had a chance was because he distanced himself from Bush so much
“I think his principal mistake was to go for Federal financing. That limited him to $80m”
It just means the so-called ‘public financed campaign’ debate is DEAD!!!...
... Just like the ‘Steak Knife Incident’ with emanuel’s & obama’s political traitors.
Kinda Kool;
...us EEEvil, rich, ‘rethuglicans’ can now give as much as we want and laugh hysterically in the face of any dissent posed by the. . .
. . . PROGRAZIs. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.
Palin/Jindal ‘12
Jindal/Palin ‘12
GOP2.0
the Deets