Posted on 11/06/2008 5:26:15 PM PST by savvyguy
Be totally honest. Could any candidate, (even Gov. Palin), have been elected to succeed a president of his own party whose job approval rating was 25 percent? Probably not.
Could any candidate have been elected to continue his party’s stay in the White House when roughly 90 percent of Americans believed the country was on the wrong track? Probably not.
Could any candidate from the governing party have been elected after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 4,000 points before one could even turn around? Probably not.
McCain faced all those obstacles
but there’s no doubt that McCain far outshone George Bush’s 92 re-election effort
Likewise, McCain outperformed Dole, who won a little less than 41 percent in 1996. And McCain’s percentage of the popular vote might be not too far from George W. Bush’s in 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.
I agree with the above comment by By Byron York, National Review.
BUT now we know a key reason which sealed their DOOM! - internal in fighting! sigh
McCain should have been decisive to stop the squabbling by saying,"Enough!!! I will FIRE the next person I hear bad mouthing anyone!" Our enemy is outside OUR camp! Make an example of any one who dare, it would have stopped it! Back to weak leadership, too soft, no passion, not willing to rock the boat, to stabilize the ship!
Don't misunderstand, I have partially blamed McCain in my earlier Open Letter to McCain, see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2125616/posts?page=60
Let's be realistic, if Palin were the candidate, faced with an unprecedented bias in MSM, unprecedented war chest of Obama she might not have won either!
Let's put this blame game behind and focus on what next, shape up & take over GOP! Prepping candidates, building stronger grassroots, etc
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
You raise good points here. A loss is a loss, but in light of the circumstances McCain should have been lucky to break the 40% mark.
It in no way matters why we lost.
We lost.
That is fact.
The question is, how do we save our Country?
Yes..Ron Paul could of won had we gotten behind him like we did the RINO shill McClame. We got suckered again. I even gave money to the Penguin cause of Sarah.
The GOP should back its candidates and elected officials. The DNC certainly does. I blame the GOP and RNC first and foremost..
All he had to do was come out against the bailout and he’d have won. Worst campaign and worst candidate on the pubbie side I’ve ever seen.
It’s okay to blame John McCain. He’s not one of us.
Joe The Plumber made a better case for electing John McCain than John McCain is. That can’t be blamed on the current conditions. The race was a winnable one. John McCain botched it. Sarah Palin is the only reason it wasn’t a 50 state landslide by 20 points.
I don’t see any point in not assigning blame where it is due. John McCain has been sticking his thumbs in our eyes for years. This was just a final middle finger to American conservatives from John McCain.
They had a “better product” (aka a drug called hopieum) and $1B to market and sell it ... we had our granpap’s Olds and $85MM ... that was the ball game.
Dole was far worse, even though I like him better than McCain in many ways.
McCain actually outdid what I expected in spirit and fight. He did good other than the reaction to the economic blight, and taking very important issues OFF the table to take down Obama. O is a great campaigner but deeply flawed due to his odd background. They brought up almost nothing about it> Bill Ayers was identified only as a terrorist in the 60s, not a modern day marxist. They could have tied him to a series of marxists, but did not. A lot of the vote they lost in the suburbs would have re-evaluated before voting for Obama. Instead, he looked like a strong, well spoken young moderate with new ideas.
“Be totally honest. Could any candidate, (even Gov. Palin), have been elected to succeed a president of his own party whose job approval rating was 25 percent? “
In America? Against an utterly unprepared, unvetted, glib, Leftist, shallow, Constitution hating, America despising, finger flipping, smirky adolescent? Yeah, pretty much. In America. Tells you something about how far we’ve drifted and where we are today.
Of course it does. If you don't take a good look at that, how do you figure out how to reverse course? And the answer isn't all that hard.
This statement contains a couple of false premises.
First, Bush's low approval rating is a combination of factors - a large group believes he was not conservative enough (spending, etc), and they disapprove of him for entirely different reasons than Democrats disapprove of him. The mere fact of this disapproval rating does not mean someone positioned from the conservative end of the spectrum was doomed to fail this election.
Second, the Democrat Congress has even LOWER ratings than Bush. How effective might a conservative been who attacked the Reid-Pelosi Congress and tied Obama to it, a Congress in which Obama was as left-wing and partisan a member as they come?
Could any candidate have been elected to continue his party’s stay in the White House when roughly 90 percent of Americans believed the country was on the wrong track? Probably not.
Again, the 90% number does not mean much in and of itself. A good portion of that number is people who think the track is not conservative enough.
Could any candidate from the governing party have been elected after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 4,000 points before one could even turn around? Probably not.
The roots of the financial meltdown was in affirmative-action mortgage social engineering.
This was the PERFECT opportunity to run against government control of the market in the name of diversity and the disastrous results of that.
The case was NEVER effectively made by McCain, who happened to be in an ideal position to make the case (having personally called for regulating the DNC subsidiarieis, Fannie and Freddie) and instead he blamed "greed on Wall Street." In my mind, this was the stupidest possible blunder McCain could have made, and it cost him the election.
First step has to be Republican primaries are held the same day as liberal primaries. Boot Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina to the last primaries held. And nobody agree to govt subsidies for campaign financing.
I agree with much of above sentiments. RNC certainly has a record of deserting his candidates or not funding them. The Sheeples have drifted farther & farther left.
Whoopee for us.
It took me longer to vote for McCain than it took me to vote for all the other offices, judges, and propositions because he was so un-maverick when it came to the horrid bailout bill.
I finally did vote for him, but I'm not particularly happy about it.
No, it's not all that hard. So let's file it, work for it, and at the same time - DEAL with the REALITY. OK?
We got 4 years of OBAMA. 2012 won't change that. We can work towards it, but we must deal with the FACTS...or, I guess concede that conservatives can't do two things at once. You think I'm not on the conservatives side because I choose to deal with reality?
I agree.
The piece barely mentions the MSM, but I don’t think anyone could have surmounted all the glorious review they gave Obama, while shamelessly attacking the GOP.
That being the case, I think McCain came pretty close.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.