Posted on 11/07/2008 4:10:56 AM PST by IbJensen
If someone had told me last year that, come the fall of 2008, I would be praying for John McCain to become the next president of the United States, I would have had three words for him – seek psychiatric help. (McCain is my kind of Republican the way “rap” is my kind of music.)
But, in the last four months of the campaign, that’s exactly what I was doing – praying for a McCain victory – not because McCain is so good (any resemblance between the Arizona Senator and a conservative is purely coincidental), but because I would have done almost anything to spare my country from the nightmare that is Barack Hussein Obama.
Now that the worst has happened, the blame game begins.
Some will fault the leftist media, which lost any sense of balance and objectivity and practically panted over the Kenyan-American.
Others will point to the huge disparity in fundraising. Obama outspent McCain by nearly three to one. Still, if it was only about money, John Forbes Kerry – who’s married to Ft. Knox – would have won the 2004 campaign. As a friend put it, “McCain failed to raise the money to project the message he didn’t have.”
There are those who will attribute McCain’s defeat to the unpopularity of outgoing President George W. Bush, or the financial meltdown for which Republicans unfairly took the fall, or the fact that only once in the post-war era has a two-term president been succeeded by a member of his party.
It also didn’t help that McCain resembled Methuselah’s grandfather, as presented by Madame Tussaud's. We live in an age of image where how you look matters more than what you believe or what you’ve done.
But, in the final analysis, Republicans lost because they nominated their weakest candidate. And McCain lost because he’s McCain.
As a member of Club Capitol Hill, McCain was best known for cooperating with Democrats, reaching across the proverbial aisle to embrace big government halfway. Perhaps he’d spent so much time forging coalitions with the left that he’d forgotten how to fight it – if he ever knew.
For the past two decades, McCain basked in the adoration of the mainstream media. He was their pet Republican. They honored him with the accolade “maverick” – their term of endearment for a Republican who specializes in betraying his own party (as McCain did with Campaign Finance Reform). Then, when the bigger, better deal came along, The New York Times et al. decided that the former object of their affection was a Republican after all, and hateful to boot.
Of course the Fourth Estate did everything it could to elect Barack Hussein Obama. (To a large extent, he is their creation.) What else is new?
If the media chose our presidents – if they were omnipotent, as many conservatives believe – why did the GOP win five of the last eight presidential elections? Was the media enamored of Ronald Reagan – infatuated with George W. Bush?
Unquestionably, media bias was worse this year than in any election in memory. But that handicap could have been overcome, had McCain run a real race.
Like Bush Sr. in 1992, McCain was the victim of hubris.
Initially, he thought he could win on experience alone. “I’m John McCain. I was a war hero. I’ve been in the Senate for 22 years. I’m a reformer. I know how to work with the other party. How can voters possibly choose a four-year veteran of the Senate, with questionable associations, over me?” McCain mused. But they did.
McCain did a poor impression of a conservative.
The ostensible opponent of regulation and champion of the market economy was neither. In September, McCain rushed back to Washington to vote for the $700-billion bailout package for financial institutions.
In October, he offered socialism lite to rescue improvident borrowers and feckless lenders, proposing that $300 billion of the $700 billion bailout be used to buy the loans of people who took out mortgages they couldn’t pay, which would then be written down to affordable levels. The full impact of any losses would be borne by the Treasury (read, the taxpayers).
Soon to follow, bailouts of people who take out loans for cars they can’t afford. And how about the grads who don’t want to be burdened with student loans? Why stop at mortgages? Why should any borrower be responsible for his debts?
Other than taxes, which McCain promised to lower for everyone, the principal difference between his economic program and Obama’s was the wrapping.
There were issues McCain couldn’t use and issues McCain wouldn’t use.
Immigration – Americans overwhelming favor a crackdown on illegal immigrants – the carriers of poverty, crime and social fragmentation.
The Democrats are the party of porous borders. Barack Obama did everything to signal his support for alien lawbreakers except giving them backrubs and enchiladas as they cross the Rio Grande.
Republicans could have appealed to middle-class rage over the failure to control our borders – if anyone but Senor Amnesty was the nominee. Along with his buddy, Ted Kennedy, in 2007, McCain was the co-sponsor of a bill to “regularize the status” of roughly 12 million “undocumented workers.” Talk about throwing away a winning issue. BTW, two-thirds of Hispanics voted for Obama.
Marriage – Here, McCain’s record was mixed. He voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment each time it came before the Senate, but said he supported state marriage initiatives.
But it was one of many social issues that McCain resolutely refused to discuss on the campaign trail – notwithstanding that his opponent promised to repeal the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which says states don’t have to recognize same-sex unions contracted elsewhere.
On Tuesday, state defense of marriage amendments passed in California by 52% to 48%, in Arizona by 57% to 44%, and in Florida – one of McCain’s big electoral losses – by a landslide vote of 62% to 38%.
Including the three latest, marriage protection amendments have been on the ballot in 31 states, and passed every time.
Alan Sears of Alliance Defense Fund notes that in California, there were 1.5 million more votes for marriage than McCain. Florida’s amendment got 779,000 more votes than the Republican ticket. And in McCain’s home state, the vote for marriage exceeded his total by 25,000. In Florida, the vote for marriage surpassed McCain's total by almost 780,000. If McCain had picked up 98,000 of those votes, by stressing his marriage stand, he would have carried the state.
Think highlighting Obama’s stealth campaign for gay marriage might have helped McCain? McCain didn’t.
Rev. Jeremiah A Wright – The October 27 issue of Newsweek explained McCain’s refusal to discuss Obama’s racist, Marxist pastor: “Many senior advisors, as well as McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, believe the campaign should remind voters of Obama’s ties to Wright, whose inflammatory sermons emerged as a problem for the Democratic nominee during the primary. ‘If we were to go with an ad during the final weeks of this campaign showing excerpts of (Wright’s) sermons, we would probably win,’ says one senior McCain aide who declined to be named discussing internal debates on tactics. ‘But we won’t.’”
Imagine the following ad:
Announcer: “Listen to the man who was Barack Obama’s pastor for 19 years -- the man whose advice Obama said he valued.”
Cut to clips of Wright: “God d*** America.” “We (the U.S. of K.K.K.) started the AIDS virus.” “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.” “White folks’ greed runs a world in need.” “The United States cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.” “America is still the No. 1 killer in the world.”
Announcer: “For 19 years, Obama sat in Wright’s church and listened to this. He and his wife gave the church $26,000 in one year. How can we trust the judgment of a man who associated with an anti-American demagogue for almost two decades? Can we expect courage from a man who was afraid to confront the ravings of his own pastor, until he was forced to do so as a candidate?”
Obama’s association with Wright spoke volumes about the type of president he would make. It could have raised serious doubts in the minds of many about the Democrat’s competence to lead the nation.
But McCain wouldn’t touch the issue, for fear of being called racially insensitive. Ultimately, the Republican standard-bearer chose sensitivity over the presidency.
Said cop-out notwithstanding, the media still painted McCain as the Michelangelo of the smear. In a November 5 editorial, The New York Times claimed the Arizonan lost because he “forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.” (In an October 7 editorial, The Slimes accused McCain-Palin of entering "the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia.")
No, what McCain did was to betray his supporters by running a campaign without the brains, heart and guts to win.
Picking Sarah Palin as his running mate was McCain’s first and last smart move. Other than that, McCain’s campaign was much like the rest of his political career – equivocal, hesitant, passionless and lacking any real focus or genuine commitment to principles.
More than a partisan media, Bush’s ratings, the Fannie-Mae fiasco, and Democratic fundraising, John McCain is responsible for the defeat of John McCain.
The next four years will test the mettle of both Republicans and conservatives, who too often follow the GOP over a cliff.
Political exile may be the best thing that’s happened to the movement and the party in a long time.
Perhaps we’ll learn to fight again. Maybe we’ll rediscover the value of choosing principle over expediency. Maybe we’ll discover that we can’t compromise with an enemy which loathes us and despises everything this country used to stand for.
If so, John McCain may have performed his most important service to his country since the Vietnam War.
John didn't want to appear ungentlemanly, but stood blithely by while the MSM shredding his running mate!
John was a hero for standing up to the Vietnamese commies while a POW, but failed miserably in advancing his (our) views on what the opponents would do to this nation.
He let his country down hard!
BINGO!!!
Gov. Palin lost this election because of John MeCain!
In all fairness to the idiot voters, McCain was the most irritating worst candidate ever. His nasal voice sounded like a tin horn stuck on b-flat.
His teeth were too yellow, and he IS TOO OLD for heavens sake. Americans like their president to be dynamic, charasmatic, engaging, bold.
McCain is NONE of those.
Seriously, I actually think that the GOP could have won over Obama handily had it picked a more articulate, dynamic, expressive candidate who had the balls to say what needed to be said.
McCain’s jowells remind everyone constantly that he is sort of sickly.
People in America like tall Presidents with swagger and confidence. McCain is short and frumpy, and is sickeningly self demeaning.
And McCain has absolutely NO CHARM AT ALL. Women flock to candidates with charm.
Reagan, GWB, even G. Herbert Walker Bush had some charm. Clinton had charm, for heavens sake!
Yes, McCain is a war American hero, with more integrity than me or just about anyone… but he panders and seems embarrassed to be a Republican. Why should anyone else WANT to become Republican if McCain is embarrassed to be in that party.
When McCain won the primary, I vowed to not send him one cent. I never did.
I was in denial about McCain’s awful candidacy for about one week after the GOP convention. For one glimmering week, he had a chance, but he let his BORING instincts take back over by burying the only exciting thing in his campaign… Sarah Palin.
Palin, whether or not she was a good pick, is the one who should be infuriated. She is a good and decent conservative, and was treated like garbage by McCain and his “handlers.”
McCain took a good and decent woman, an accomplished exciting woman Governor of Alaska, and with his refusal to fight like a man, turned her into a neutered, perceived outcast.
Like someone else said on another forum, the only thing I ever want to hear from McCain is a big, “I was a fool who wrongly thougt pandering to the Democrats was the way to go. I was wrong, and I am sorry.”
He wanted to talk about energy...gas was too high. But he was for cap and trade, which would increase costs.
He couldn’t talk about tax cuts when he voted against them.
He couldn’t talk about experience after picking Palin.
He couldn’t talk about being different from Bush when he said on video that he voted with him 90% of the time.
That’s the price of being a moderate Republican. You can’t have a coherent approach.
McCain lost cause he didn’t get more votes than the other guy!
We're going to end up paying dearly because this LIBERAL CODDLING, CONSERVATIVE DETESTING, numbnuts is a nothing more than a DEMOCRAT!!
We might as well have nominated Hillary for nominee, she might have gotten more votes for republicans than this traitorist loser!
I believe that we are absolutely resolute in our determination to regain our composure and reengage our adversaries.
We will not take a McCain-type pussycat approach to our aggressiveness in retaking our nation from an amalgamation of communists, socialists, homosexuals, assorted pansies and downright anti-America rats!
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John...failed miserably in advancing his (our) views on what the opponents would do to this nation. Well, what else were you expecting from...
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You were in the same audience as I was and watched his lousy performance against Obomba.
The very act of choosing a gaggle of losers to run his campaign was an egregious error.
One of the important issues that we never heard discussed was the pollution of our nation by illegal aliens, but then we knew which side of the border McCain stood: clearly implanted with el presidente Bush on the South side.
It was a poorly administrated campaign and it will cost this nation, and you too, dearly!
“Seriously, I actually think that the GOP could have won over Obama handily had it picked a more articulate, dynamic, expressive candidate who had the balls to say what needed to be said.”
not after the crisis/bailout and 8 years of Bush. Probably a o win situation. If we picked someone really good, he would’ve been wasted with no future. So maybe it was a good thing that we picked a dud?
A perfect description and article describing just how far out of the real world the Republicans have gone. I agree with the Author, the minute that he knew that McCain was “their fair haired boy” it was over
Here is the 'nut graph', as we used to call it in the newspaper writing business.
Not compromising is antithetical to what we were taught as children, but it is an absolute necessity in defending the ONLY concepts that keeps America healthy and strong and free. (think Goldwater)
I've actually gone so far as to refuse doing business with people I know to be rabid anti-American Democrats and Obama supporters.
And this 'moderate' approach will cost all of us dearly.
To me a 'moderate' is a silly fool who staddles the centerline and doesn't stand for a damned thing.
McCain appeared to be prissy and fearful of offending his communist opponent.
Of all the people in the United States we get an empty-suited communist and a liberal RINO.
Sarah Palin was the outstanding star of this disastrous sham of a presidential campaign.
Those hundreds of millions of dollars slipped into the country for Obomba's campaign certainly didn't help things.
. . . . .
"Senator McCain cannot step out and defend Palin every single time someone says something bad about her."
McCain has committed the ultimate treachery against the Republican Party, against its membership, against its core values, and against these United States. He must be targeted for removal from office no later than the 2010 elections.
And, when Rahm Emanuel goes after Lindsey Graham, stand by and let the chips fall where they may.
We have, to put it mildly, an intensely moronic electorate who are incapable of reading or detecting a liar when they hear one.
That being said, we haven't had a decent candidate since Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Now, it's too late. The nation will veer so far to the left that some of us think we'll be falling off a cliff.
The developing dismal situation will demonstrate that a strong, benevolent despot is required; perhaps someone of Francisco Franco's mettle. What passes for a democracy has worked magnificently for the left who yearn for a 100% nanny state administered by the millions who work for a corrupt, socialist central government.
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