Posted on 02/07/2008 6:29:17 PM PST by Checkers
Are there any Freepers who support John McCain?
If you support Mr. McCain, can you make the case for your man?
Can you make the case without bringing up the War?
Can you make the case without bringing up Judges?
Can you make the case without using any ACU ratings? (Those don't impress anybody.)
Can you make the case without insults or telling people to "calm down"?
Can you make the case without the type of lying and dishonesty we've come to expect from John McCain and his special friend Mike Huckabee?
Can you make the case without trashing Barack Obama?
Can you make the case without using Hillary Rodham Clinton as some kind of boogyman or boogyperson?
Can you?
The ball is in your court.
Those are huge issues.
I think the complaint is that those issues have been discussed ad nauseum already. Essentially, McCain's supporters think that he will do well on those issues; his opponents do not trust him.
One major problem with things like ACU ratings is that it's very easy for politicians to boost their ratings with minimal risk by taking positions that they know will win or lose overwhelmingly. It was, to be sure, very gratifying to see Fred Thompson on the right (albeit losing) side of some 99-1 votes, but what's actually more important is how a candidate does on the squeakers.
Trying to change the Senate rules so that it would carry out its Constitutionally-mandated advise-and-consent duties was a squeaker where John McCain gave victory to the enemy. Many judicial posts are still unfilled because of his treachery. While it is true that he's allowed some good judges in, we could likely have gotten them in even without his stabbing us in the back.
Likewise, while John McCain was correct in noting that U.S. strategy was sub-optimal, many of us believe he made those observations not to benefit the U.S., but rather to attack the President. Given that McCain's proposed strategy would have been even worse, I tend to share in such beliefs.
Yes, I have been besieged several times by pro McCain supporters who don’t like my tag line.
> He is not as bad as Hillary Clinton.
If Hillary is president, the damage she will do to conservatives will be minimized by the Republicans in Congress who still have a backbone.
If McCain is president, Republicans in Congress would not be able to oppose his punishment of the conservatives without opposing their party leadership. And McCain would have the solid support of the Democrats in crushing the conservatives and any of their causes.
In any event, be prepared to hand over your guns, your money, your liberties, and your dignity if any of McCain, Hillary, or Obama become president.
McCain’s chances of becoming president are virtually zero.
I like it. Very clever.
I, too have been attacked by supposed conservatives who think my tag line praises the Clinton Administration.
Only someone with a dull, plodding mind would think such a thing.
Its a tactical issue.
You and I both want GOP members (conservative ones most preferrably) in the House and Senate. We have to figure out how to do that in the face on a fairly badly stacked deck in the next 4 years.
McCain is going to be running AGAINST the GOP in order to get votes. This isn’t my opinion. It’s McCains. He only gets attention when he opposes the GOP and adopts liberal policies. He has supported only one conservative issue which is Iraq (although he keeps falsely claiming that the surge was his idea) and it will be the only thing we agree with him on.
Now, if you are running for the House in Oklahoma, Texas or Colorado and McCain is at the top of the ticket. Do you 1) Stand on a stage with him when he shows up to campaign for himself and have to explain later that you aren’t actually supporting global warming carbon taxes, amnesty and waterboarding 2) Run on the McCain ticket and have conservatives in your own district not vote for you, or 3) Hold your own events and run against Obama/Hillary and against McCain too.
Iraq and immigration are likely to be the two biggest issues for GOP candidates in 2008. McCain is right on one and he is the anti-GOP on the other. So you are likely to have to keep McCains name off anything related to your campaign for fear of turning off the 84% of Americans who opposed his shamnesty bill.
In the 20-30 GOP seats which the DNC took from us in 2006, we have to run conservative candidates to get them back. Those candidates will be pointing out how NOT conservative the dem winner was under Speaker Pelosi after dems campaigned in those districts as conservatives in 2006. Those were pro-military districts with conservative democrat voters who typically went along with the GOP. McCain is going to be a problem in those districts as well as he moves left in the general so what are those GOP candidates supposed to do? Do we run a ‘centrist’ candidate instead so he can match McCain?
You and I both know (or should know) that McCains media support is going to end the day the Dems choose their nominee. You know the old saying ‘When given the choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, voters choose the Democrat’. The MSM will side with Hillary over McCain which will just cause him to move further Left or emphasize his already leftist position more strongly to get that attention.
McCain also believes he can win this election without getting conservatives. He believes he can get a large majority of the ‘independents’ along with democrats who don’t like Hillary and a majority of the GOP voters. He would trade conservative votes for those people in the middle-left since he doesn’t have to change his positions to get those votes. In order to get conservative votes, he has to move to the right which he was barely willing to do even during the GOP primary. It’s virtually implausible that McCain will try harder to get our support six months from now than he has in the last six months. McCain still believes that we will just fall in line and smile as we swallow the excrement sandwich.
I don’t care about McCain any more than he cares about me. He isn’t a conservative although he does agree with some conservative issues. The guy doesn’t have a philosophy at all. Nobody knows where he will come down on any new subject that comes up (like global warming). Nothing I can say will fix him or make him change a single iota of his agenda since he doesn’t take advice from Republicans.
But I do give a damn about Congress and limiting the damage there. I’ve got a House member in my district which has a small democrat voter advantage. What is he going to have to do with McCain visiting Nevada? This is my real problem.
This only bolsters my point. You do not let your military get sucked into trying to nation build in a country like Iraq while countries like Iran build nuclear weapons. You use a punitive approach only. You deal with these types of people by giving them clear demands and then backing those demands up with air strikes against their infrastructure. You tell them that while those strikes will be targeted, the fear of collateral damage will in no way prevent us from achieving our military goals to take out targets.
We could have acheived in Iraq in a matter of a couple of years or less what has taken us almost 6 years. No country has ever benefited from a prolonged war. They figured that out a long time ago but we keep trying to do what has never been done and fight a long, costly war that is to help another country, not ours. I’m not some anti-war dove. I’m against the way we have approached this war on terror because I do not have faith in the Muslim people. I wish I could. I just don’t. The longer this war drags out, the more I believe those claiming it’s about doing business with the very people killing our troops. I’ve never wanted to believe that. I can’t hardly believe that. But my God, it’s becoming easier to believe.
I can’t possibly elect someone for whom I did not vote. You know darn good and well that is the system. Does it somehow make you feel better to blame me? Why don’t you blame the people who are perfectly willing to vote for the guy who can not win against Clinton or Obama? You are essentially saying that you will throw your vote away on a loser.
I agree with you. As an Australian, it’s difficult for me to comment. But let me say this:
HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE FOR THE PARTY!
Imagine you lived in Australia, where voting is compulsory. It’s not the candidate we vote for here, but the Leader of the Party that we support.
The thought of punishing the party by not voting just does not make sense to us.
Please, don’t give the election to Obama or Hillary!
I keep hearing this and it makes no sense. Name a VP other than Dick Cheney who really had any influence in the administration. You pick a VP to help win key states and then you put him in a back office and pull him out for window dressing when convenient. Don't tell me McCain will be influenced or listen to a VP. He doesn't listen to anyone other than those strange voices in his head.
Tag lines don’t show up on my screen for some reason. I thought that mine wasn’t showing up until I asked someone, today.
Only when he faces the facts about CO2 induced global warming and drop his stance for any type of CO2 tax or CO2 cap and trade scam.
I should say that my tag line is a quote from an article by Thomas Sowell that was post on FreeRepublic, last week.
Moron eh? The first sign that someone is losing an argument.
Right now I do not support McCain at all, not even a tiny bit. I am at a complete loss as to how I will vote, for the first time in my life. I cannot imagine not voting, and I have never been one to vote for a candidate that I did not think had a chance of winning just to send a message.
I have a few deal-breaker issues when voting, I always consider the fact that the President is also the Commander in Chief, and how conservative I think the candidate is- and worry about the economy- border issues are important to me also since I live right on the border.
Looking at Hillary, Obama, and McCain- all I see is deal-breaker candidates. It is definately time to consider the lesser of evils- but right now it is not clear to me who that is either. I can’t even imagine what McCain could possibly do in order for me to change my mind either.
Maybe what we need to do this time around is take steps to get the option “None of the above” added to the ballots in November. Then if “None of the above” wins- we should get a “do-over” and the whole process should start from the beginning.
How can the Republican Party be returned to its conservative roots without losing the Presidency at least once? Can you offer any plausible scenario?
I would agree that now isn't a good time to try to turn the party around except for one thing--McCain et al. will almost certainly work to ensure that there will never be a better time. If we won't try it now, when there's maybe a 5% likelihood of success, we'll have to try it when there's a 3% likelihood, or a 1% likelihood, or no measurable chance whatever.
McCain knows he is disliked. In his CPAC speech he kept talking about coming to you, “the listener” for counsel. He knows he has a huge divide he must cross.
It will be interesting to see the bridge he can devise to traverse the gap.
I support kicking John McCain to the curb.
Yes, I support him.
But which is the LEAST offensive? I really do not get the logic behind the refusal to support the least of two offenses.
Where you to be given the choice between 15 years in the penitentiary or 25, which would you choose? Hell, it makes me sick, but reality sometimes has that effect on me, and I have learned to do OK while living in it anyway.
McCain is a dead duck no matter who many broken glass Republicans unite behind him. That old angry , slightly mad, grump old man will lose big time, especially to the youthful Obama. You might as well vote your conscience because voting for McCain won’t have any impact on the outcome.
huh-huh-huh!
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