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.
I believe that Mccain sealed his fate when he suspended his campaign and signed the $700B + bailout. Over 75% of americans did not support it. He blew it right then and there. Obama signed it but that was expected of him since his liberal dna could not do otherwise.
Maccain brought a knife to the fight and Obama borught an M16.
Could have nailed his liberal arse with associating the pathetic liberal congress to obama. nothing . Nada. If anything it is shocking so many people voted for him in the first place!
I agree completely. Not defining the financial crisis as the fault of democrats was the nail in McCain’s coffin.
I believe he is simply old and wanted to run the campaign he would’ve run in 2000. As a maverick reformer running against washington. That is why he picked Sarah. That’s why he spent so much time talking about earmarks. Thats why he talked so much about bipartisanship.
Ultimately he understood little if anything about the economy, and couldn’t create an effective economic message. He was also so infected with democratic thinking, he accepted almost all of their assumptions as fact.
47% considering how badly run his campaign was is amazing. It’s a good base to build off considering how bad this year was for Republicans.