At his final rallies, Barack Obama is gleefully telling crowds that Dick Cheney's endorsement this weekend of John McCain was well-earned. George W. Bush is offering no such target by staying completely out of sight, but he did rate a mention in Pennsylvania yesterday, albeit as an afterthought.
“I think," John McCain said, "that Tom Ridge--and President Bush--deserve some credit for the fact there’s not been another attack on the United States of America since 9/11.’
Aside from that, it's been all silence since McCain proclaimed "I am not President Bush' in the final debate.
The actual president, according to press secretary Dana Perino, is "pretty focused" on "getting this economy back in order" in seclusion at Camp David.
He will come out of hiding the weekend after next for a meeting of world leaders in Washington to discuss the global financial crisis but may have even less clout there than in the presidential campaign
His problem, according to a New York Times editorial, is "utter lack of credibility when it comes to the central question of how to regulate national and global financial markets to ensure that this disaster never happens again. Eight years and a huge financial crash later, and Mr. Bush is still extolling the corrective powers of unrestrained markets."
Bush's final days in power are making King Lear look like a party animal.
Showing posts with label John McCain campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McCain campaign. Show all posts
Monday, November 03, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Two Republican Parties
Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama today underscores how clearly and irreparably John McCain has split open the fault line in the GOP.
In going against McCain, whom he has known and admired for two decades, the party's keynote speaker in 2000 and former Bush Secretary of State cited Sarah Palin and the William Ayers tone of the Republican campaign and praised the "inclusive nature" of Obama's as key reasons for his decision.
If, against all odds, McCain wins, traditional Republicans like Powell and those pillars of the GOP before the rise of the Religious Right and Karl Rove's divisive tactics will be all but shut out.
If McCain loses, the struggle for the soul of a battered minority party will be ideologically fierce. The signs are already emerging:
*"In the end," Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal, "the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism."
*The son of the National Review's founding father, William F. Buckley, is forced out for supporting Obama. “But to paraphrase Ronald Reagan," Christopher Buckley explains, "I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”
*Traditional Republican voices, such as those of columnists George Will and David Brooks, have been lamenting the direction of the party and the tone of the campaign.
For decades to come, political analysts will be debating John McCain's decision to move rightward rather than appeal to centrists as the maverick he once was but is now just the basis for an empty slogan.
But win or lose, he will have shaken up the Republican Party for years to come.
In going against McCain, whom he has known and admired for two decades, the party's keynote speaker in 2000 and former Bush Secretary of State cited Sarah Palin and the William Ayers tone of the Republican campaign and praised the "inclusive nature" of Obama's as key reasons for his decision.
If, against all odds, McCain wins, traditional Republicans like Powell and those pillars of the GOP before the rise of the Religious Right and Karl Rove's divisive tactics will be all but shut out.
If McCain loses, the struggle for the soul of a battered minority party will be ideologically fierce. The signs are already emerging:
*"In the end," Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal, "the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism."
*The son of the National Review's founding father, William F. Buckley, is forced out for supporting Obama. “But to paraphrase Ronald Reagan," Christopher Buckley explains, "I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”
*Traditional Republican voices, such as those of columnists George Will and David Brooks, have been lamenting the direction of the party and the tone of the campaign.
For decades to come, political analysts will be debating John McCain's decision to move rightward rather than appeal to centrists as the maverick he once was but is now just the basis for an empty slogan.
But win or lose, he will have shaken up the Republican Party for years to come.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Hanoi Hilton to Paris Hilton
The Obama attacks may be damaging the John McCain "brand" in the long run, according to a growing chorus of Republican supporters and admirers, including McCain's mother who calls one of the ads "stupid."
But the candidate himself isn't backing off. On radio today, he compared an Obama speech to "watching a big summer blockbuster, and an hour in realizing that all the best scenes were in the trailer you saw last fall."
Long-time McCain watchers see ventriloquism in all this by Karl Rove protégés who have taken him over. McCain's 2000 campaign manager calls the Paris Hilton-Britney Spears commercial "clumsy, juvenile, and a mistake" while David Gergen parses the Charlton Heston ad calling Obama "The One" as "code for 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background."
In the long run, what will all this do to the image of a straight-talking war hero who withstood the pressures of being a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton and now is a captive of smearers using his name to compare Obama to Paris Hilton?
Perhaps a little time off will give McCain some perspective. “If I put in three or four 18-hour, 20-hour days in a row, then I’m not sharp," McCain told reporters recently. “It’s just a fact."
As Obama visits his grandmother and surfs in Hawaii, McCain is planning some down time later this month back home in Arizona. He may want to think about who he used to be and how to get back to being himself for the rest of the campaign season.
But the candidate himself isn't backing off. On radio today, he compared an Obama speech to "watching a big summer blockbuster, and an hour in realizing that all the best scenes were in the trailer you saw last fall."
Long-time McCain watchers see ventriloquism in all this by Karl Rove protégés who have taken him over. McCain's 2000 campaign manager calls the Paris Hilton-Britney Spears commercial "clumsy, juvenile, and a mistake" while David Gergen parses the Charlton Heston ad calling Obama "The One" as "code for 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background."
In the long run, what will all this do to the image of a straight-talking war hero who withstood the pressures of being a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton and now is a captive of smearers using his name to compare Obama to Paris Hilton?
Perhaps a little time off will give McCain some perspective. “If I put in three or four 18-hour, 20-hour days in a row, then I’m not sharp," McCain told reporters recently. “It’s just a fact."
As Obama visits his grandmother and surfs in Hawaii, McCain is planning some down time later this month back home in Arizona. He may want to think about who he used to be and how to get back to being himself for the rest of the campaign season.
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