Lindsey Graham is in strife-torn Georgia. On every trip to Iraq and all through the primaries, he has been joined at John McCain's hip, a Southern conservative to validate the candidate's on-again, off-again appeal to the Republican Right. Why then, in all the rumor-mill mood swings from pro-life Tom Ridge to who-knows-what Mitt Romney, has Graham been left out of the equation?
As notorious as George W. Bush for his emphasis on personal loyalty, McCain would surely find a peak of comfort level with the South Carolina senator in the Number Two role. Yet it's Joe Lieberman, the ex-Democrat now Independent who will be speaking at the Republican convention and being touted as a possible crossover VP candidate.
It's a puzzlement.
Showing posts with label Republican conservatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican conservatives. Show all posts
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
John McCain, Traitor
In the eyes of its diehards, the Republican Party will go a long way tomorrow toward nominating a candidate who has betrayed its principles.
On the far right's list of infamy, McCain is reviled for damaging free speech and the First Amendment for trying to curb the power of money in elections, harming free enterprise by advocating a patient's bill of rights and the importation of lower-priced socialized medications from Canada and, worst of all, refusing to crack down on illegal immigrants who might sneak across our unfenced borders for another 9/11 attack.
The tide of bile against John McCain is so high that right-wing realists are piling last-minute sandbags on the ideological dikes to avert a GOP Katrina.
In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby argues that "the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real--as opposed to the mythic--Ronald Reagan.
"The conservative case against McCain is clear enough...But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling."
The New York Times' new sage William Kristol urges far-right colleagues to overcome their "disgruntlement and dyspepsia" and not to "treat 2008 as a throwaway election."
Fellow senators, too, are having a hard time swallowing the idea of McCain as their standard bearer, the Washington Post reports, warning that "his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office."
McCain's offenses against collegiality, to an outside observer, seem motivated by outrage at blatant corruption, but we may not be attuned to the nuances of legislative free enterprise.
Tomorrow will be a test for all his detractors. Will they choose a chance to win in November with the treacherous McCain or go down in honor with malleable Mitt Romney?
On the far right's list of infamy, McCain is reviled for damaging free speech and the First Amendment for trying to curb the power of money in elections, harming free enterprise by advocating a patient's bill of rights and the importation of lower-priced socialized medications from Canada and, worst of all, refusing to crack down on illegal immigrants who might sneak across our unfenced borders for another 9/11 attack.
The tide of bile against John McCain is so high that right-wing realists are piling last-minute sandbags on the ideological dikes to avert a GOP Katrina.
In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby argues that "the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real--as opposed to the mythic--Ronald Reagan.
"The conservative case against McCain is clear enough...But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling."
The New York Times' new sage William Kristol urges far-right colleagues to overcome their "disgruntlement and dyspepsia" and not to "treat 2008 as a throwaway election."
Fellow senators, too, are having a hard time swallowing the idea of McCain as their standard bearer, the Washington Post reports, warning that "his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office."
McCain's offenses against collegiality, to an outside observer, seem motivated by outrage at blatant corruption, but we may not be attuned to the nuances of legislative free enterprise.
Tomorrow will be a test for all his detractors. Will they choose a chance to win in November with the treacherous McCain or go down in honor with malleable Mitt Romney?
Sunday, August 05, 2007
The Judi and Jeri Shows
Now this is new: two leading Presidential candidates trying to sell their second and third wives as First Lady to Republican voters, whose family values embrace “secondary virginity.”
In the New York Times, the Giulianis re-introduce Judith, nee Judi, to offset a Vanity Fair profile that portrays her as a pushy adventuress who insists on an extra airline seat for her Louis Vuitton handbag and who, as the Mayor’s girlfriend, swept into the first 9/11 anniversary memorial ceremony at Ground Zero with a police detail that shoved Hillary Clinton aside.
“I try to remain me,” she told the Times, but to avoid “making myself in any way a distraction from what my husband is trying to do for America.”
The Judi makeover will have to overcome the image of the next First Lady as a twice-married mother meeting her then-married husband at a cigar bar and embarking on a public affair that led to a contentious divorce and alienation from his two grown children. That, along with Mrs. Giuliani’s penchant for high living and tendency to terrorize his staff, might just turn out to be a “distraction.”
But in the interfering-wife department, she is being overshadowed by Mrs. Fred Thompson, whose dominance in the actor-senator’s still unannounced campaign now has a name, the Jeri Factor, to describe her involvement in every detail. The new issue of Newsweek describes her as his "top political adviser and de facto campaign manager."
With disappointing fund-raising figures, Thompson is still running a close second to Giuliani in the polls but among other distractions, his politically savvy but photogenically sexy “trophy wife” is becoming an issue with Republicans who want to see him as the true-conservative alternative to Giuliani.
Mrs. Thompson might benefit from the advice of a former girl friend of her husband’s, country singer Lorrie Morgan, who wrote in her memoir:
“Fred let me know that it was important how I dressed. Sedate was in...with men who had big wallets and insecure wives, wives who were a little older than I was. So get that basic black dress out of the closet. And no cleavage, baby.”
Stay tuned. With the three Democratic front runners still in their first marriages, the Judy and Jeri Shows may draw ratings in the fall TV season to rival “Desperate Housewives.”
In the New York Times, the Giulianis re-introduce Judith, nee Judi, to offset a Vanity Fair profile that portrays her as a pushy adventuress who insists on an extra airline seat for her Louis Vuitton handbag and who, as the Mayor’s girlfriend, swept into the first 9/11 anniversary memorial ceremony at Ground Zero with a police detail that shoved Hillary Clinton aside.
“I try to remain me,” she told the Times, but to avoid “making myself in any way a distraction from what my husband is trying to do for America.”
The Judi makeover will have to overcome the image of the next First Lady as a twice-married mother meeting her then-married husband at a cigar bar and embarking on a public affair that led to a contentious divorce and alienation from his two grown children. That, along with Mrs. Giuliani’s penchant for high living and tendency to terrorize his staff, might just turn out to be a “distraction.”
But in the interfering-wife department, she is being overshadowed by Mrs. Fred Thompson, whose dominance in the actor-senator’s still unannounced campaign now has a name, the Jeri Factor, to describe her involvement in every detail. The new issue of Newsweek describes her as his "top political adviser and de facto campaign manager."
With disappointing fund-raising figures, Thompson is still running a close second to Giuliani in the polls but among other distractions, his politically savvy but photogenically sexy “trophy wife” is becoming an issue with Republicans who want to see him as the true-conservative alternative to Giuliani.
Mrs. Thompson might benefit from the advice of a former girl friend of her husband’s, country singer Lorrie Morgan, who wrote in her memoir:
“Fred let me know that it was important how I dressed. Sedate was in...with men who had big wallets and insecure wives, wives who were a little older than I was. So get that basic black dress out of the closet. And no cleavage, baby.”
Stay tuned. With the three Democratic front runners still in their first marriages, the Judy and Jeri Shows may draw ratings in the fall TV season to rival “Desperate Housewives.”
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