Politics
Out of context: Reply #847
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- ukit0
http://race42008.com/2008/09/24/…
From a Republican blog:
McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign today to focus on legislation regularly referred to as the “Wall Street bailout” is perhaps the most politically tone deaf move I’ve seen from the campaign this year. I agree with Ramesh Ponnuru that this move makes it less likely that John McCain will be president. But don’t worry; I’m sure Ramesh and I will both be savaged as traitorous scum or something of the sort shortly.
In any case, here’s why this move by McCain was insane:
1) The whole thing feels like a gimmick, and voters can intuit that. What voters infer from this move isn’t that McCain is putting country first, but that he’s attempting to utilize misdirection yet again to cover up what voters will assume to be McCain’s dearth of solutions regarding the economy. The campaign suspension becomes a political prop, much as Palin has become one, a woman who should be doing serious interviews about energy and growth with serious journalists.
2) McCain may have suspended his campaign, but Barack Obama hasn’t. Obama’s ads will continue to run and he’ll pull ahead in states like Virginia and Nevada, and probably stay well ahead in all of the blue states plus Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado. McCain will definitely need stellar debate performances in order to just make up lost ground.
3) Speaking of the debates, if McCain really does succeed in nixing the first debate, he’ll be ensuring that the one debate that he can win doesn’t occur (the one on foreign policy), making it that much harder for him to regain any momentum in the race.
4) But won’t McCain get momentum from showing leadership on the bailout? Probably not. The bailout is extremely unpopular with two groups McCain needs in November: conservatives, who see it as a market-corrupting scheme, and moderates, who see it as Washington once again putting special interests firsts. I can see the Democrats’ attack ads now: McCain suspends campaign to give your money to Wall Street.
5) By trying to postpone the debate, McCain makes it seem as if he’s afraid to face Barack Obama, and that he’s running from the challenge.
The fact that the move is politically tone-deaf, and that it unites the base and center against McCain, will just serve to remind voters that McCain is a creature of the Beltway GOP, which has done so well at pissing off pretty much everyone in the country over the past eight years. This SurveyUSA insta-poll confirms my belief that voters will take McCain’s move in the worst way possible. McCain will almost certainly lose ground via this move, and I’m not certain he’ll be able to gain it back in time. McCain’s fundamental problem right now is that he’s running a campaign based on bells and whistles and not on serious solutions for a serious time. Instead of having Palin sell ANWR while McCain sells his health plan, he’s running on Ayers, mooseburgers, and grit. I think there’s a very real chance that the sensible center may just decide that this party’s over, at least until the GOP starts to stand for something again that makes sense to a majority of Americans.
- kerpow!!! i've never seen so much fall apart by a high official.robotron3k