I listened to Fox News, and the sad and exasperated Juan Williams, who should really get a reprieve from pulling a paycheck for sitting in between Britt Hume and William "the bloody" Kristol, attempted to make the point that he found it amazing that McCain won the nomination in spite of the virulent opposition of the mouth-breathing hard right, including and led by Fat Rush, the Hillbilly Heroin addicted arbiter of drive time conservatism. Kristol, Hume and Fred Barnes responded with a long and disjointed discussion of previous Republican primary battles passed, including Bush/Reagan, Bush/Dole/Buchanan, and W/McCain and all nodded sagely that this particular Republican primary was fought politely and honestly.
I'm pretty sure that wasn't Juan's point.
The fact that the incredibly flawed McCain, the most slavish supporter of the disastrous Bush foreign policy of the last four years, the man that blindly ignored every shred of evidence of the folly of our illegal, imprudent and counterproductive Mesopotamian misadventure won the nomination over Rudy, Mitt and Huck is hardly an endorsement of a unified conservative movement. McCain, a heretofore staunch opponent of a prudent immigration policy, a somewhat tempered assessment of the completely irresponsible Bush tax cuts for the absurdly wealthy, and the principled opposition to the use of torture by our armed forces has of course backslid on all of these core "beliefs" in the interest of pandering to the Republican wingnut base. And John Kerry was a flip-flopper.
This sanctimonious phony, who was born again after the Keating 5 scandal, and passed the McCain-Feingold Act, which naively attempted to bring rules to the campaign finance world, only to ignore its spirit and accept tainted money and surround himself with lobbyists and special interests, becomes the Republican nominee, over the protestations of Rush, Hannity, and Glen Beck, who don't find him sufficiently pro-lobby, pro-tax cut, pro-torture. Wait until they find out that he was schtupping Vicki Iseman after all.
William's point was clear, although he never had the chance to make it.
They had nothing. Rudy was a cross-dressing, thrice married, pro-fag, pro abortion New York City mayor. Mittster was a Fagachussets pro abortion, pro-tax governor who was on the record opposing everything he supported over the last nine painful months.
Huckabee firmly believes Jesus rode on a dinosaur.
As I mentioned earlier, the strategy may be to throw this election, realizing that Bush's 17% approval rating, the recession, the cratering stock market, and the horrible diminution of our standing in the international community are too high a wall to climb, and then blame the defeat on the fact that McCain wasn't a conservative after all. Cynical, possible, but off base.
Because there really isn't anyone at this point, is there? McCain put on a brave face and attempted to outline exactly what it is that he'll be standing for between now and November. And it's all a little weird. As Fareed Zakaria points out in his column in Newsweek, 9/11 was but a brief respite for the Republican Conservative movement, in their inexorable decline that has seen entire voting blocs shift away from the party, probably for good. Latinos, women, Asian Americans, college educated and youthful minorities will not vote for the party of Rush, W, Karl Rove, or Bill Kristol. There is nothing that McCain can say or do that could change that.
Zakaria points out that
Conservatism grew powerful in the 1970s and 1980s because it proposed solutions appropriate to the problems of the age—a time when socialism was still a serious economic idea, when marginal tax rates reached 70 percent, and when the government regulated the price of oil and natural gas, interest rates on checking accounts and the number of television channels. The culture seemed under attack by a radical fringe. It was an age of stagflation and crime at home, as well as defeat and retreat abroad. Into this landscape came Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, bearing a set of ideas about how to fix the world. Over the next three decades, most of their policies were tried. Many worked. Others didn't, but in any event, time passed and the world changed profoundly. Today, as Frum writes, "after three decades of tax cutting, most Americans no longer pay very much income tax." Inflation has been tamed, the economy does not seem overregulated to most, and crime is not at the forefront of people's consciousness. The culture has proved robust, and has in fact been enriched and broadened by its diversity. Abroad, the cold war is won and America sits atop an increasingly capitalist world. Whatever our problems, an even bigger military and more unilateralism are not seen as the solution.
Today Tim Russert babbles on and on about the big problem that the Democrats face. He says that while Hill and Obama will be fighting it out in Pennsylvania, McCain will have the opportunity to unite the Republican party around himself, providing the Republicans with an opportunity to coalesce around defining issues for November. Count me as skeptical that such a thing will occur.
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