The evaluations of the Florida results seeem still to miss the point. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/01/how_mccain_won.html). Start with the obvious - to the typical GOP voter all the candidates were deeply flawed. Uh huh. Ignores a few points.
1. Reagan only united the party in retrospect. He near to blew it up 76 and 80. Fordies came near to walking out at the 80 convention. They tried to ram a dual Presidency on him and stuck him with 41 when that failed. The traditional GOP [Ike-Dewey-Dole-country club- chamber of commerce] never liked Reagan or the strands behind him.
2. The issues that let them unite with him [the disaster of Carter's Presidency, WW3, the race/crime/welfare nexus] are gone. Soviets are history. Outside of a few old bulls like Kennedy no one in the upper echelons of the Dem Party is seriously proposing Jacobin social engineering. They talk the talk but Clinton and three decades have taken the old race problem off the table. Clinton let welfare reform go through and put the Dems to at least a neutral position on street crime. No serious Democrat today would support a parole for Willie Horton. Similarly 911 and Iraq combined simply are not WW4 to most people. War against the jihadis has gone back to being something icky that happens over there, not some serious threat here. Many of us on the Movement Right see the Long War as real but the public does not. W has managed to completely discredit the entire notion. The only thing they see is silly color code alerts, endless lines at the airport and food fights on civil liberties issues. It has just become another marker in the culture wars as the two sides of the Boomers refuse to ever move on.
3. The actual crack up started with Buchanan in 92 but was papered over by the GOP taking the Congress in 94 [Gingrich Revolution etc] and then by W in 2000. Recall that the money boys backed W when McCain dithered on running to keep the various wild men [Forbes, Buchanan, Bauer etc.] out of power.
4. For all the venom of the Democratic campaign it is essentially a fight for personal power - HRC and Barack Hussein could swap each other's position papers and advisers without anyone except some political junkies and policy wonks noticing the difference. The Dems are united on wanting national health insurance and a do over on the 70's march to social democracy. Beyond that they are a mostly recationary party geared to defending things [abortion, afffirmative action, Identity Politics etc.] they won a generation ago.
5. The Republican split is actual even if the positions of many of the leaders are essentailly opportunistic. The various factions really really disagree and on top of that don't much like each other. They are curently lining up behind an opportunistic Corp Rat weasel and a foul tempered maverick less because they like each than as totems for a much deeper war. The give-away is that McCain who is the last hard war man there [he essentially pushed the surge and Petraeus down W's throat] is getting the peace vote while those that really still like W mostly go for Romney.
6. So we come out of Florida with the media having made Obama and McCain. question of course is what comes next. At some point someone in the media stops doing love stories and subjects them to the usual 'deep scrutiny'. Presume this happens in March after they both clinch their respective nominations. It is a long time till November. In a film noir sense we seem destined for an 'interesting year'.
7. It also means the MSM are calling victories McCain being able to win under 40% in crowded fields. It may get him a nomination against an even more flawed Romney [Huckabee nailed him as looking like the guy who gave you a pink slip - he's a Corp Rat]. It doesn't get the defeated factions to vote for you. One could vote W as the lesser evil. Amnesty made that a dead strategy. Given a choice of totally screwing the base or settling for a compromise we were all expendable. Always true in theory but we hadn't had a President stupid enough to do it in modern times since LBJ. W promsied compromises in 04-05 then turned on us in 06. Anyone think McCain won't do the same when his whole career is a long series of issues where he pokes the right in the eye and dares them to do something about it. Had this argument with Harold Hutchinson elsewhere. (http://calledasseen.blogspot.com/) . He basically said my kind had nowhere to go and would have to follow where hsi kind [he was for Rudy at the time] led. I responded by reregistering as a Democrat. I doubt everyone will follow me as far off the reservation by expect a lot of people to either not vote for President or vote suicide 3rd and 4th parties. McCain expects the rest of us to blindly follow because like W he is the Decider. The serfs were freed some time ago. Free, free at last.Labels: Florida Fantasies
posted by scott 8:15 AM