Extreme Makeover: John McCain Edition 2008?

With his nomination all but inevitable, the Republican machine is ready to begin the process of selling John McCain as a maverick and a different kind of Republican. He will be presented as someone who appeals to Democrats and Independents, a unity candidate of the first order. The problem is that John McCain is not a mainstream candidate, he is a war-mongerer and has no intention of letting the American people decide what to do about Iraq. He will be another “decider” who knows better than the American public what is best for us. The MSM has already begun the John McCain make-over, the same folks who had pronounced his campaign all but dead in December are now trumpeting his “straight talk”, independent candidacy as right for America.

It has always amazed me how John McCain has been given this independent moniker by the MSM. To be sure John McCain has split with the Republican Party on some issues, but a look at his record reveals the true nature of McCain. A review of his voting record shows a troubling trend, Mr. McCain in a number of controversial votes has chosen to not vote. He has missed 56.6% of the votes during this Congress alone. How Senator McCain can be labeled an independent and a maverick while still voting with the Republicans 87.8% of the time is a mystery to me. I guess it is the same logic used to proclaim Senator Lieberman an independent, I guess that is why they have been inseparable during the later stages of this campaign; birds of a feather.

The same strategy that was used to get George W. Bush into the White House will be deployed again. Remember in 2000, Bush was going to be the great uniter, an independent Republican. How did that work out? For anyone who thought the Republican brand was DOA, I have news for you with McCain there will be the talk of change without any change. His nomination will allow the Republicans to spin his candidacy as a new direction for the country when in reality it will be the same old story. The Republicans will go for the best of both worlds, they have already begun to have George W. try to coalesces the Party faithful but I guarantee you once the primaries are over McCain’s campaign will dissociate itself from George W so fast heads will spin. The only policy that they will cling to is the most dangerous one, the Iraq War. With the Bush administration already laying the groundwork for freezing current troop levels and backing away from troop reductions promised at the last General Petraeus meet and greet, McCain will argue to stay the course.

If staying the course was bad policy last year, what has occurred since then to make it a good strategy this year? Oh yeah, the surge is working. This has to be the biggest crock of BS ever sold to the American public. And as the general election approaches make no mistake the chorus will become louder singing the praises of this false narrative. The problem is simply this, even if we keep troops there for a hundred years and the violence is reduced if the Iraqi’s do not make the tough decisions to reconcile their country we will still be in no better position than we were at the beginning of this fiasco. What these conservative clowns don’t understand is that this will never be resolved militarily and as long as we provide cover for the Iraqi government to drag their feet and solidify their gains we are only prolonging the inevitable and keeping our troops in harm’s way.

I find it almost comical that the McCain camp has stolen the “Day One” slogan from the Clinton campaign, he will be “commander and chief from day one” and will be able to escalate our involvement in both wars and if we are lucky will be able to start another one. As long as these fools can continue the nation at war scenario in need of a strong military President, this nation will be ill prepared for the reality that the rest of the world has no problem seeing. As we are seeing with the cracks in our NATO alliances, the rest of the world is not buying the Islamo-fascist war of our generation mind-f**k the warmongers are perpetrating. The closer the empire is to decay the harder the colonial task masters fight to cling to the myth. The decay begins long before the rust appears on the armor, it begins when the Empire forgets the principles that made it great in the first place. Is there any doubt that we no longer stand for those principles?

The social conservatives are already lining up to sell their principles to the highest bidder. There are a few of the rank and file who are clinging to their skewed principles and still supporting Mike Huckabee, but the leadership has already surrendered. We will now witness the transformation of John McCain into a social conservative standard bearer, “ a true conservative” if you will. We will watch as his record is whitewashed and purged of any votes that are not in keeping with a true conservative. Bush says McCain has some convincing to do, I can only interpret this to mean that he has some flip-flopping to do. The question then becomes does McCain lose his independent image in his effort to woo his social conservative base which without he can not win in November? The tight-rope act begins for McCain and I am not so sure he is nimble enough to pull it off, but with the MSM holding the net anything is possible.

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The Fiscal Conservatives Have Won Again

With the news that John McCain is now the frontrunner for the Republican nomination it is official, the social conservatives have lost again to the fiscal conservatives. This demonstrates again that money in conservative America is still trusted more than God. The question now becomes has the Republican factions split beyond repair as is widely being reported? I tend to say no. What we are witnessing is the same phenomenon that occurs every four years with conservatives, every four years a fiscal conservative will come along and pander to the social conservatives in the primaries only to desert those “family values” for the more established values of greed and selfishness.

It is amazing how fast God and country are abandoned for the good of the Party. With all the talk about standing up for the “Christian values” of America, many in the social conservative movement are only too eager to take from Caesar what is Caesars and to leave God standing at the gate. Choosing to enrich themselves over standing up for principles too many so-called Evangelicals are willing to take their principles and plug them into their circumstances versus plugging their circumstances into their principles. In other words rather than asking how the situation fits into their principles they would rather ask how they can adjust their principles to fit into the situation.

Since his victory in the Florida primary, the growing possibility that Mr. McCain may carry the Republican banner in November is causing anguish to the right. Some, including James C. Dobson and Rush Limbaugh, say it is far too late for forgiveness.

But others, faced with the prospect of either a Democrat sitting in the White House or a Republican elected without them, are beginning to look at Mr. McCain’s record in a new light.[1]

I can’t wait to see how John McCain will be transformed right before our eyes into the embodiment of all the social conservative values in time for the general election, just like George W. was. I really thought this year the grass-root social conservatives would finally rise up and rebel against their fiscal conservative counterparts, but alas it was not to be. His record and positions will go through a revisionist rewriting and many of the social conservative leaders will recount their earlier criticisms and state unequivocally that John McCain is one of us. Never mind that he voted against the tax-cuts, opposed the same-sex marriage amendment, supported stem-cell research, looser immigration, and campaign reform. This will be the best repackaging since they tried to exhume Reagan from the grave and recreate who he was.

In the final analysis those staunch voices of American virtue will once again surrender their principles and their God for their real god, which is the god of money. Instead of voting their conscious’ they will again follow the money. It strikes me as odd that these pillars of the Evangelical community would instruct their followers to support John McCain. What we are witnessing is the hypocrisy that has characterized America in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of the secular communities. When given the chance to stand on principle and support a candidate that supposedly embodies their beliefs, they have chosen to deny him before the cock can crow.

Meanwhile, conservatives are growing increasingly “resigned” to the idea of a McCain nomination, said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, adding that among Washington activists, many of whom, like him, double as lobbyists, self-interest may also be a factor.

“There are people who don’t like the idea of a being off a campaign or being on the bad list if the guy gets into the White House,” Mr. Keene said. “This is a town in which 90 percent of the people balance their access and income on the one hand versus their principles on the other.”[2]

Let us not be fooled John McCain is not mainstream. He has consistently embraced the policies of the Bush White House and we have no reason to believe that if elected he wouldn’t continue to do so. We can also expect Senator McCain to try and expand the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I would also expect Senator Mc Cain to echo the bellicose and belligerent tone with Iran that has been the hallmark of the Bush administration. Once the nomination process is over I expect to see the media and the Republicans try and position Senator McCain as another center-right unifier, you know like that one from the 2000 election. What was that guy’s name?

McCain may seem moderate on domestic policy, but make no mistake about it he will continue to try and expand the empire and press for the continued war on terror. My hope is that we as a nation are ready to wake up from the nightmare of 9/11 and are ready to release the world that we have been holding hostage. It is time to let all the hostages go. Senator McCain is not ready to do that. Mr. McCain will continue to expand the gap between wealthy and poor by continuing the voodoo economic policies of George W. Bush. The Republicans feel they can afford McCain in the White House for now since they have been able to stack the Supreme Court under Bush. I would not be surprised if John McCain did not pick Mike Huckabee as his Vice-Presidential nominee to placate the social conservatives and keep them from staying home in November.

Despite the groaning from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the other talking heads the social conservatives will fall into line like they always do, especially if Hillary Clinton is the nominee. The social conservatives may not like McCain, but they hate Hillary and Bill Clinton and the thought of them being back in the White House is enough to bring them out in droves. They will not be voting for McCain they will be voting against Hillary. They will hold their noses and vote for McCain.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/us/01conservatives.html?hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/us/01conservatives.html?hp

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The Huckabee Yelp

As the Baptist preacher, turned governor, turned Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee continues to rise in the polls, it will be very interesting the imaginative ways the Republican establishment will use to derail his candidacy and still maintain its strangle hold on the evangelicals who are flocking to him. In just two short weeks we have been treated to new revelations concerning the “man who would be king”. There was the “pardoned rapists” story, the unelectable story, and now the release of private letters written by Mr. Huckabee while in Arkansas. The Republican dirty tricks department is in full-throttle mode and as his numbers continue to increase the tricks will get dirtier and the tone is going to get meaner.

As Mike Huckabee gains ground on his rivals for the Republican nomination, opponents have quietly begun highlighting the slew of ethics issues the social conservative faced during his political career in Arkansas.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found Huckabee trailing only Mitt Romney — and by less than the margin of error — in Iowa, where the primary season kicks off with Jan. 3 caucuses.

But opposition research files on Huckabee’s ethics stand at the ready, and their contents have begun seeping into press releases.[1]

The only way for the Republican establishment to discredit Mr. Huckabee and retain the evangelicals they will need is to attack him on two fronts. The first will be to question his ethics and try to expose him as a hypocrite (as if in the Republican Party that would be a deal breaker); using this method it would appear that the candidate self-destructed, he really wasn’t a “true believer”. The second front will be to attack him as being “too liberal” on social issues, this would include immigration, taxes, and social spending. By using either of these two weapons against him the Republicans can smear the candidate, but still maintain the “moral” high ground.

What the Huckabee candidacy has exposed is the lie that has been the lynchpin of Republican politics since Nixon’s campaign, the lie is that social conservatives and fiscal conservatives share commonality of views and issues. The truth is that they don’t and the destruction of the Huckabee campaign will expose it for all to see. While the fiscal conservatives have always needed the social conservatives, it has always been a one way relationship. The fiscal conservative candidate would pay lip service to the social conservative agenda and they would be allowed to speak at the nominating convention, but then after the election the fiscal conservatives would go back to business as usual. That business of course is to turn on the public faucet for the wealthy to fill their pails at the public’s expense. This game has been played out in election after election.

What no one counted on was that a “true” social conservative would ever get the nomination; this is the fly in the ointment. It is ok for Republican candidates to pander to the social conservatives to get their votes so long as the social conservatives remain on the fringes. The problem with pandering to the lowest common denominator is that every cycle requires you to offer more, so if you are pandering to bigots, racists, and intolerant people the line keeps getting lower and lower. The rhetoric has to get nastier to satisfy the mob. Up until now, the fiscal conservatives have been able to feed the “monster” and still remain viable in a national election. Sure there have been the occasional social conservative candidates, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, and of course Pat Buchanan; but they have always polled low enough to not raise any alarm. Usually, the fiscal conservatives could present a candidate who could project himself as a “true believer”, but this year is different.

This year you have a pro-life Mayor who committed adultery, a Mormon Governor from a liberal state, and a secular Senator with no ties to the social conservatives; it couldn’t get worse for the fiscal conservatives. The rise of Mike Huckabee should have been predictable for the Republican strategists, but of course due to their arrogance of intelligence they believed that they could continue to roll out the “perpetrators” and continue to keep the social conservatives inline. You keep stoking these fires and someone is bound to get burnt. The Republicans, using the Karl Rove play book, have stoked the fires of the social conservatives with their phony “value” issues until now there is a flame that is threatening to consume the rest of the Party. The social conservatives are now ready to exert a larger influence over the Party than ever before, now they want one of their own, a true believer.

The previous social conservative movements have all been orchestrated by the fiscal conservatives to imitate a real movement, but it was always under the guidance of a fiscal conservative masquerading as a social conservative. Mike Huckabee represents the day of reckoning for the fiscal conservatives. He has recognized the “frailty” of the current crop of wannabes and has rushed in to fill the void. To the chagrin of the Party establishment his message is playing better than the “anointed” candidates and it scares the hell out of them. They know that on the national stage Mr. Huckabee will be vulnerable to all types of attacks and would probably lose in a landslide. The thing about the message of hate and intolerance is that it may play well to the Party base, but it doesn’t play so well to the nation as a whole.

So, as the deconstruction of Mike Huckabee plays out it will be interesting to note the role of the media in his downfall. The Republicans will use their trusty friends in the fourth estate to write the stories that they have leaked. All of this will be done of course in the interest of the public’s right to know, if only they were as forthcoming with all of their candidates.

[1] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/7000.html

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