The Shake Up in John McCain's Campaign
I respect John McCain, period. In particular I respect the Maverick McCain. Unfortunately Republicans are afraid that the authentic John McCain can’t beat Barack Obama.
Now we see a huge shake up at the top of Senator McCain’s campaign. The master minds of George Bush 2004 are now in charge.
Steve Schmidt, a close buddy of Karl Rove will run the show from now until November you can be sure. No campaign can survive another shake up. The die is cast.
Expect a “Red Meat” campaign from here on out.
That should cheer a lot of front page bloggers here and I would assume their brethren throughout this great land of ours. Lately it’s become fashionable to praise George Bush here. Now the folks who brought you George Bush are going to re-- package John McCain. If that's what it takes to motivate your base, so be it!
It’s amazing how powerful the far right remains in the Republican Party—even after the debacle of 2006.
It’s amazing but I’m not at all surprised . As I’ve been writing for three years, Main Street Republicans have played second fiddle to the far right for so long that they have no infrastructure and no “star strategists” who know how to win campaigns. They haven’t developed the particular type of genius it takes nowadays to harness the internet, voter files, grass root activists, communications and everything else it takes to win campaigns nowadays.
So the only game in town is the tried and true Bush Rove team.
We’ll see how Senator McCain wears the new packaging.
Chaz Proulx
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Reader Comments (7)
The Republicans may have to RE-package McCain, as you suggest, but isn't that better than having the Democrats' PRE-packaged nominee, Barack Obama? I mean, if I am not mistaken (how can I be?), Barack Obama is the first-ever designer candidate in American politics. Mr. Obama is not a self-made man like the Maverick you respect; Mr. Obama is the work of architects and aspirants. He embodies our hopes and dreams; he invites that projection, accepting the incarnation of the new collective American Dream (what the hell is that dream, anyway?). McCain is really just a guy.†
All in good fun, my dear fellow!
Bliss,
BG
†I heard Rush Limbaugh yesterday lambast McCain's own messianic tendencies; El Rushmo thinks McCain believes his very presence -- Don't be afraid, McCain is here! -- is sufficient to bring change and resolution; and is, at least to Rush, suggestive of a man given to persona and not substance. Alas, if true, America clearly prefers the image over the real. Lost and parched in the desert (allegedly), we long not for water to soothe our parched lips. We long for the mirage of water.
To me, the election in 2008 will come down to which mirage is more compelling.
Sorry you are so cynical. I'm happy to be working for candidates I believe in.
Yes, yes, my cynicism -- which I prefer, perhaps unjustly, to call skepticism -- runs deep.
I am glad you are happy working for candidates you "believe in." You strike me as identical to many devoted supporters. I can't imagine that anyone supports a candidate in whom he or she does not believe.
Peace.
BG
Neither candidate Obama of John McCain are a mirage.
As I pointed out I respect Senator McCain and of course I respect Senator Obama.
These are real human beings doing things that would crush you or I.
Poetic license only goes so far. To reduce the efforts of both the Republican Party and the Democratic party to a mirage is metaphorical overkill.
That's why I used the word cynicism.
It's easy and lazy to continually point out problems without offering solutions.
So please tell me the American who should be president. The one who isn't a mirage.
and please eschew obfuscation when you do it
The country is ready for 'change'.
*Why is he voting for the Bush/NeoCon FISA bill?
In other news I saw a GREAT bumpersticker yesterday. It had an Obama picture and then it said: You are going to be VERY disappointed.
I should be president. No, you should be president.
The problem with finding solutions to problems is that the problems are often the solutions to earlier problems. One man's solution is another man's dissolution, as you know. Moreover, if we could all agree on what the problems actually are in the first place, perhaps we could all find proper solutions. Perhaps.
The biggest problem is partisanship: people are defending their identity, and their team's identity, to the detriment of the country as a whole. Partisans accept nearly every statement by nearly every leader in their party, without question, because they BELONG, they identify. Republicans are wrong not because they are wrong. They are wrong because they are not Democrats. You get the picture. None of this, really, is about solutions. It's about power; control. It's about feeling good about oneself because one voted for the right candidate, the better one; because one is on the right team.
If a Republican is empirically and demonstrably right about the war on terror, for example, the Democrats CANNOT agree he is right. If they do, they render themselves superfluous, unnecessary. Hence, they revise history regarding that Republican's reasons for going to war; or they revise their position according to "facts on the ground" not in order to be right, but in order to keep themselves viable, necessary and relevant. And if Democrats are empirically and demonstrably right about global warming, Republicans cannot applaud them, or they will render themselves superfluous and unnecessary. You see the pattern, and it is the PATTERN which needs to be changed.
Unfortunately, the pattern will not change because of human psychology. I have already discussed this all here; you even participated in my comments thread about political psychopathologies. But there is indeed something pathological about politics, and I've just shown you what it is. And since it is rooted in psychology, in the psychology of envy, power, and self-righteousness and the need to belong to the "better group of humans," partisanship will not stop.
That is why I am trying my darnedest to simply be myself, irrespective of party affiliations and identities. Nay, in spite of them. Of course, this too is psychological; I recognize that I believe I belong to a better team, the team of political independents, because I have forsaken partisanship. Of course, this does not mean I will deny my essentially conservative bent, since conservatism is not in the strictest sense partisan. I am a traditionalist; I believe reason trumps passion, and not the other way around. I believe in a true democracy, where even the dead get a vote; tradition is the vote of the dead, of our forebears who gave us what we have today, and I honor them by not moving the boundary stones they set around certain sacred principles. But I am also a liberal, in the true sense: that liberty must come from within each individual, and not from without by fiat and force of the state.
In short, I am saying, ultimately, that we are mistaken as a people if we think an intentional and willful collection of broken souls makes a nation whole. Since many folks have taken an essentially militaristic viewpoint -- that if we all march together we can conquer all -- we are left with partisanship: each party believes it more whole, and more holy, than the other. Sadly, too few see that a collection of broken souls will never equal a whole man. Or even a healthy nation. Never. Unless, of course, we recognize that we are indeed broken, Democrat and Republican and independent, and then find, individually, the only way toward wholeness. Of course, this thus suggests that our individual quest is a religious and not a political one. It also declares that, despite his wife's claims to the contrary, Barack Obama cannot fix, or even assist us in fixing, our "broken souls."
But enough of my obfuscating.
Peace,
BG
This is jibberish
As one of my early writing teachers said, "cut to the chase"