GS: “Everyone can pile on McCain all they like, but this loss would have happened regardless of who we nominated. Personally, I think McCain was probably the only one that had a chance in an environment that was the most anti-Republican that I’ve seen in my life time.
As I noted before, McCain was ahead in several polls before the economy imploded.
As for McCain not wanting it: That’s absurd.”
Thank you, sir.
This piling on crap isn’t getting anyone anywhere.
There’s a new crop of GOP leaders coming along. Hopefully, some of them possess as much integrity as Senator McCain.
Maybe he wanted to maintain what he saw/sees as his honor, in the midst of a no-holds-barred fight against an utterly dishonorable opponent. Maybe he was willing to lose, rather than sacrifice his principles concerning how a Presidential campaign should be waged. GScott is right: McCain certainly did the legwork, but was unwilling for whatever reason, to hammer home any number of perfectly evident facts that could have undone Obama. And to me, the fact that these things were true, however unsavory, was a failure on McCain’s part, and even an abdication of responsibility as his Party’s candidate.
We will have to wait and see, as to whether this decision was one of the most monumental errors in judgement in American history, or whether it will serve to give Obama, Pelosi, Reed et. al. sufficient rope to hang themselves. But I don’t see much middle ground.
This piling on crap isn’t getting anyone anywhere.
I said McWimp was a MILLSTONE around the neck of Palin, if you may recall.
Now, I’m not say that it must be true that he was more than that. But think about it. A maver . . ack who is known to side with the Dem, and candidate considered by Republicans to be one of the worst on a bad slate of candidates, from the viewpoint of Reagan conservatives/Republicans, slides through against a Romney that even Ann Coulter was willing to grudgingly support.
McCain spends the entire summer invisible and finally comes time to pick the VP, picks a Republican. That energizes the Party. She gets higher tv ratings than Obama at the Dem convention. McCain seems eager to campaign side by side with her, at first, but knows she draws the crowds. Okay.
What happens. She goes to tv interviews, that are going to be edited, with a sort of carelessness. But that’s alright. Then what happens is rumors are launched by the Dem that she’s a ‘hillbilly’. McCain says he stands by her, but never volunteers such information. He must always be prodded. Rumors float that she has ‘gone rogue’. Such rumors supposedly come from McCain’s own staff.
Then there’s the clothes-horse episode. Staff complain that Palin, and each member of the family, dragged them, their RNC access, and their personal credit cards, through tortuous afternoons of shopping at Saks, at Neiman’s and wherever else. While such excess is not uncommon for public figures, it did seem excessive for a Governor who just the day before or so had stopped into Walmart for some diapers.
Turns out, the clothes-horse were merely the staffers. Palin never asked for it. Family members did not. Staffers launched into a spending spree on their own, guessing various sizes, returning many thought to be the wrong size, apparently losing some items in their uncatalogued excess. Perhaps they expected their personal credit cards would be reimbursed at RNC expense. Etc. And it smacks of a setup.
McCain said nothing to dispell the rumors. And when the campaign was over, more staff rumors came out that Palin couldn’t undrestand that Canada was a party to NAFTA, even though she dealt with it constantly as Governor of Alaska, or that she didn’t know Africa was a continent, not a single country. The absurdity of such allegations was something McCain might have finally stood against, publicly. But he continued to remain silent.
Almost . . . as if it had been his plan to discredit Palin from public debate and consideration for the future.
Now who would benefit from that? Yes, RINOs, sure. But also the Dem. McCain picks what those inside the GOP considered to be a leader for the future in the mold of Reagan, runs a campaign where he spends more time criticizing her and telling her to ‘shut-up’ than he does consistently critizing his opponent, and when rumors fly he is nowhere to be found to put them to rest.
Was McCain a Dem plant? The Dems basically picked him by the way the elections were run, and scheduled, by the RINO RNC.
At any rate, I’m not saying it’s true. But there is something of an appearance that McCain was the ‘bum’ in this fight, that he threw it intentionally, and had a mission to attempt character assassination of a rising and true Republican star.
sevry: “Then there’s the clothes-horse episode. Staff complain that Palin, and each member of the family, dragged them, their RNC access, and their personal credit cards, through tortuous afternoons of shopping at Saks, at Neiman’s and wherever else. While such excess is not uncommon for public figures, it did seem excessive for a Governor who just the day before or so had stopped into Walmart for some diapers.”
Why are you still obsessed with a lie that was de-bunked long ago?
And the conspiracy theory crap ... What’s up with THAT?
What many people, including “sevry”, still refuse to factor in is the money angle. McCain stuck to his word re: “public financing” and got hosed. There was NO way that HIS campaign would accept illegal donations. ESPECIALLY not in an atmosphere where the world’s thugs and despots were cheering on, and contributing to, the Obamessiah.
I’ll not speculate as to why the campaign allowed Sarah Palin to sashay into the MSM meat grinder so woefully unprepared.
SO ...
Let’s lick our wounds, re-group, form a “strategery”, and sabotage (by that I mean ‘light is the best disinfectant’) and hound that corrupt phony bastard from office.
Why are you still obsessed with a lie that was de-bunked long ago?
Not in the leftist establishment channels. The obamafied still believe it. They don’t know Palin didn’t wear any of those clothes. It’s the perfect example of McCainery that you wish to pretend hasn’t happened. We saw the gutless, wimp - McCain. We saw him every time he had the ‘nerve’ to attack his own running mate, through surrogates, but rarely stood toe to toe with his opponent in the election. We’d always . . heard . . what he really thought about Republicans. And we know what he’s always thought about Democrats.
Rocketman ~(Ä)~ - 15 November 2008 10:52 AM
I’ll not speculate as to why the campaign allowed Sarah Palin to sashay into the MSM meat grinder so woefully unprepared.
She was a bit unprepared. But she was basically fine. What happened in the first two major interviews is that her answers - were clipped - taken out of context - edited. And McCain made no effort at all to point it out.
As I said, I’m not saying McCain was working with the Dem to defame one of THE rising stars in the GOP before she even got started. But, if this has been a work of fiction, and one were turning the pages on his behavior, it’s a possibility that might cross the reader’s mind.
I don’t agree that McCain wanted to lose. But it did seem clear to me that he only wanted to win on certain terms; those that, to his mind, were “honorable.” He wanted it, but would not fight for it, because doing so would dishonor him, he thought.
The irony is, the one and only time he was really able to reach people a little bit was when he, at the Convention, implored people to Stand Up and Fight with Him. If only…
Oh well, Sarah Palin was certainly a find, as far as I’m concerned.
James, I think you may be right about McCain wanting to win on his own terms based on his own ethical and moral outlook. I don’t know that you can blame a guy for doing what he thinks is right, but he certainly did leave some arrows in the quiver that he could have fired. Would it have made difference? Dunno, but probably not. I think this loss was pretty much pre-ordained.
This piling on crap isn’t getting anyone anywhere.
There’s a new crop of GOP leaders coming along. Hopefully, some of them possess as much integrity as Senator McCain.
My pleasure, sir.
I think it is good to evaluate and learn from the mistakes we made this election cycle, but we have to keep in mind that when one side has all the resources, mistakes are easier to avoid and often not even discernible when they are made. When you are the underdog and fighting uphill, every mistake is compounded and magnified. Change three things in this campaign and the McCain campaign would have looked pretty effective and Dear Leader’s campaign would have looked like the quixotic suicide mission of an out of touch radical.
1. A neutral media. Obama could not have survived an election with all of his baggage and paper trail had the media been neutral. Furthermore, the choice of Palin would have seemed forward thinking and bold had the media not destroyed her. I could on about this for pages.
2. Fund raising equivalency. Obama should have been destroyed by the media for breaking his pledge. However, if McCain would have responded in kind and Obama not repeatedly accepted illegal donations, this race would have looked different. maybe McCain can be faulted for adhering to the money limits, but that’ what he really believed. I see people all the time say they wish they had politicians that would do the right thing over just looking to win. Well, here ya’ go.
3. No financial meltdown. Well, or at least fair coverage (I thin kwe see a common thread here, no?) of who was to blame and how it was handled. McCain was AHEAD before this happened.
Change those three things and it would be Obama’s campaign looking like a failed McGovern wannabe and an Americana underdog from behind win for the McCain campaign.
This is all very nice, playing nice, pretending it is ok to set aside the examination of why McCain lost, and all, great guy that some think he is…
But until you acknowledge why he lost it, why the GOP lost so big, STOP trying to pretend it was merely the past administration which is now gone so it isn’t anybody else’s fault…
Look, this isn’t about “The Home Team” ---- this is NOT about the home team baseball game and whether the coach lost it, it is not the friends and neighbors and your own kids out there giving it their all, or not, or whatever - this isn’t even POLITICS.
This is about your NATION, and the direction it is going, which at the moment isn’t even about Right Versus Left - it is more about sitting on your couch, potato, and watching it go DOWN.
And until you acknowledge the things you are splitting the GOP into toothpicks over, you aren’t going to get the hole in the hull fixed, and it is time to see if any lifeboats are able to float this close to the sucking of the main ship being swamped to the bottom of the Marianna Trench. Since you waited too long to do anything, whether resurrect it or to bail out of it.
Back in the 50’s and 60’s they still had a saying left over from WW2 - “Let’s run this up the flag pole and see if anybody salutes it.”
It is irrelevant what some of you think of McCain and the Leftist RINO tenets of rock solid faith that they believe in.
Yeah, we all saw them “salute the flag”.
But you also saw for 10 years and longer that HALF THE PARTY didn’t. Not only DID NOT, but TURNED THEIR BACK and MOONED YOU over it.
Those of you pretending that McCain is the underdog hero of this scenario are telling HALF the party the same thing you have for 15 years - $#%@@#$ YOU! GET LOST.
McCain literally said it to us several years ago and said it literally in front of cameras and open microphones, I DO NOT WANT Christians and Conservatives voting for me, there are plenty of votes to preplace them and more from the MIDDLE of the field, and from Reagan Democrats.
(You know how we know he didn’t get the Reagan Democrats? They voted FOR OBAMA and AGAINST PROP 8)
He ORDERED us to NOT VOTE FOR HIM, he didn’t want us and wasn’t going to tolerate any idea of beholdingness to us if he won THAT way.
HE LITERALLY SAID INTO AN OPEN MICROPHONE IN FRONT OF A CAMERA, “I’d rather lose!”
And he acted like it.
So those of you who want TWO DIM PARTIES… THIS ELECTION is WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE. You got your wish.
We wrote in, we called in, we told our neighbors - millions would not even discuss it.
But we laid it out and the specifics of WHY - like I have, McCain Feingold THOMPSON and McCain Kennedy SHAMNESTY, specifics, not “FEELIES"…
Now, if you are going to let McCain “NEGOTIATE WITH THE LIBERALS FOR THE GOP” like Obama and the DIMS want him to, you do that.
You want TOXIC NEWT laying out your blueprints for you, Rudi in there selling them for you and with the help of Huckleberry…
Tell yourself you have a winning deal.
Cookie cutter of 2006, and 2008....
But you like it.
And tell you what - you should stick with that.
These are NOT days to go with something that doesn’t satisfy your GUT INSTINCTS.
You can take some part of the GOP Base with you and fight for some part of the DIM base and feel really comfortable sitting on that PICKET FENCE in the Middle Ground.
This piling on crap isn’t getting anyone anywhere.
There’s a new crop of GOP leaders coming along. Hopefully, some of them possess as much integrity as Senator McCain.
My pleasure, sir.
I think it is good to evaluate and learn from the mistakes we made this election cycle, but we have to keep in mind that when one side has all the resources, mistakes are easier to avoid and often not even discernible when they are made. When you are the underdog and fighting uphill, every mistake is compounded and magnified. Change three things in this campaign and the McCain campaign would have looked pretty effective and Dear Leader’s campaign would have looked like the quixotic suicide mission of an out of touch radical.
1. A neutral media. Obama could not have survived an election with all of his baggage and paper trail had the media been neutral. Furthermore, the choice of Palin would have seemed forward thinking and bold had the media not destroyed her. I could on about this for pages.
2. Fund raising equivalency. Obama should have been destroyed by the media for breaking his pledge. However, if McCain would have responded in kind and Obama not repeatedly accepted illegal donations, this race would have looked different. maybe McCain can be faulted for adhering to the money limits, but that’ what he really believed. I see people all the time say they wish they had politicians that would do the right thing over just looking to win. Well, here ya’ go.
3. No financial meltdown. Well, or at least fair coverage (I thin kwe see a common thread here, no?) of who was to blame and how it was handled. McCain was AHEAD before this happened.
Change those three things and it would be Obama’s campaign looking like a failed McGovern wannabe and an Americana underdog from behind win for the McCain campaign.
You opened that can of worms - McCain Feingold THOMPSON.
McCain knew what he crafted, and loved it, and saw it as a precursor to getting the Fairness Doctrine back.
When Christians howled, when CONSERVATIVE private citizens howled about the curtailing of their FREE POLITICAL SPEECH RIGHTS, he laughed.
Fred tried to deny his support of some of that, even though he filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court trying to keep some parts HE claimed were accidently bi-products of it.
6 major American international ministries underwent IRS audits and investigations for several years over McCain Feingold ADN NOT OVER ANY ACCUSATIONS OR SUSPICIONS of wrongdoing on IRS terms, just on McCain Feingold - tampering with POLITICS - by doing things like having homes for unwed pregnant girls and helping them adopt out their babies, instead of having ABORTIONS - ministries like Marilyn Hickey and Joyce Meyers - who are NOT “political”. They had to spend MILLIONS of dollars defending themselves - both to the IRS and also to their donors - with monies intended for CHARITIES - feeding the poor, hospitals, clean water, plantings, housing, schools, educations, start-ups in industrial efforts like helping eachother buy sewing machines, old homestyle non-electric Singer types (no power in their villages, they sew under brush arbors), to do commercial sewing to support their families…
And McCain knew what he was doing when he wrote EACH FIRST AMENDMENT-CURTAILING WORD of it.
He was hoist by his own petard in th is Election’s financing, and ALMOST DIDN’T GO WITH McCain Feingold financing anyway, and in weeks saw NOBODY WAS DONATING TO HIM AT ALL - so he really had no choice - he didn’t get significant donations UNTIL HE NAMED PALIN.
DEAL WITH THESE FACTS - He was hoist by his own petard and after what he put these ministries and their target charity recipients through,a dn several other “special interst groups” who were not privately as rich as George Soros, but were CONSERVATIVE - he knew would be SILENCED in this election and WANTED IT THAT WAY - He hasn’t begun to get his due reward.
HE HAS NOT BEGUN TO GET A TASTE OF HIS DUE REWARD!
But at least Mitt would have taken a lot of those 70% of the Single Women voters from Obama, with those five handsome sons of his!
Surely now, Rose, you jest!
I seriously doubt Romney would have beaten Obama. Obama is the arrival of a “time and judgment” in the world.
Although, Romney was my choice out of the rotten pick we had. I definitely think Romney would be better suited for the challenges in the world, not the least of which, the economic crises (yea, plural) we’re in.
The only difference between McCain and Romney in January 2008 was the DIM CROSSOVERS for McCain who put him over in the PRIMRIES - but didn’t show up for the General Election, for him.
Texas voted 74-76% for Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2006
Texas voted 53% for McCain in 2008 in the General Election.
I think Mitt would have gotten the 75% if it were not for the ugly lies from McCain and Huckleberry against Mitt.
Furthermore, I never heard anyone say that McCain was their first choice.
I heard hundreds in person tell me Mitt was their first choice.
Obama got 70% of single Females.
Mitt has five very very handsome and very nice and personable sons.
It was a better risk than the other RINOS - there is a reason those RINOS hate Mitt so badly.
Palin would have seemed forward thinking and bold had the media not destroyed her.
But they didn’t. And neither did McWimp and his band of backstabbers.
She was the star at the Governor’s conference, to the wounded pride of a few of them there. And she said, she’s not behind the ‘bailout’ as during the campaign. She thinks DC is making a mess of things. And if DC can’t lead - the Governors will.
Let’s hope we see some of that.
Only those in Obama-nation think she’s been discredited. Only those in the McCain campaign think so. Both tried - both failed.
GScott - 15 November 2008 06:42 PM
2. Fund raising equivalency. Obama should have been destroyed by the media for breaking his pledge.
The story is that he seems to have been reckless with credit cards, and may have imperiled the accounts of those who wanted nothing to do with him.
And investigation of card companies certainly is demanded. And if donations are to be limited per individual, then all unsubstantiated donations or gift cards, never mind fraudulent charges to other people cards, should be prosecuted.
I wonder if House GOP members are just waiting for it. I wonder if those who think Obama is their - boy - are constantly whispering in his ear, we’ve got this on ya, that on ya, and everything else if you don’t succumb to our Dem blackmail - assuming you make it past the Supreme Court in Dec.
GScott - 15 November 2008 06:42 PM
maybe McCain can be faulted for adhering to the money limits
McWimp has been a stooge for decades. He promoted such ‘reform’ because the NY Times knew it would harm Republicans, as things worked at the time.
GScott - 15 November 2008 06:42 PM
3. No financial meltdown. Well, or at least fair coverage (I thin kwe see a common thread here, no?) of who was to blame and how it was handled. McCain was AHEAD before this happened.
Reid demanded McCain come back to DC and ‘own’ the ‘bailout’, or else Reid said it wouldn’t happen. McCain made a big show of it, and the next day Reid said McCain suddenly wasn’t needed, wasn’t wanted, and was irrelevant. Obama was then invited, and by all reports broke up the meeting. And then a superficial and shallow RINO who said he’d suspend his campaign suggesting a forfeit at the first debate, with nothing changed in DC, suddenly McWimp shows up as if he couldn’t remember how important HIS participation was in all this that he would suspend his campaign.
It was as if the RINO couldn’t hear what he had said the previous day for the thundering of the RINO herd, or that RINOs, unlike elephants, have a shockingly short attention span. Might make for a bad President, the leftist establishment began to say - and repeat without letup.
The press and Comrade Senator Government played up McCain’s ‘erraticism’ for all it was worth. The word, erratic, has never been used so often on the public airwaves in such a short span of time, surely.
With people like Rose all over the map and guys like sevry seeing a boogeyman behind every tree, what does the GOP have too forward to? More of the same.
As has been said more than once, conservatives need to return to their basic principles. And while they are at it, they should learn how to brawl in the streets like any good fighter can do. Screw this Marquis of Queensbury crap.
Give me a Street Fightin’ Man anytime!
Evrywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
cause summers here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n roll band
cause in sleepy london town
Theres just no place for a street fighting man
No
Hey! think the time is right for a palace revolution
But where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n roll band
cause in sleepy london town
Theres no place for a street fighting man
No
Hey! said my name is called disturbance
Ill shout and scream, Ill kill the king, Ill rail at all his servants
Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n roll band
cause in sleepy london town
Theres no place for a street fighting man
No
With people like Rose all over the map and guys like sevry seeing a boogeyman behind every tree, what does the GOP have too forward to? More of the same.
More of the same? They should have a bright future without the likes of Rose or sevry or me. Right? But they have you. Now, that’s more of the same.
They have you and millions like you. How’s that workin’ for them?
So go bust your knuckles in the streets for them. Be glad your party doesn’t embrace the likes of Rose or me. They have you. And that’s more of the same.
Now you’re free to act like a howling, roving, clamoring mob fighting in the streets. Why not? Works for the other side. But, you look like the other side now.
