I Went To Super Tuesday and All I Got Was This Lousy . . .
Actually, all I got was this lousy headache. Well, that, and the unwanted sense of the increasingly looming inevitability of a McCain nomination.
Now hold on just a minute. I’ll have everyone know I’m not suffering from McCain Derangement Syndrome. Not like the desperate caller I heard just moments ago on C-Span who wondered if maybe McCain could be disqualified as a presidential candidate because he wasn’t born in the United States. (He was actually born in the Panama Canal Zone.)
Nice try, buddy. But don’t you think that might have come up a while ago if it was a legitimate disqualifier? I’d say it was all tongue-in-cheek on the part of the caller, but he sounded as serious as a heart attack.
Granted, it is a bizarre thing that the candidate who disagrees with the Republican base on more major issues than any other is, barring some disaster (or miracle, depending on how you look at it), apparently going to be the Republican nominee. How does such a thing happen?
By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a Giuliani guy from the very beginning. Admittedly, he had his own problems with the base, but for months he was the national frontrunner. And then a funny thing happened on the way to his master plan for victory. He basically sat out all the early primaries and by the time Florida rolled around, voters from the retiree state put him into retirement himself.
I’ll bet no serious candidate ever does that again.
In the meantime, McCain, who had been written off for dead back in the summer when his approval ratings languished around six percent, went to the early primaries, pulled off a victory in quirky New Hampshire, and came roaring back to become the party’s frontrunner.
How did he do that? Was it Bhutto’s assassination, which put foreign policy back in the spotlight, a subject on which McCain generally shines? Was it the media’s well-known love affair with him? Was it an inexplicable surge of independent voters who have also been known to have a peculiar penchant for the maverick senator? Was it the Huckabee factor, which had the no-chance-for-nomination governor robbing votes from Romney? Was it Romney’s own problems with flip-flopping, pandering and negative campaigning?
I don’t know, but conservative talk radio has hammered the guy for weeks on end, all to no avail. Rush Limbaugh has said he might not vote in the general election if McCain is nominated. Ann Coulter has said she would vote for Hillary instead of McCain because she’s not as liberal as him. A writer in the New York Post has actually coined a phrase for people who would do what Coulter is suggesting: “suicide voters.”
Come off it, people! Stop the insanity. Ann, I love you and your bombastic humor, but if you’re serious, it’s time for a psychiatric exam. McCain’s not the best we could have done, but he’s not a bug-eyed socialist who wants to make every last American a dependent of the state. And he’s not willing to lose the war in Iraq. He understands that would be a disaster, which apparently is beyond the comprehension of either Hillary or Obama.
If you are a Republican, hold your nose while voting if you must, but for the sake of the country, don’t be a suicide voter. It would be a decidedly nihilistic and unpatriotic thing to do.
Greg Strange provides conservative commentary with plenty of acerbic wit on the people, politics, events and absurdities of our time. See more at his website: http://www.greg-strange.com/.
| More from Greg Strange
Stumble It!
February 6th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Not a bug-eyed socialist who wants to make every last American a dependent upon the State? I am not so sure about that!
First, the McCain-Feingold law is as apalling a violation of the oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution as no fault divorce and the Child Support Crusade.
To pass such an obvious violation of the Constitutional command that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press renders McCain and Feingold and all who supported this obscenity in the name of campaign finance reform fundamentally unfit to draw a paycheck off the taxpayers in any capacity.
That includes YOU, President Bush! For signing the POS.
Second, while Hilary is now at least acknowledging that the federal government’s funding is driving much of the Child Support Crusade and reforms on the federal level might prove helpful, (try enforcing the existing Antipeonage Act, THAT would be helpful!), McCain, when asked a question about that very same thing, said he would not “interfere with the court decisions” and denied that it was a federal issue at all!
That’s funny, I thought the 13th and 14th Amendments and the Antipeonage Act are in fact, federal laws!
I will grant you that Mitt Romney has shown an equal willingness to feign ignorance of these issues as well, and Huckabee is no damn good either.
Ron Paul is now on record as opposing federal interference by means of federal funding of both domestic violence and the Child Support Crusades, but he waited until January 31, after the primary season began, to come out and SAY so.
Thundering silence is not the way you get the support of divorced fathers, Dr. Paul.
As for global warming, it is undisputed that the natural carbon cycle involves 160 to 200 billion tons of carbon each year. That’s carbon being absorbed from the atmosphere by plant photosynthesis and chemical weathering and being returned to the atmosphere by metabolism, combustion, and decay. We add but a mere 5 to 7 billion tons each year through our use of fossil fuels, most of which is absorbed by plants who can’t tell the difference between carbon dioxide generated by burning coal and petroleum products and carbon dioxide generated by metabolism.
Therefore, I submit that the effect on climate change of massive government regulation of the production of plant food, as supported by RINO’s Schwarzenegger and McCain, will be ZERO.
Unfortunately, it would be such a disaster for the American economy that the illegal Mexicans will be rushing back to Mexico to find a better life!
I am not sure we really want to solve the problem of illegal immigration that way.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Roger, while I agree with everything you say about McCain, it will still come down to this: would you really rather have Hillary? I can’t stand McCain (and I’m an Arizonan!), but I think the county will have a better chance of surviving a McCain presidency than a Hillary one. Unlike Bill (who just wanted sex and power), Hillary is a committed idealist. And her ideal is basically communism. “We’re going to take from all of you for the common good.” That’s a Hillary quote, but it could just as well have been Karl Marx.
Like I will do, hold your nose firmly, and vote for McCain. It stinks, but it beats the hell out of the alternative.