If McCain Loses This Election

Yeah, but that "that Cincinnatti guy" is an idiot and the North Carolina ad looks like it was made in a high school AV club. I doubt McCain is really feeling much support from his right.

This is just the "new politics", where you can't drag your opponent's name through the mud so someone else does it for you and then you disavow - the damage is done, but you dodge the backlash. Obama and Clinton have tried this many times in the race already.

I'm strongly considering putting one of those "None of the Above 2008" bumper stickers on my car. None of them are worthy of the job. McCain might be considered the lessor of the evils but not by much.

To be honest, the GOP really isn't doing that much to help McCain. His fund raising is anemic compared to Obama and Clinton. The party has to shoulder part of that blame with McCain.

I'm guessing that the Bill Cunningham situation was a massive fubar probably by both the McCain campaign and the local party. I doubt it's a sanctioned attack on Obama. There's plenty of smooth ways to run negative attacks without getting dirty or alienating your supporters. This didn't happen. Similarly with the North Carolina attack ad, it doesn't look to me like McCain is making friends among the rightwing side.

I don't think you folks understand. I'm sure NRO doesn't get it either. McCain doesn't give a **** about the right. He's going for the win over Obama by getting the most votes from a coalition of disenchanted Hillary Democrats and center left Republicans. The right may was well sit this one out. Then they can spend the next 4 years watching the left's agenda get enacted under a RINO administration.

If principled libertarians and conservatives want to vote for the lesser of evils, I submit that the Obama as President scenareo is best of a bad lot.

It's a setup, basically. If McClown loses, the "move the party to the left!" Republicans can blame it on us Conservative types for not being sufficiently ferverent in our support of a man who hates us and for having scary opinions about taxation, the size of government, and who should be on which side of the Rio Grande; if the Aged Maverick pulls it off, the same group of idiots will say that it proves the Republican Party should've been acting more like the Democrats all along.

Hear hear! to Larry J.

I have no possible influence on this - not even my vote - as I'm a Brit. However, the outcome of this election will have a very large effect on my country, make no mistake.

Looking at this from outside, I see a three-horse race between just about equally unattractive candidates. To whit; a crooked lawyer, an empty suit and a geriatric Bible-thumping Luddite zealot. The "geriatric" bit matters because all his possible running mates are just as crazed as he is.

And the reason why the choice is so poor? Simple. American (and British, to be fair) politics is so much of a swamp that no decent candidate would go within a mile of the White House or the Capitol - they can't stand the smell.

Where are Jack Ryan and Jed Bartlet when we need them?

McCain a bible-thumper? Are you smoking crack again FC?

I have heard him called many things but never that.

Mike, to a Certain Type of Person, anyone with any type of ethics or morals- or just anyone who doesn't have a conspicuous LACK or ethics and morals- must be a "Bible-thumper", which is considered bad because anyone who is Christian (note- JUST Christian; not Buddhist and DEFINITELY not Muslim) is prima-facie evil incarnate. This isn't as much a judgement on the person being insulted with that epithet as it is a type of projection, and revelatory of the character of the person hurling it.

The odd thing is, if Christians really did act like what the people who use phrases like "Bible-thumper" want to think they do, those people would never have the courage to malign them; it would be too dangerous, kind of like publishing cartoons of Mohammed.

I actually think there's a lot of overreacting on both sides here (i.e., the MDS types and the "vote GOP or we're doomed" crowd). Ultimately, the fundamentals in America are not too bad. Consider:

1. The recession, if it happens, is likely to be light. The stock market tends to be a leading indicator, and it's showing signs of recovery.

2. Although the dollar has been low, this has been a function of a struggling economy. Bottom line: when push comes to shove, investors as a whole aren't going to pick socialist states heading toward pre-1989 Eastern Europe levels of economic malaise over the relatively free economy of the USA.

3. We most likely won't withdraw from Iraq--sorry to disappoint you Paulites. We would have if we had still been in the same shape as in late 2006--but the fact is that we've WON the war. Neither Obama nor Clinton is going to have the guts to face down Petraeus over this one. If they do, they will set themselves up for catastrophic defeat in 2012.

4. For that matter, they probably will face catastrophic defeat anyway. Socialism doesn't work, and over the long haul generally pays the price at the polls for not working. If a Democrat raises our taxes in a weak but recovering economy, forget about reelection. If s/he follows conservative economic policies, s/he will still do enough in other areas to make conservatives mad, while dampening the enthusiasm of the Democrat base.

5. If McCain wins, OTOH, he comes in at a disadvantage in his own party. If he moves to the right, fine; but if he moves to the left, he faces a probable primary challenge from either (or both) Jeb Bush or Bobby Jindal. I realize that primary challenges don't usually work in presidential races; but keep in mind, McCain is already unpopular with his base. He'll be 75 by the time his next term comes around.

6. You aren't going to lose your guns. Clinton, with huge positive ratings and a booming economy in (more or less) peacetime, couldn't push gun control past Trent Lott (!) The Democrat Congress isn't going to risk another '94. In fact, (knock on wood)it looks as if we will get a huge victory in the Supreme Court here.

7. Speaking of the SC: yeah, I know all three suck here. The plus side is, though, that at worst we'll see liberals replaced by liberals. Scalia isn't going to let himself be replaced by Obama. Who knows, McCain might surprise us and replace Stevens or Ginsburg with a conservative. They'd never step down for Thompson or Romney, but McCain might actually fool them.

8. Health care: the Democrat Congress has already let out that they probably won't do much here. After all, a majority of people are satisfied with their health care plans and don't want to go to new uncharted territory.

9. For whatever reason, there appears to be a 30-year cycle of politics. The next decade, if this trend continues, should be a conservative one (like the Eighties and, to a lesser extent, the Sixties). Also, the Nineties, while generally a liberal decade, were considerably less radical than the Sixties, the Thirties, or the first decade of the last century--which may indicate that the long-term trend toward more centralized government may be turning around (albeit very slowly and in a cyclical, rather than steady, way). This is probably due to the psychological blow to the Left resulting from the downfall of the USSR--which, I believe, will be compounded by the psychological blow of their failure to inflict a similar catastrophic defeat to the US in the War on Terror.

The bottom line is that the President is not a monarch, and we still are substantially a free and prosperous nation. Many libertarians will state, quite rightly, that power derives from the people and not the central government--yet they usually mean it in a Platonic way: in their ideal universe, power would derive from the people. Yet, in fact, we the people really do have a lot of control over events. Even in a totalitarian dictatorship like Zimbabwe, the people are showing that they aren't just sheep. In that country, of course, they aren't allowed to own arms; hopefully, the US government will change that, though I'm not holding my breath. Here, however, we have so many different avenues of defending our rights that it seems unlikely that we'll lose them any time soon.

(Here come the inevitable angry posts to the effect of "How dare you not admit we're doomed...)

P.S. As to what I intend to do: I'll reluctantly vote McCain, actively oppose any policies of his I think endanger our freedoms, and, if he manages to piss me off enough, actively support a primary challenge in 2012.

"If McCain wins, OTOH, he comes in at a disadvantage in his own party. If he moves to the right, fine; but if he moves to the left, he faces a probable primary challenge from either (or both) Jeb Bush or Bobby Jindal."

Ye gods! You mean that the USA and the world in general might be saddled with a third member of the Bush dynasty?

Rome was a republic to start with, too. It was a republic for a lot longer than the USA has existed.

Mike:

"Hagee, a leading figure in the fundamentalist social conservative movement, endorsed John McCain on Wednesday in San Antonio.

This has to sting for Mike Huckabee, a man much more in tune with Hagee's philosophy than John McCain. It does add another brick in the wall to my theory that the leaders of the fundamentalist movement don't care as much about ideological purity as they do about being on the winning side.

Hagee's minority fundamentalist beliefs include referring to the Catholic Church as "The Great Whore" and "a false cult system", calling the Harry Potter series "contemporary witchcraft" and that the Bible predicts that Russia and the Islamic states of the Middle East will invade Israel and be destroyed by God. After this happens, the Anti-Christ (the head of the European Union, natch) will cause a confrontation over Israel between China and the West which will lead to the Second Coming.

Nice endorsement, Senator."

Texas Blue 29/2. It didn't take long to find this; first listing on Google, search phrase "mcCain fundamentalist".

By the standards of anywhere else in the West, right-wing American politicians might as well be members of the KKK.

DaveP.:
You mistake me. I am not one of those who like Moslems, though I think Buddhism has a lot to offer. In fact, I think that one of the best gifts the the USA could offer the world would be a gift of instant sunshine for Mecca.

"By the standards of anywhere else in the West, right-wing American politicians might as well be members of the KKK."

Provide me with an address and I will send you a Euro if you promise to buy a clue with it.

By the standards of anywhere else in the West, right-wing American politicians might as well be members of the KKK.

This is truly one of the more idiotic and ignorant things that you've ever posted here, FC, and that's a pretty high bar.

FC has his Mecca fantasy once again. What's with this urge to glass, Fletch?

I thought for a little while about that one. Opus Dei - obviously wrong, they're Catholic. Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish - nope, they're non-violent. Mormons - not extreme enough for my point, plus they are non-violent (albeit annoying).

I couldn't think of a single group that I could use to make my point. However, any country that has fundies of any stripe as a serious force in politics has serious problems. The only thing wrong with the KKK as an illustration was their racism.

Ken:
Here come the inevitable angry posts to the effect of "How dare you not admit we're doomed...

I thought your comment was very good.

FC:
However, any country that has fundies of any stripe as a serious force in politics has serious problems.

The only violent fundamentalists who may, possibly, exist in significant numbers in the USA are Muslims, and they are not a serious force in US politics. The UK and Europe have a much more serious problem in this regard. And that's without consideration of one of one of the biggest threats in Europe - fundamentalist socialism.

Anonymous above was me.

If McCain loses then presumably Obama wins.

That forces the problem onto the rest of the free world: how to remove him without provoking massive civil unrest in the US (counter-productive to the aim of keeping the US steady at the top as military superpower and peace and freedom guarantor). Since it's pretty much too late to manage that at such a point US allies has to preempt it. Better to remove a nominee than a president, better to remove a candidate than a nominee, perhaps Clingon will get her nomination after all?

Maybe I should fix my TV setup before the Dem convention starts...

The only violent fundamentalists who may, possibly, exist in significant numbers in the USA are Muslims

Good thing we caught Ahmed McVeigh when he blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma then, eh?

Good thing we caught Ahmed McVeigh when he blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma then, eh?

Actually, McVeigh professed to be an agnostic, so I'm not sure what he was a "fundamentalist" of.

And "three" (the number that the government claimed were involved, whether you believe that or not) isn't exactly a significant number.

Unfortunately, significant numbers aren't required when it comes to terrorists. That's the nature of entropy. It's a lot easier to destroy than to create.

Cthulhu for President 2008.
Why vote for a lesser evil?

Sigh. Its getting to that point. . .

Thanks, Jonathan. Glad to see that there's someone besides me who still thinks there's something better to hope for than to get drunk and watch the world die.

Incidentally, I made a typo. I said,

"The next decade, if this trend continues, should be a conservative one (like the Eighties and, to a lesser extent, the Sixties)."

Obviously, I meant to say "the Fifties," rather than "the Sixties."