Quickhits
(AP) Madeline Albright,"I think that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy."
(Kurtz) The Army breaks "press protocol" in an effort to preemptively defuse the Walter Reed story.
(NYTimes) Blast (in Pakistan) That Killed U.S. Diplomat Tied to Qaeda
(Carpetbagger) Cheney in 1991, "The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one in terms of what we’d have to do once we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire.”
(HuffPo) After the speech, McCain was asked by an audience member if he was "sucking up to the religious right." He drew laughs by responding: "What's wrong with sucking up to everybody?"
(Kurtz) The Army breaks "press protocol" in an effort to preemptively defuse the Walter Reed story.
(NYTimes) Blast (in Pakistan) That Killed U.S. Diplomat Tied to Qaeda
(Carpetbagger) Cheney in 1991, "The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one in terms of what we’d have to do once we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire.”
(HuffPo) After the speech, McCain was asked by an audience member if he was "sucking up to the religious right." He drew laughs by responding: "What's wrong with sucking up to everybody?"
posted by mikevotes at
8:12 AM
7 Comments:
McCain: Dead man walking...
By
-epm, at 9:40 AM
Yeah. I think so.
His only support is that neither of his challengers is "clean" and he has engaged the Bush attack machine.
So, maybe he'll hang around and take chunks out of Romney, Giuliani and whoever else.
Because I don't see him giving up after all of this if he's anywhere near close.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 9:55 AM
Looking past the primaries for a moment, the appeal of McCain to the independent voter was his image as a straight talker. That image has been pissed on and set ablaze. That image transcended politics and policy to a large degree. Without that image, he is just another politician. The fact that he himself put the bullet through the head of the "Straight Talk Express" will make him contemptible in the minds of independent voters.
Just my opinion, of course, and I may be projecting my own feelings unjustifiable onto the masses...
By
-epm, at 10:33 AM
I think you're right.
I was speaking more of the Republican primary.
I think he tried the Hillary Clinton like claim of being the frontrunner in the primary, but it hasn't really stuck for him.
But with all the people who have signed on with him, I don't see him folding his tent early in the primary season. He will hang around.
I think his Iraq position alone would tank him in the general election completely separate from any issues of charcter, flipflopping, pandering.
Mike.
By
mikevotes, at 1:33 PM
In the Republican primary, I'm keeping my eye on Mike Huckabee. I think he's getting more traction with the sectarian base than the MSM would indicate.
I think Mitt Romney is also a strong contender. He's probably better liked by the anti-tax, capitalistic-fundamentalist wing than the sectarian bible thumpers, but the thumpers have more bleed-over into the greed wing than the greed wing does to the thumpers.
I think McCain has made himself too much of a Jekyll & Hyde with the sectarians. He's split the thumper crowd between the socially fascist (Dobson, Perkins) and the politically craven (Falwell). In a nutshell, I think McCain has become too enigmatic -- too amorphous -- for the doggedly black-and-white crowd, for both the gospel and the greed camps of the party.
Giuliani might as well go back to "consulting" and working on his comb-over. I don't see how he takes a single primary, beyond the possibility of NY; and that's only because he's the home boy. He's a flaming liberal by the standards of the gospel crowd, but I'm not sure how he's viewed by the geed camp.
Everyone else? I think they'll all follow in the long tradition of countless other hopefuls who were buoyed more by inflated self-images than by public support.
I should bookmark this comment to see if I too am filled more with hot air than hard knowledge... We'll know in a little more than a year (God, that seems like an eternity!)
By
-epm, at 6:00 PM
Did you see the NYtimes article on the secret conservative cabal?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/us/politics/25secret.html?hp
Apparently Huckabee is doing okay with the religious Republicans, but his whole "compassion for the poor" thing is rubbing the business Republicans wrong. (I do agree with you, though, that the guy has a clear message and is pretty good at delivering it. Probably because he really believes it.)
Romney's weird to me. He's not a good fit, but he comes across on camera as charismatic.
McCain has lost credibility. It would take a whole lot of attack ads for him to do well. He's going to have to drag everyone else below him. Does he do that in a primary?
Giuliani has an impossible hill. Affairs, marriages, wrong positions. But probably his biggest hurdle will be 9-11. There will be justified attacks on his conduct and decision making, and those attacks will chunk right into his consulting business. Does he stay in through that?
If I were laying a bet. I'd put a longshot on the Christians backing a token candidate or a third party candidate. If the field continues to shape up and Republican fortunes continue to slide, they might take this "losing" year to try to make a statement. If they see a loss anyhow, they might just make this an example year and try to point out that without them the machine dies.
Longshot, but I'm sure it's been discussed.
(Of course, when declarations came around for the '92 election, in the wake of Gulf War 1, the Dems expected they had a losing cycle coming.)
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 6:36 PM
I saw the Times headline. Read a little ways in and was more disturbed the the cult like secrecy than anything else.
As you point out in the end, this far out in a political campaign it's a fools errand to bank too much on today's conventional wisdom.
By
-epm, at 7:22 PM
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