No Swift Boats for Naval Hero McCain
A telling piece by Jonathan Martin in the Politico explains why there will be no swift boat coming to Naval hero John McCain’s aid:
 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14811.html
No big money donors are willing to fund the independent groups that can run a massive ad campaign linking Obama to Jeremiah Wright, for example. This is because they expect McCain to condemn them for doing it; they don’t believe that his campaign will know how to capitalize on it; and they are not sure it is worth the investment because, if McCain should win, will he govern that much more conservatively than Obama?
This campaign is fraught with ironies, delicious to Dems, nauseating to the GOP.
One is the irony of ideology: Obama is steeped in extreme leftist ideology and is successfully running as a moderate. McCain is steeped in pragmatic moderation and is attempting to run, unsuccessfully, as a conservative.
Obama has successfully packaged a Trojan Horse approach, with the LEM’s (Liberal Establisment Media. I refuse to call them mainstream; don’t cede the middle ground to them) help to be sure. The radical left is thrilled with Obama, because they know he is one of them. But they know he has to run more moderately in order to win, and they are willing to look the other way while he tacks to the center. The mainstream Democrats and that amorphous group of left-leaning, generally non-ideological voters don’t know or refuse to believe that Obama is a radical leftist. Thus he has cobbled together a winning coalition: keeping the left wing base in the fold and bringing the middle along.
On the other hand, McCain cannot keep the Republican base happy, because he has never been and is not now a movement conservative. He is a patriotic and slightly right-of-center pragmatist. Yet McCain can’t even get credit for that. He used to be the darling of the “moderates” and independents, yet they are flocking to Obama, a radical leftist in his ideology. In short, Obama is winning because he is perceived as middle of the road (when he is not), and McCain–the real moderate–is losing because he is perceived as being right wing (when he is not).
on October 28th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I had been hoping that some independent group would start flooding the airwaves with commercials regarding the Obama-Jeremiah Wright relationship.
The lie that Obama told about accepting public campaign financing, thus limiting the amount that he could spend, may have won this election for him. How ironic that McCain was a media favorite for his attempts to rein in campaign spending, and now the legislation that bears his name may cost him the election.
It’s incredible how many people really seem to believe that Obama is a moderate who will govern from the center. There is nothing in his record or proposals to base this on, other than his complaints when anyone accurately labels him as a far-left liberal.
The media isn’t fooled by Obama. They go along with the “moderate” deception, because he’s the far left candidate that they’ve waited several decades for.
on October 28th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
With election day approaching and the polls as they are, I think I’m starting to know how the citizens of Paris must have felt in 1940, when their army was routed and it was just a matter of days until the Wehrmacht was goosestepping down the Champs Elysees.
on October 28th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
It would be easy to dismiss your analogy, Ken, as a nicely turned bit of hyperbole, but the era that may be dawining on America certainly appears ominous. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi controlling the executive and legislative branches; Reid with perhaps a fillibuster-proof majority; Pelosi with an even larger majority than she has today. What check will there be on their power? The press? Ha! The courts? Maybe once in a while. But Obama will be appointing federal judges and Supreme Court justices with every vacancy. He told us what kind of judges he would appoint, and with Reid’s majority in the Senate, they will all sail through. After one term of Obama, the radical left may be on their way to controlling all three branches of government. If Obama gets two terms? God help us.