Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation.
Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.
They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980.
The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party's future.
More from the London Telegraph after the jump.
My comment: In a way it's terribly ironic that the Republican party is being split over wedge issues, the very weapon they have used to maintain power since the Reagan years. As I mentioned in a previous post, the lines seem to be drawn between the Fiscal Conservatives and the Cultural Conservatives - who, in the final analysis, had very little in common in the first place.
There has been talk among the Cultural Conservatives of forming a third party and I suppose if that's going to happen, now is as good a time as any. The natural consequence would be diminished horse power for both factions, leaving neither with with enough to do much damage for generations. Perhaps there's a certain poetic justice there after 40 years of sustained, unchecked logrolling - but that's the reward for ideological purity in the face of huge challenges that require pragmatic solutions.
The election hasn't even been held and already both sides are up to their ear lobes in the blame game - though few are pointing a finger at the overall demonstrably bankrupt philosophy of unrestricted, unregulated free market capitalism. (I don't mean to suggest that capitalism is inherently evil. It is not. It is merely a tool in the economic tool box and the degree to which it is evil - like any tool - is the manner in which it's used.) Both sides are focused on the campaign tactics - McCain was too dirty - McCain wasn't dirty enough - McCain focused on the personality and character of his opponent too much - or not enough - too much on the issues or not enough.
From my perspective, McCain was the wrong man at the wrong time without an overall strategy and too many tactics that led to no gains, driving people away rather than attracting them. The only solution he offered was "I'm not Bush" and that's not a reason for anyone to do anything. In the end, he came off as an angry old man, shaking his fist at the sky in vain. After the last eight years of disasters - military disasters, foreign relations disasters, economic disasters, ethics scandals, constitutional erosions and hubris that would make any sane person blush - a Republican would have to be the second coming of Christ with fanfares trumpeted from Heaven On High to even come close to winning this round. And McCain is no second coming - nor is Sara Palin, in spite of the fact that she's bought into her early press, believing it to be true.
In all of this, I don't see where the Right has much right to complain. After all, they've done it to themselves. Over the course of the last 40 years, they've had a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that they knew what they were doing. Instead, they gave us asset inflation and called it economic growth. They gave us political maneuvering that demonstrated they were petty in the extreme. They perverted the idea of "bipartisan compromise" to mean "do it our way" and they've once again left our beloved country in a mess while holding up flag pins as the sign of their patriotism.
The Titanic of Newt Gingrich's "One Hundred Year Republican Majority" has hit the iceberg of reality and Tom Delay's ethically challenged lifeboat of ideological purity just won't float. The Grand Old Party is breaking up and sinking fast. But that's what you get when a Bush administration or a McCain campaign is told, "Captain! Captain! she's not answering the helm!" And the reply is "Aye, mate! Full speed ahead!"
No comments:
Post a Comment