Obama’s secret weapon: white conservatives
Jeremy G. writes:
I’ve been reading through the Internet news about Republicans voting in the Democratic primary. They seem to be voting against Hillary. I think this may account for a lot of Obama’s success lately in white states. Hillary is simply too strongly hated to get elected, especially when voters can cross over and vote in an opponents’ primary. This cross-over system has hurt both political parties and we will now face our worst case scenario, a McCain run against Obama. And Obama, with his chip-on-the-shoulder wife and his hate whitey Afrocentric Church, is going to lose. I think McCain is going to be our next president. With his victory, I don’t think we can purge the country and the Republican party of the neo-cons, open borders, and never-ending wars. Only the containment of America by emerging world powers or our own internal fragmentation will defeat them.
LA replies:
Amazing. So the conservatives are not just foolishly cheering for the defeat of the only person who can stop Obama, they are actually voting for Obama. Just as the conservatives opposed or failed to back Romney, the only viable and acceptable candidate who could stop the totally unacceptable McCain, now the conservatives are voting against the only person who can stop the totally unacceptable Obama. The conservatives are emerging as the ultimate guilty party in this election, whose blind prejudices (against Romney, against Hillary) are resulting in the worst possible choice of candidates in November.
I repeat that the open primary system, which allows Democrats to vote in Republican primaries and Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries, is an insult to reason, an insult to the very idea of democratic political representation. Our current system of choosing nominees is a contemptible joke. It is a scandal on this country which prides itself on being the premier democracy in the world.
On Jeremy’s larger point about the likely continuation in power of the Bushites and neocons, my heart sinks.
LA continues:
But there is another way of interpreting this: that the conservatives are voting for Obama, not out of simple hostility to Hillary, but out of the calculation that Obama would be a weaker candidate in November.
From this point if view, the conservative behavior is not stupid but intelligent, though I would still oppose it because its purpose is to help McCain. The conservatives neglected or opposed Romney, assuring McCain’s nomination, and now they vote for Obama, assuring (if Jeremy’s analysis is correct) McCain’s election.
By the way, a correspondent has been beating me up over my initial comment above, saying that by attacking Obama so much, both in this post and many recent posts, I am helping McCain. It is not my intention to help McCain. I describe things as I see them. I describe Obama as I see him. I am still totally opposed to the election of McCain. That doesn’t mean that I have to pretend that Obama is desirable. Throughout 2004 I said that it would be better in the long run for Bush to lose the election, even though the election of Kerry would be a disaster in the short run. Similarly, if we’re clear that Obama would be bad for the country in the short run, while we still refuse to vote for McCain, because his election will mean the destruction of conservatism and thus the permanent loss of any ability to oppose the left in the future, then, even if Obama is elected, a conservative opposition to the left and the neocons can be maintained. In immediate practical terms, such conservatism should express itself in supporting the election of enough Republicans to the Congress so as to prevent a President Obama from passing his program.
LA continues:
But a further thought suggests the hellish situation we are in: A reason to oppose McCain is that if McCain were president, then, because is he is a Republican, conservatives and Republicans would support his left-leaning program. Yet at the same time, it’s also said that if Obama were president, conservatives wouldn’t oppose him because of his racial symbolism. If the above analysis is correct, then whoever is elected in November will face no serious conservative opposition to his program.
On the positive side, a leftist nonwhite president may finally cure white conservatives of their paralyzing racial correctness. If conservatives truly opposed Obama’s program and presidency and expressed that opposition openly, that would free them of the fear of being called racist for speaking critical truths about blacks. From this point of view, an Obama election would strengthen true conservatism.
LA continues:
Ann Coulter has made quite a splash supporting Hillary over McCain. She’s been acting as though it was a given that Hillary would be the nominee. But supporting Hillary over Obama is a relatively easy choice The interesting question is, what position will Coulter take if the Democratic nominee is Obama?
M. Jose writes:
You wrote:
“Just as the conservatives opposed or failed to back Romney, the only viable and acceptable candidate who could stop the totally unacceptable McCain, now the conservatives are voting against the only person who can stop the totally unacceptable Obama.”
Considering how much better Huckabee did than Romney in many of the Southern states, I am not certain in the end how viable Romney was, however so he may have seemed before Super Tuesday. It seems to me that his Mormonism was likely a bigger liability in the South than many people had believed it would be. One could as easily say that conservatives failed to back the only viable candidate Huckabee (unless your objection was not that he was not viable but that he was unacceptable). I am not certain that Rush, Hannity, and all of the other influential conservatives could have improved Romney’s odds much even if they had all backed him from the beginning (definitely James Dobson apparently endorsed Romney by default, and Bob Jones III officially endorsed him, and it did little good).
It is unclear to me that had Huckabee and the rest dropped out, that Romney would have defeated McCain one-on-one, so I am not certain that a failure to back Romney led to his defeat except in the sense that if everyone who didn’t vote for McCain voted for Romney, Romney would have won. This, of course, assumes that every non-McCain voter would have picked Romney over McCain, which is not clear.
LA replies:
I never said that if Romney had had more support and had not been so dissed and neglected by the conservatives, he would have been assured of victory. That’s ridiculous. Who ever makes such definite statements in politics? But certainly he would have had a better chance, and the conservatives would not look like utter idiots for dissing and neglecting McCain’s only viable rival and then bemoaning the victory of McCain.
As for Huckabee, I’m glad he’s stayed in the race and is keeping alive the extremely remote possibility of stopping McCain. But I just can’t take Huck seriously. He strikes me as a character, not a serious candidate.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 22, 2008 12:16 PM | Send