Conservative uproar, anger, despair over McCain

Michelle Malkin is on fire today about the debate and what she describes as McCain’s inadequate/disastrous performance in it, including his proposal that the federal government directly take over all troubled mortgages in America. She provides lots of links to various commentators, including Stephen Spruiell, who has an incisive explanation of McCain’s mortgage proposal, and Andrew McCarthy, who seems to have just realized to his shock that McCain would rather not expose a leftist, and lose an election.

Malkin also quotes her correspondent Danny who has the quote of the week (month? year?):

What about all of McCain’s talk about “victory”? It matters in Iraq, but not in Michigan, not in tonight’s debate?

Truly that capsulizes the Bush-McCain-Republican-neocon philosophy. “Victory” is always about “victory” in some far-off land or about “victory” in terms of some unreal universal abstraction. When it comes to defending our actual country, people, and way of life, these self-touting celebrants of victory follow the McCain philosophy: they would rather not fight the left / unappeasable aliens / enemies, and lose an election / our country / our civilization.

- end of initial entry -

Joseph C. writes:

You say that McCain would rather refuse to expose a leftist and lose an election. Well put.

As I wrote you last month, McCain views this campaign as his last act of patriotism. He has done the bidding of the MSM. He “saved the country” from the mean, xenophobic traditionalists in his party. He made sure the country would have no conservative standard bearer in the race. And all of these actions won him plaudits from the media, his real constituency.

Now, he will make sure he doesn’t incur their wrath by going too far and actually trying to win. That would be “mean”—denying the country its first black president and “blowing our chance to put the past behind us.” McCain was never in this race to win—only to win the nomination. He will now fall on his sword, running a campaign akin to that of the insipid Bob Dole, and decry the unfair treatment afterwards.

Last month, you replied that my theory was interesting, and readily testable by the way McCain conducted himself. Well, the results are in, and others are picking up on this. I get no pleasure from being right, since even though I will vote third party I think the electorate deserved a vigorous debate. But I will get immense pleasure in watching McCain get a well-deserved beating next month. I hope he is crushed—politically and personally—and disappears as a force in national politics. Traditionalists—the only real patriots—need him like they need herpes. Call it the Ira Peznick theory.

LA writes:

Here are Google results on other threads at VFR about McCain in the last year in which Joseph C. has commented.

Among them are these accurate predictions:

• Joseph C. also reminds us that although McCain is the MSM’s darling now, wait and see what they do to him if he’s the Republican nominee.

• Joseph C. writes: Notwithstanding Rush Limbaugh’s monologue yesterday, do you have any doubt that he will dutifully pull the lever for McCain in November?

Ben W. writes:

After the Obama-McCain debate last night, the camera lingered on as the two candidates walked around shaking hands with the audience. McCain left after just a few minutes. Member after member in the audience reached out to shake Obama’s hand and ask for a photo op WITH HIM! Most people in the audience had brought small digital cameras with them for the occasion. No one that I could see was in the least bit interested in a photo op with McCain.

I am quite sure that the entire audience was not made up of Obama supporters—not in Nashville, Tennessee. People however wanted to take home a photo of themselves with Obama as if they felt that this photo would be a memory of themselves with the future president. I might add that 90% of these were white folk.

That is when I realized that McCain is a loser. People don’t even want to see him—the crowds swell up for Sarah Palin. The two most popular candidates in this election are Obama and Palin, with McCain a distant third. Who votes for a man who is third in line?

Palin is like the third hitter in a baseball lineup—she delivers the hits and gets on base. McCain, the cleanup hitter fails to deliver with a man (or rather in this case a woman) on base waiting to be brought home. McCain, time after time, strikes out after Palin sets him up to bat in the run. No RBI’s from McCain. He is an empty bat.

And I think people sense this. They congregated around Obama feeling that we have a winner here. This election is basically over!

Ben W. continues:

One more thing about Obama and Palin. These two are physically attractive and McCain comes off rather poorly in comparison. It was painful to watch McCain walk around hunched over half the time while Obama moved around easily. Yes, McCain bears war injuries but the townhall format which he so passionately advocated worked to Obama’s advantage. There has to be an aura around a candidate that gives him\her a winning quality. McCain lacks that physical presence—that both Obama and Palin have.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 08, 2008 01:52 PM | Send