Not So Super

Hey, help me out here: where’s your post about how horrible McCain is? I can’t find it.

Daniel has been focusing on the most important thing about the past few weeks–this especially depressing period in our country’s life–which is that the idiots who suddenly tried to rout McCain with their ad hoc Reagan stool actually made this mess. They haven’t been bested in some epic battle of true conservatism versus McCainism; they just blundered around all year not knowing what to do because they don’t know how to get themselves out of the Bush era they helped sink us in. In that fog McCain never had opposition and he won by default with his stature–and the active support of some on the Right that the default Romney-backers insist on counting as allies (if only cause they’re all allied against the islamofasicsts).

I mean really, I’ll always love to laugh at Hewitt, but the guy did the thing right. It was obvious conservatism was screwed anyway in ‘08 back when he picked Romney. With McCain and Giuiani the options at the time, it made sense, at least from the blinkered Bush-supporting perspective he and all the recent Romney desperadoes were coming from.

Of course, conservatism was screwed by then because conservatism has been screwed ever since the “conservatives” picked Bush in ‘99 (yes, and for years and decades before that, and I don’t unequivocally endorse any poltiical development since magna carta, but you know what I mean…in the lowest depth a lower deep opens..) but that leads me back to the original point: they made the Right safe for Bushism and now they don’t understand why their Reagan stool didn’t work out for them.

They’re not going to learn the lesson, of course. They’ll just see themselves as the beautiful losers in a nefarious liberal capture of their beloved party, and vow to fight on until the glorious day when they get an imperialism-immigration-insolvency statesman who isn’t so rude to them. And then won’t David Brooks be sorry!

One good thing, if McCain loses, they can’t blame his “anti-immigration” stance.

He will have lost on the war, and the war alone.

The war alone? Alone?? Come on! If anything, McCain’s lost will be overdeterminded. That is, there’ll be more factors than you could ever hope to nail down. Among them: Bush’s unpopularity, conservative hostility, Democratic enthusiasm/hunger to reclaim the Oval Office, immigration (he’ll be hit from the left by Dems and from the right by Repubs), etc. In fact, I’d say the war might be the least of his problems, especially if things continue to go “well” over there, or at least if the situation keeps getting a pass by the media (which it might not come general time).

I apologize, you’re right, I should have assumed better. And you can write about whatever you want. Comments are too easy to post.

OldNewEngland, you don’t list any issues.

“Bush’s unpopularity” is not an issue. Why is Bush unpopular? The war, mostly.

“Democratic enthusiasm/hunger to reclaim the Oval Office” is not an issue. Why are they more enthusiantisc than normal? Because they HATE, HATE, HATE the war. Or better yet, they see the public hates the war and they smell blood in the water.

Immigration? Please, McCain is the open border water boy for the Republicans party. McCain is the Republican neutralizer on this issue (assuming it is a loser, which it is not).

Yeah, Bush was a big spender but that is not driving moderates and other Republicans to democrats, as they are even bigger spenders (other than for the war).

The economy is still pretty good and was great in 2006, but the Republicans still lost.

Bottom line, it is the war.

Bsebse writes,

Bottom line, it is the war.

This is correct as far as it goes, but I am not sure that it goes all the way to the bottom line. Even if not for the war, would the Republicans not still have lost in 2006?

In every republic and parliamentary monarchy in the West of which I know, every party in power inevitably accumulates a growing weight of opposition over time. People accrete to the Democratic party precisely because they feel dissatisfied with the Republican. This is what makes two-party politics inherently cyclical.

Republicans were in ascendancy 1994–2006. Like the tide, it was time for the wheel to turn. The war gives the appearance of motive to a motion that was already underway. Indeed, one could argue that it was the war that prevented the wheel from turning two years earlier, in 2004.

Howard

If George Bush had just invaded Afghanistan and had focused on settling that country, and he was still trying to track down Bin Laden (or perhaps caught him), and we were not passing huge budget overrides for the war in Irq, and gas was 25-50 cents (or more) lower than it is now, yes the Republicans would have won 2006 and GW Bush would have been a candidate for a great president.

Yes, it was, and still is, the f-ing war.

I think conservatives are confusing their anger at George Bush for his betrayal of conservative issues with the general anger in the nation at Republicans.

The general population does not care very much about George Bush’s spending, his drug program for seniors or his weakness on a bunch of social conservative issues.

And they certainly are not being driven to the democrats over these issues, where they will only get more of the same.

The general population hates bush for mostly for the war and related side effects ( such as high gas prices).

Bush’s policies on civil liberties in the US could also being hurting him with the general public, but that is less clear to me. Phone tapping, holding people without arrest, torture.

I think of this as part of the war in Iraq, but really it is something different.

This was one area where McCain distinguished himself, although weakly IMHO, and which I do support him.

Bush’s policies on civil liberties in the US could also being hurting him with the general public, but that is less clear to me. Phone tapping, holding people without arrest, torture.

The majority of polls indicate that either the public doesn’t care about these issues or outright supports the President’s positions. As much as libertarians would like this set of issues to be hurting the President, it doesn’t seem as if it is quite doing that.

As you said, it isn’t “corruption” or “overspending” or “not being conservative enough” that did Bush in (which much of the broad right appears to believe - or wants to believe), it’s the war and, to a lesser extent, gas prices that were the fatal blows.