As Powerful CPAC convenes, Mitt calls the quits

[Baashi]

Just in. The man drops out! Good call.

 

Man!! Potomac world is in shock. Wall Street Gurus and their Evangelical foot soldiers (agents of intolerance as the old soldier McCain calls them) are in shock. This is a political triumph for the silver haired old soldier. He poked finger in the powerful Rush Limbaugh’s eye and proved that he can get away with that sort of “sinning”. My hat is off to the maverick. That’s how it is done.

 

This drama is extremely interesting one. Moves, counter moves, lies, back stabbing, voter ignorance, media coverage, arrogant and biased pundits and TV talking heads. Just beauty!!

 

 

CPAC -- is an entity that unites "who is who" of the base of convservative Republicans. Here

[Faarax-Brawn]

Man!! Potomac world is in shock. Wall Street Gurus and their Evangelical foot soldiers (agents of intolerance as the old soldier McCain calls them) are in shock. This is a political triumph for the silver haired old soldier. He poked finger in the powerful Rush Limbaugh’s eye and proved that he can get away with that sort of “sinning”. My hat is off to the maverick. That’s how it is done

So i gather you are a republican? Great,one more reason to pick on you.

 

In anycase,Rush Limbaugh & his evangilicals rejected Mccain outrightly on super tuesday. Moderate conservatives went for Romney while conservatives went str8 to the Huck himself. Mccain won because of large N/east states,states HE WILL NEVER WIN in the general election. He blatantly failed in The places that matter most,the south.

 

In the event that Obama gets the nod,this Really OLD Soldier ,will be trounced. He may have a little bit of luck with Hilarry,even then,my money is with the lady herself.

[Faarax-Brawn]

If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war,

I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,"

:mad: :mad:

[Baashi]

^No. I'm not a GOP.

 

==========================

 

Super Tuesday Primaries and a Presumptive Nominee

By George Will

Thursday, February 7, 2008

 

LOS ANGELES -- Forewarned, Democrats now are forearmed -- not that they will necessarily make sensible use of the gift. Tuesday's voting armed Democratic voters with the name of the candidate that their nominee will face in the fall. Will their purblind party now nominate the most polarizing person in contemporary politics, knowing that Republicans will nominate the person who tries to compensate for his weakness among conservatives with his strength among independent voters who are crucial to winning the White House?

 

Perhaps. The Republican Party's not-so-secret weapon always is the Democratic Party, with its entertaining thirst for living dangerously.

 

John McCain has become the presumptive nominee of the conservative party without winning majority support of conservatives. According to exit polls, he lost them Tuesday to Mitt Romney in his home state of Arizona, 43-40. He lost them in that day's biggest battleground, California, 43-35.

 

The surest way to unify the Republican Party, however, is for Democrats to nominate Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama, the foundation of whose candidacy is his early opposition to the war in Iraq, would be a more interesting contrast to the candidate who is trying to become the oldest person ever elected to a first presidential term, and who almost promises a war with Iran ("There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran").

 

Obama's achievements on Tuesday would have been considered astonishing just two weeks ago, but they have been partially discounted because the strength of his ascendancy became so apparent in advance. And he would have taken an even larger stride toward the nomination were it not for a novelty that advanced thinkers have inflicted on the political process.

 

Once upon a time, in an America now consigned to the mists of memory, there was a quaint and, it is now said, oppressive custom called Election Day. This great national coming together of the public in public polling places, this rare communitarian moment in a nation of restless individualists, was an exhilarating episode in our civic liturgy. Then came, in the name of progress, the plague of early voting.

 

In many states, voting extends over weeks, beginning before campaigns reach their informative crescendos. This plague has been encouraged by people, often Democrats, who insist, without much supporting evidence, that it increases voter turnout, especially among minorities and workers for whom the challenge of getting to polling places on a particular day is supposedly too burdensome.

 

The plague made many Super Tuesday voters -- those who hurried to cast their ballots for John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani and other dear departeds -- feel like ninnies, which serves them right. On Tuesday, the Democratic Party paid a price for early voting, especially in California, where more than 2 million votes were cast in the 29 days prior to what is anachronistically called Election Day. The price was paid by the party's most potentially potent nominee, Obama, whose surge became apparent after many impatient voters had already rushed to judgment.

 

Although Obama lost California to Clinton by 380,000 votes, he surely ran much closer in the votes cast on Tuesday, after her double-digit lead in polls had evaporated. Had he won the third of the three C's -- he won Connecticut, where a large portion of voters are in her New York City media market, and in Colorado, a red Western state rapidly turning purple -- he might now be unstoppable.

 

Evangelical Christians, who in 2006 gave Republicans more votes than Democrats received from African-Americans and union members combined, wanted to determine the GOP's nominee -- and perhaps they have done so. By giving so much support to an essentially regional candidate, Mike Huckabee, rather than to Mitt Romney, they have opened McCain's path to capturing the conservative party without capturing conservatives. McCain's Tuesday triumph was based in states (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California) he will not carry in November.

 

Although Obama is, to say no more, parsimonious with his deviations from liberal orthodoxy, he is said to exemplify "post-partisan" politics. The same is sometimes said of McCain. Five days before Super Tuesday, McCain received an important endorsement from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, another supposed practitioner of post-partisanship, which often looks a lot like liberalism that would prefer not to speak its name. Three days before that endorsement, the emblem of Schwarzenegger's post-partisanship -- his extremely liberal (lots of mandates and taxes) and expensive ($14.9 billion, slightly more than the state's current budget deficit) plan for universal health care -- died in an 11-member state Senate committee, where it got just one vote.

 

Perhaps we are seeing the future. It looks familiar.

 

Source

[NASSIR]

Thanks Baashi for the link. NPR is my favorite radio.

[Baashi]

Any time buddy. NPR makes my morning commute a pleasant one.

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

I don’t believe McCain is having real "problems" with the Conservatives. Nursing these narrative seems straight out of Carl Rove play book. I won't be surprised if this is part of a great scheme to solidify McCains independents base so that the Republicans can keep the White House at a time when they are extremely unpopular. Ingraham/Beck/Hannity/Coulter are part of the game.

 

Obama08

[LANDER]

Originally posted by Faarax-Brawn:

So i gather you are a republican? Great,one more reason to pick on you.

A Bush voting republican at that!, ask him about the 2K, he won't deny it.

 

 

Libaax has a point though, as far as branding McCain the more 'moderate' republican. Do not be fooled by the diatribe coming out of the neo-con media, none of these Republicans have an agenda that could even be masked as 'progressive'.

[Faarax-Brawn]

Originally posted by LANDER:

quote:Originally posted by Faarax-Brawn:

So i gather you are a republican? Great,one more reason to pick on you.

A Bush voting republican at that!, ask him about the 2K, he won't deny it.

 

 

Libaax has a point though, as far as branding McCain the more 'moderate' republican. Do not be fooled by the diatribe coming out of the neo-con media, none of these Republicans have an agenda that could even be masked as 'progressive'.

I bet he is not regret his vote aither. I never understand how a black person ever votes for the GOP

 

I will never vote a republican. Mccain is the same as Bush,in terms of foreign policy. Actually,Mccain is more dangerous than Bush in that,He is a more witty,smarter & quiter than Bush. in other words,he is a smarter Bush

[xiinfaniin]

The Apostate Sheriff

How Bush Begat McCain

 

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, February 8, 2008; A19

 

 

On Super Tuesday, John McCain secured the Republican nomination. How did that happen? Simple. In the absence of a compelling conservative, the Republican electorate turned to the apostate sheriff.

 

In the beginning, there were two. There was America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, determined to "go on offense." And there was America's maverick, John McCain, scourge of Iraq wobblies.

 

Both aroused deep suspicions among conservatives. Giuliani's major apostasy is being pro-choice on abortion. McCain's apostasies are too numerous to count. He's held the line on abortion, but on just about everything else he could find -- tax cuts, immigration, campaign finance reform, Guantanamo -- he not only opposed the conservative consensus but also insisted on doing so with ostentatious self-righteousness.

 

The story of this campaign is how many Republicans felt that national security trumps social heresy. The problem for Giuliani and McCain, however, was that they were splitting that constituency. Then came Giuliani's humiliation in Florida. After he withdrew from the race, he threw his support to McCain -- and took his followers with him.

 

Look at the numbers. Before Florida, the national polls had McCain hovering around 30 and Giuliani in the mid-teens. After Florida, McCain's numbers jumped to the mid-40s, swallowing the Giuliani constituency whole.

 

On Super Tuesday, the Giuliani effect showed up in the big Northeastern states -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut -- and California. McCain won the first three with absolute majorities of 51 percent or more. And in California, McCain-Giuliani (plus Schwarzenegger, for good measure) moderate Republicanism captured 42 percent of the vote.

 

Elsewhere, where Giuliani was not a factor, McCain got no comparable boost. In Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, he could never break through even 37 percent. The vote was divided roughly evenly among McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney (trailing). But these splits were not enough to make up for the winner-take-all big ones, all of which McCain won.

 

The other half of the story behind McCain's victory is this: There would have been a far smaller Republican constituency for the apostate sheriff had there been a compelling conservative to challenge him. But there never was.

 

The first messianic sighting was Fred Thompson, who soared in the early polls, then faded because he was too diffident and/or normal to embrace with any enthusiasm the indignities of the modern campaign.

 

Then, for that brief and shining Iowa moment, there was Huckabee -- until conservatives actually looked at his record (on taxes, for example) as governor of Arkansas and listened to the music of his often unconservative populism.

 

That left Romney, the final stop in the search for the compelling conservative. I found him to be a fine candidate who would have made a fine president. But until very recently, he was shunned by most conservatives for ideological inauthenticity. Then, as the post-Florida McCain panic grew, conservatives tried to embrace Romney, but the gesture was both too late and as improvised and convenient-looking as Romney's own many conversions. So late and so improvised that it could not succeed. Yesterday, Romney withdrew from the race.

 

Conservatives are on the eternal search for a new Reagan. They refuse to accept that a movement leader who is also a gifted politician is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. But there's an even more profound reason why no Reagan showed up this election cycle and why the apostate sheriff is going to win the nomination. The reason is George W. Bush. He redefined conservatism with a "compassionate" variant that is a distinct departure from classic Reaganism.

 

Bush muddied the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Teddy Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture into education that would have been anathema to (the early) Reagan. It was Bush who signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. It was Bush who strongly supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the Medicare drug benefit. And it was Bush who conducted a foreign policy so expansive and, at times, redemptive as to send paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan and traditional conservatives such as George F. Will into apoplexy and despair (respectively).

 

Who in the end prepared the ground for the McCain ascendancy? Not Feingold. Not Kennedy. Not even Giuliani. It was George W. Bush. Bush begat McCain.

 

Bush remains popular in his party. Even conservatives are inclined to forgive him his various heresies because they are trumped by his singular achievement: He's kept us safe. He's the original apostate sheriff.