The Reagan coalition is analogous to a three-legged stool: War mongers, religious fundies, and corporate types. A three legged stool is strong, but over the past decade or more, the religious fundamentalists have been left out as the corporate republicans lined their pockets. And the war mongers? They are really just another branch of the corporate republicans who want to use the military to extend their business interests.
Now the party is split and three candidates represent separate legs of the stool. Democrats should win next November unless they prove they are totally incompetent at running a campaign.
1. The War Monger: John McCain
McCain visited a market in Baghdad with “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” Still photographs provided by the military to NBC News seemed to show McCain wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit. He said the US is succeeding because he could "walk freely" in Baghdad.
He also made the following statement at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire:
Q: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years — (cut off by McCain)
McCAIN: Make it a hundred. ''
He's not happy to just occupy Iraq forever; he also sang "Bomb Bomb Iran" to the tune of a Beach Boys song.
2. The corporate crony: Mitt Romney
According to Rolling Stone:Romney had no problem making piles of cash off companies that executed mass layoffs or defrauded the government, but he balked when asked to invest in a Bain deal to acquire a video distribution company called Artisan Entertainment. "I didn't want to profit from a studio that made R-rated movies," he huffed.
3. The Fundamentalist: Mike Huckabee
Huckabee wants to amend the US constitution to be in God's standards. He also loves making religious analogies, such as the comparison of the search for WMD in Iraq to an Easter egg hunt; you don't always find all of the eggs.
Conservative vote was split. McCain used 9ui11iani's strategy to do well. Huckabee did better than expected in the south. Endorsement and money aren't the whole story. Romney poured millions of his own money in to try to win caucusses in places like Wyoming. Huckabee comparately has spent a pittance yet sweeps these southern states. He might have done better if Thompson hadn't been in the race. McCain benefitted from timing.
As for Clinton, she is benefitting from Hispanics in California. She is getting older voters and Obama the young and blacks, some yuppies. The race is not over. We may go through March so my caucus (WA next Saturday) may actually still be in play. I predict we'll go Obama. Clinton is doing well in the early count because of early absentee ballots so who knows what could happen in the night. She had a huge get out the absentee effort after New Hampshire which was smart. Good strategy.
Obama cannot yet be written off and Edwards still has some chance to be kingmaker. Obama draws large crowds, stadiums - even his surrogates draw big crowds. If this thing is strung out awhile, he can pull in more. Clinton does the union hall thing, few hundred people. She has some good crowds too.
Got to go to bed soon.
Posted by: MPLS photo added | February 05, 2008 at 11:19 PM
THE DANGEROUS MYTH OF JOHN McCAIN
JOHANN HARI,
SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER
A lazy, hazy myth has arisen out of the mists of New Hampshire and South Carolina. Across the pan-Atlantic press, the grizzled 71-year-old Vietnam vet, John McCain, is being billed as the Republican liberals can live with. He is "a bipartisan progressive," "a principled hard liberal," "a decent man" -- in the words of liberal newspapers. His fragile new frontrunner status as we go into Super Tuesday is being seen as something to cautiously welcome, a kick to the rotten Republican establishment.
But the truth is that McCain is the candidate we should most fear. Not only is he to the right of Bush on a whole range of subjects, he is also the Republican candidate most likely to dispense with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. . .
Rage seems to be at the core of his personality: describing his own childhood, McCain has written: "At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out." But he claims he was transformed by his experiences in Vietnam -- a war he still defends as "noble" and "winnable," if only it had been fought harder. . .
McCain has distinguished himself most as an uber-hawk on foreign policy. To give a brief smorgasbord of his views: at a recent rally, he sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann." He says North Korea should be threatened with "extinction."
McCain has mostly opposed using U.S. power for humanitarian goals, jeering at proposals to intervene in Rwanda or Bosnia -- but he is very keen to use it for great power imperialism. . .
So why do so many nice liberals have a weak spot for McCain? Well, to his credit, he doesn't hate immigrants: He proposed a program to legalize the 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. He sincerely opposes torture, as a survivor of it himself. He has apologized for denying global warming and now advocates a cap on greenhouse gas emissions but only if China and India can also be locked into the system. He is somewhat uncomfortable with the religious right (while supporting a ban on abortion and gay marriage).
It is a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has drifted that these are considered signs of liberalism, rather than basic humanity.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/348434_mccainonline24.html?source=mypi
Posted by: slugbug | February 06, 2008 at 08:27 AM