Anne Applebaum: The GOP repulses me
A lot of knuckleheads have puffed forth a lot of hot air pushing the notion that the only reason Obama is ahead in the polls right now is because of the financial crisis. That’s an oversimplification of the truth, which Josh Marshall concisely nutshelled a few days ago:
I was on a panel a week or so ago. And I said that I thought most observers were overstating the degree to which an economic crisis automatically advantaged the Democrat. To some degree, sure, especially in the dying days of an unpopular Republican incumbent. But remember, McCain’s sell in this campaign was steadiness, experience, unflappability in a crisis. If he’d convinced voters that that was what he brought to the table, I do not believe the damage he sustained by the economic crisis would have been nearly so great. I continue to think that McCain’s reaction to the economic crisis was the turning point in the election.
There’s no doubt that St. McSame’s hamhanded handling of, well, just about everything regarding the crisis was a major factor, if not the major factor, in pushing Obama (permanently?) out front, but the other prime reason McCain took a hard stumble is that he latched onto the dark underbelly of the Republican base after the convention like a dull-eyed barnacle, perhaps forever tarnishing his carefully-crafted maverick image. Adding Palin to the ticket would have been enough to adhere the knuckledraggers of the GOP to his campaign for the remainder of the election cycle, but McCain made the fatal mistake of letting sweet, sweet Sarah and her devoted flock of seething simpletons drive the message from the bottom (quite literally) up, gorging on their hateful gruel and belching it out in the direction of mystified independents and teetering Democrats who used to hold him in high esteem. He wasn’t the John McCain they thought they knew, he was a new wretched and flailing wingnut-human hybrid. A sneering crank whose rallies are filled with more blood-curdling boos than triumphant cheers; the stark contrast between the audio of McCain’s drool-encrusted, hectoring howler monkeys clogging the air of his half-filled halls with bilious bellows and the hopeful, we-can-do-this acclamation of Obama’s supporters is jarring, to say the least, especially when laid one-after-the-other on cable news. The Republican brand is sinking fast and instead of doing the wise thing (his image was tailor-made for this) and hopping in a life boat and paddling like crazy, pointing and laughing all the way at the dildos who have demonized him for years, he tied himself to the mast and started parroting Sean fucking Hannity, maniacally waving to all of the drowning imbeciles below him and hollering, “You love me now, right?!”
Not a smart move by any stretch of the imagination when you have to at least pretend to play to nearly everyone in general elections and WaPo’s Anne Applebaum, who greatly admires McCain (like Colin Powell, etc. etc.), does a fairly good job explaining why in her column today:
The larger point, though, is that if I’m not voting for McCain—and, after a long struggle, I’ve realized that I can’t—maybe it’s worth explaining why, for I suspect there are other independent voters who feel the same. Particularly because it’s not his campaign, disjointed though that has been, that finally repulses me: It’s his rapidly deteriorating, increasingly anti-intellectual, no longer even recognizably conservative Republican Party. His problems are not technical; they do not have to do with ads, fundraising or tactics, as some have suggested. They are institutional; they have to do with his colleagues, advisers and supporters.
McCain went from respected to repulsing. I think history, if he loses, will show that ultimately that’s what cost McCain this election.
Posted by Kevin K. on 10/28/08 at 10:25 AM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '08 • St. McSame • Barack Obama • Editorials • Nutters •
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