It seems to me that the GOP made a very foolish move for themselves by nominating John McCain. This guy seems like the worst possible choice they could have made. He’s either too liberal or too conservative for a lot of people, and he has no charisma. He’s an old man running against an extremely charismatic, youthful, energetic Democrat. The fact that Obama happens to be black doesn’t hurt, either, as in my opinion the ultimate public evil today in most people’s eyes is racism, and what better way to strike at racism than elect a black man president? In addition, a black president represents change, which so many people are yearning for. Obama has generated a cult of personality on a massive scale - I mean, just look what happened on this forum with people changing their location to something related to Obama. The guy has a true cult following. He is going to be very, very hard - in my opinion, impossible - for old, boring, creaky, rusty John McCain.
I think if the Republicans want to get their main in the White House, they really should have picked a different guy.
You know, my inner cynic keeps whispering that the Republicans knew that they didn’t stand a chance of winning this election (thanks to the Bush administration), and so they put forth the worst candidate they could find… to make their next guy look really good (and/or to make sure that a Democrat would be forced to clean up their mess).
Or, possibly, McCain was the only one willing to risk the odds, knowing how low Pub popularity is at this point.
Either way, yeah… I agree. McCain does seem to be a remarkably weak best offering.
I don’t think it’s that the party collectively decides not to try; I think in down cycles, you just don’t have the star candidates coming forward. You don’t want to blow your shot in a year when the deck’s stacked against you, so the good Republican governors and such stayed in the shadows. It’s also unusual to not have the sitting VP take a shot at it - this is the first time the VP of a President completing a second term isn’t running in as long as I can remember.
This reminds me of 1996; Bob Dole was a poor candidate but there weren’t any good ones, so Bob got the nomination as a sort of lifetime achievement award. 1984’s Dem nomination of Walter Mondale was in a similar vein; it was inevitable Reagan would be re-elected, so they just tossed a longtime white guy in there to take the fall.
When you say “the Republicans”, does that mean Republican voters or the Republican party? Because the Republican Party didn’t choose McCain, the voters did. There was a whole slate of candidates, any of whom are either smarter, more conservative, more personable, less divisive, and so on. So are you saying that in some mass conspiracy, the voters in 50 states collectively decided to throw the election this year? That doesn’t even make any sense.
I think that McCain is actually the strongest candidate they could have offered. My apologies for repeating a currently overused buzzword, but the Republican “brand” is in pretty bad shape right now. A traditional conservative, lockstep, Bush ball washer would have had no chance at all of reaching independents. All of the other Pub candidates also had trouble with the base. Rudy is too socially liberal, Romney is a Mormon (it matters to a lot of right wing evangelicals, regardless of how irrational that might be), Huckabee is socially conservative and solidly evangelical, but he’s also fiscally liberal by Republican standards (he’s too Christian. He actually cares about helping the poor).
Who else was there? Ron Paul? Whackjob. Grandpa Fred? Superficially, he was more the kind of candidate that conservatives usually like, but, for whatever reason, he never caught fire. he wasn’t particularly exciting or motivated and didn’t seem like he really cared, but even if he had been the nominee, I don’t think he’s have any chance of reaching beyong the base.
McCain isn’t doing all that badly, and I really don’t think anyone else would have done any better. I think anyone else would be trailing by double digits. McCain at least has the ability to carve some daylight between himself and Bush, and he’s close enough on the social issues that he won’t lose the base in huge droves. He may not be Reagan, but I think he gives the GOP the best shot they have any right to ask for this year.
This sure was a weak field for the Republicans. Any smart Republican wouldn’t run. McCain probably wouldn’t run this year if he would survive long enough to be elected later. Giuliani was trying to run on his 9/11 steam, but was really four years too late. Thompson ran because…I dunno, I guess his PR guy thought it was a good idea. Romney is interesting, but he simply exudes too much used car salesman to be effective. Put him in a polyester leisure suit and it all makes much more sense. Huckabee is a different breed. He saw his niche and went for it. Basically the Republicans have a fractured coalition and there’s nobody that can really bring it together again. Reagan did a good job, as does GWB, but that’s really it. I can’t think of many who will appeal to the base, while luring independents. America’s moving left, it seems.
The ideal guy would be Chuck Hagel. But he didn’t run for precisely the reason that RickJay mentioned. He knew that he’d lose. If he does have Presidential ambitions, he’ll wait, and renew the party for 2012.
The problem with the Republicans is that they really can’t do anything to help themselves at all. They are screwed. They need to completely reinvent the party because Americans are tired of their BS. You can’t just reinvent the party and pretend as if nothing happened, though. You have to keep trying until you fail then stand back and pick up the pieces.
It’s really quite crazy how the Republicans continue with the same Bush tactics to try to win. Bush has spent the past 8 years ignoring all of our big problems and creating new ones. McCain doesn’t even have any suggestions to solve any of our problems. I see the chief problem being foreign oil. Bush wasted 8 years that could have been put to better use.
McCain’s major problem is his economic uselessness. If I were running for President, I’d make oil-dependency a national security issue. I’d offer to focus the full power of the US Government into solving this problem. I think this would really resonate with the voters. McCain’s stupid gas tax holiday really doesn’t help shit and everyone knows that. People are scared shitless about gasoline prices and he has yet to even offer anything that would help in the long-term.
Currently McCain, and to a lesser extent, Obama are paying lip-service to our energy problems. That is really a terrible thing. It’s easily one of the greatest challenges that we as Americans will face. Our economy requires someone else’s natural resource to function. We need to end that. McCain seems to offer absolutely no help at all in this department while Obama is talking about ethanol. Ethanol is garbage. We need nuclear and electric cars. Plug-in hybrids are a great “gateway technology” that will allow it to happen in a measured way.
But McCain doesn’t offer much of what the average American cares about. That’s why he’ll lose.
I don’t think McCain is down and out. Obama is pushing too liberal for his own good and that will turn off a large percentage of the population. I am undecided but Obama cannot be too aggressive on his change polices. He could ensure a win with moderate economic policies and a good Iraq exit strategy but he is trending off that path. It would be better for him to just play a sensible moderate and try what he wants once he gets into office.
People tend to forget that it doesn’t matter what people in New York, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois think. What matters is the swing states like Florida think. If you see cheering crowds for Obama in Manhattan or San Francisco, that means extremely little.
I honestly can’t think of any better candidate than McCain. I worry that he could win. There was no other candidate in the Republican primaries of whom I would say that.
Running following one of most unpopular Presidents ever, a lousy economy, high gas prices, and supporting an unpopular war, with “safe” Congressional seats no longer safe, some already lost, and still he is running within a few percentage points (and was in hypothetical match-ups against Hillary as well). His image as the maverick and straight talker allow him be that close in these circumstances. Never mind that McCain 2008 is no longer those things, that historic image of him will hold for many.
They stumbled into a candidate who has a shot at pulling it off. And the McCain who hadn’t yet sold his soul would have actually been able to do it. This McCain won’t.
As a Democrat, McCain is the candidate I was most afraid of. In my circle of friends, the independents’ preferences unanimously came down to Obama and McCain. They did not like any other Republican candidate or Democratic candidate. Now that it is down to those two, it’ll be interesting to see who they choose.
I know for the ideologues that it may be difficult to imagine how the same person can like both Obama and McCain, but for those who vote independent and vote from the gut (and I bet a lot of people do), I think they both make good impressions. Hell, I’ve been a staunch Obama supporter since the beginning and even I like the way McCain presents himself. None of the other Republican candidates made me feel this way. The fight is for the the middle-of-the-road voters, and I think, of all the candidates the Republicans fielded, McCain represents the best chance to amass the most of this important voting bloc.
It’s not like the Republicans lacked for choices. McCain, in my opinion, was the best candidate they had. And I certainly do not count him out. The general campaign has just begun and McCain has a good shot at being elected.
If you know the country doesn’t want 4 more years of Bush, wouldn’t you want the Republican least like Bush to run? Who is more unlike Bush than McCain?
On a personal note, I’m a moderate Republican frustrated by my party taken over by the religious right the last decade or so. I was glad for the opportunity to have the Bull Mooses of the party drag the elepant back closer to the center.
I think you guys are jumping the gun here: with McCain, I think a lot will depend upon his VP choice. There’s a very good chance said VP would have to take over. Unfortuntely, choosing a younger black man would be saying, “Hey, we’ve got an Obama too.” So it’ll be either a woman or a non-white. Are there any senior Republican Amerindians?
Failing that, they’ll have to try and wrangle the Constitution so that Arnie can run.