BUSH’S FLIPS HELP OBAMA - AND DAMAGE MCCAIN
President George W. Bush pulled the rug out from underneath John McCain this week - twice! - and the result is that Barack Obama has seized the foreign policy momentum in the campaign.
Here is how this happened:
G.W. Bush had two pillars of his foreign policy - and John McCain adopted these and adhered to them as if they were the Holy Grail:
A) We will not negotiate with Iran until and unless they cease trying to build nuclear weapons;
B) There can not be any talk of ‘Time Lines’ or “deadlines” or any fixed schedule of US troop withdrawal from Iraq.
In the course of the past few days, the Bush White House totally reversed course on both!
They sent the Under Secretary of State, William Burns, to join the ongoing talks the EU was having with Iran. This sudden change of policy - granted, Secretary Burns was instructed to ‘listen’ and not to say anything - has sent shock waves throughout the foreign policy community. (At meetings like this there is much off-the-record conversation in hallways and back-rooms; this is where real breakthroughs happen - and where real communication takes place. Undoubtedly Burns had private face-to-face talks with Iran.) It is viewed as a total reversal by a lame-duck Bush White House which is now trying to patch up a badly damaged legacy.
Obama has for over a year advocated a dialogue with Tehran.
On the heels of this shocker came another: the Bush White House again reversing itself and agreeing to something called - and it sounds utterly Clintonian - ‘Time Horizons’ with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. Let’s face it, these Time Horizons are the very same Time Lines that Bush - and McCain - have been blasting for years. But Bush has now just - like Bill Clinton - used semantics to flip his previous position. Bush is now on the same page as Obama who, for years, has advocated a timetable of withdrawal.
Of course in doing so the Bush White House has actually joined with Obama to isolate McCain all by his lonesome out on a precarious foreign policy limb.
A noted GOP strategist emailed on Monday that “Obama has check-mated McCain so badly that the GOP Convention should drop McCain and pick another nominee.”
Indeed, this Obama trip has been a a raging PR success for Obama. And a desperate McCain has been forced to flail about in an effort to get coverage: he journeyed to Kennebunkport to see former President Bush, attended a NY Yankees game with Rudy Giuliani and leaked out a deliberately false story that he was going to pick his running mate this weekend. Oh, he also went to New Hampshire - and was greeted by one reporter and one photographer!
McCain’s campaign has no theme to it. Just as he is all over the place on all issues, his campaign has no consistency.
Where is John McCain’s vision about what he want to do for the United States?
Why hasn’t he - yet - communicated a coherent philosophy about the role of government in our collective future?
What - exactly - would be the purpose of a McCain Presidency?
McCain told us he wasn’t going to go after Obama. Well, that seems to be all he ever does!
McCain and his (ever-changing) staff need to hunker down and figure all of this out - and fast. They are losing traction to a surging Obama, who has the media eating out of his hand.
It used to be McCain who had that compliant media; now they are ignoring him.
Message to John McCain, who used to revel in cozying up to the liberal media and dumping on conservatives: If you live by the sword, you die by that sword.
NOT THE END OF THE GOP AND CONSERVATISM
We Republicans and Conservatives may very well get wiped out this November; it is certain we will lose more seats in the House and Senate than we lost in 2006. Some prognosticators see a loss of around 25 seats in the House and 6-8 in the US Senate.
The Presidency? Well, we have already lost it. We lost it when GW Bush and the Bush Family Machine hijacked the GOP and made it a Big Government Party - just like the Democrats.
George W. Bush has destroyed the current Republican Party - and he has come close to killing the organized conservative movement, as well.
His successor as the so-called ‘leader’ of the Republican Party, John McCain, has morphed from the successor-to-Barry-Goldwater he was hailed as when he won Goldwater’s Arizona Senate seat 22 years ago to the Maverick-anti-Conservative- Republican in 2000 and now to a GW Bush Clone in 2008.
In the process he has blurred his persona and lost his status as a unique candidate with a signature brand. Now, if you ask people what they think of McCain, the answers are all over the map. But few really like him or are devoted to him. And he is not identified with a cause - a must in national politics.
McCain still might win the White House in November. Never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to screw up anything and everything they run. So today’s certain winner - Obama - may very well implode by the fall, just like Dukakis, Kerry and Mondale.
But if McCain were to win, what of his Presidency and a McCain-led Republican Party?
Has there ever been a President who has had so little support inside the base of his party? Has there ever been a President who went out of his way to attack that base? And took such glee is that base’s unhappiness?
How could McCain possibly lead the GOP - and the nation - with such poor relations with his own party?
This is just one of the many reasons there is palpable despair throughout GOP and conservative ranks. We all realize that the Republican/Conservative movement has run aground - and isn’t likely to be rescued, repaired and relaunched for years to come. (The length of this exile will be determined by the success or lack thereof of the Democrats in DC. If history is a guide, it won’t take them long to screw everything up and in two and four years a resurgent and re-made GOP can come back.)
But here is a simple message to all Republicans and Conservatives: even the Bushes and McCain can’t kill our movement, our party or our cause.
Conservatism is too powerful for even the selfish, greedy Bushes and the maniacal McCain to kill.
And the Neo-Cons - who have tried to take over our movement and in the process have helped ruin it - are not going to be allowed any longer to be in positions of influence.
Many on the right these days are actually hoping that McCain gets defeated in November - not because they want an Obama Administration - but because ridding ourselves of all vestiges of the failed Bush Era - (and McCain has become an integral defender and partner of Bush) will accelerate the inevitable soul-searching followed by the necessary reconstruction of the Conservative Movement and its vehicle, the Republican Party. The sooner we shed ourselves of Bush & McCain - and all their behind-the-scenes handlers/manipulators/Svengalis - the better.
A fascinating note: a long-time Reaganite Republican told me that virtually every conservative he knows is plotting against McCain - not against Obama! What does that tell us about the state of the GOP and the conservative movement? It is riven with dissent and discord - and, like any addict living in denial, it can’t be fixed until we reach the very bottom.
November 4, 2008 may be that bottom.
If it is, do not despair.
This coming self-examination - done out of power- will lead to the re-emergence of the Right - stronger than we have been in more than two decades and filled with the memory of how we allowed the Bushes and McCain and the so-called mainstream media to take over a unique American political movement and ruin it.
We must never allow that to happen again.
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