Blue Mass Group

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Conservatives abandoning McCain in droves

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Today’s defection: George Will.

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Will then makes an excellent point that I’ve been thinking about for some time: for McCain, everything that goes wrong is because of a few bad people — it’s never the fault of defective policy.

For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are “corrupt” or “betray the public’s trust,” two categories that seem to be exhaustive — there are no other people.

That’s a juvenile way of looking at the world — most of us left it behind at around the time we became eligible to vote.  Alone, it should disqualify McCain from the presidency.

But Will goes quite a bit further: he disparages McCain in terms that I found pretty eyebrow-raising, mostly in regard to McCain’s frankly stupid call for SEC Chairman Christopher Cox to be fired.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts … This childish reflex … McCain’s fact-free slander … McCain’s smear … McCain’s campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence …

Will’s bottom line is frankly terrifying.

It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

What he’s saying is that, the first time a President McCain faced a crisis of any significance, his reaction would likely be what we’ve just seen: lash out at the nearest, easiest, most convenient target and demand disproportionate punishment, while simultaneously refusing to engage the deeper, more fundamental issues that are the true cause of the crisis.

What he’s saying, in short, is that John McCain is not constitutionally (small “c”) capable of being president.

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Comments

  1. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either

    .  

  2. As Will warily points out (“Conservatives have been warned.”), McCain has said that he’d consider appointing Andrew Cuomo as SEC chair.  Now, I’m all for bipartisanship and all, but a Republican talking about appointing a Cuomo to a major policy-making position would be like Barack Obama talking seriously about naming, oh I don’t know, Phil Gramm to be Treasury Secretary.  And that would be enough for me to seriously reconsider my position (or at least my enthusiasm).

        • … the sort of conservative that McCain may be losing is the type that has recognized that what conservatives in power (tax cuts fix everything, war is cheap, when it isn’t pay through the nose with no oversight or be labeled as a troop-hater, keep the war off the books) have been pedaling hasn’t be working.  They are looking for actual solutions to actual problems and they see McCain as a mere follower of the orthodoxy of the conservatives in power rather than any underlying principals of conservatism.  I do think, however, that these types represent a small minority at best and they won’t all defect.  Hopefully they’ll just stay home if they can’t bring themselves to vote against the GOP.

          • I would add that these are actual conservatives, as opposed to Republicans who call themselves conservative.

            • … exhibit A

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              p>

              “There is certainly a lot in there for a principled conservative to object to.”  (0.00 / 0)
              shhyeah! If any of it were true.

              LOL!!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!
              by: Libby Rural @ Tue Sep 23, 2008 at 13:00:24 PM EDT

              Ladies and Gentlemen,… a 100% prime specimen of the 28%.  Denial is a powerful force indeed.

          • In 2004, there were many “main street” Republicans, who deserted Bush for Kerry – though unfortunately others with concerns stayed with Bush for the tax cuts.

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            p>Here, rather than individuals deciding that Bush/Cheney were certainly not doing things they agreed with, there are major opinion leaders, who this group normally respect, speaking out. I know Sullivan endorsed Kerry, but there was nowhere near the number of other leaders doing it.

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            p>In addition to everything else wrong, McCain calling for more tax cuts in addition to retaining the Bush ones we can’t afford has to disturb many fiscally conservative people.

            • … put this last week:

              Of course, the past 10 years has been strange in itself. We have just lived through the American counter-revolution. In a decade we saw a president impeached by his enemies merely for having enemies. Then we saw the Supreme Court reverse the will of the voters and appoint a president. Then we witnessed a shredding of the Constitution and all commitments to international law in the wake of a horrific attack that exposed government malfeasance and incompetence. Then we overthrew and occupied a sovereign state for no reason whatsoever. All the while we burned through a record government surplus to grant tax breaks and welfare to the wealthy, who just got wealthier. Now we have a record debt, a rickety financial system, collapsing home prices, a festering war in one country and a losing war in another. The president is no longer accountable to the rule of law. And, contrary to the expressed orders of Gen. George Washington, we now torture people.

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              p>There is certainly a lot in there for a principled conservative to object to.  I am a little surprised that it took them this long, however, since most of this was evident in 2004.

              • I guess many were like the proverbial frog in a pot of water, getting incrementally hotter. Like you, I would have thought they would react faster, but I’m glad that at least now some are responding.

        • You’re right that the liberals (so far!) have managed to put aside their differences with the Democratic Party better than conservatives have done with the GOP.  It helps that Obama (unlike Clinton, Gore or Kerry) is firmly on the left-middle side of the Party while McCain is middle-right of the GOP.

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          p>But liberals have still been as critical as Will is here (and more critical than the WSJ rant) many times this campaign season.  Liberals have labeled Obama a “sell-out” on the Biden nomination, offshore drilling, the FISA amendments, his support for women, his opposition to single payer healthcare, his support for Israel, his abandonment of the public financing system, for being “elite” and “not black enough,” and for wearing a flag pin after saying he didn’t.  And that’s just off the top off my head.

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          p>Many on the left have labeled Obama a “neo-progessive” while Jesse Jackson suggested castration might be the best solution to this “trend”.

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          p>These hardly seem that different?

            • The fact is that many Democrat likely voters say they will vote for McCain-Palin.  

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              p>Looking at the latest numbers ( http://www.gallup.com/poll/108… ) shows that 24% of “conservative” Democrats support McCain while only 10% of “liberal/moderate” (they won’t even call themselves “liberal” hardly at all đŸ˜‰ Republicans say they support Obama.  Only about 5% of “liberal” Democrats support McCain but only 3% of “conservative” Republicans are supporting Obama.

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              p>When you add the 3-4% supporting Nader (compared to 1% for Barr), it’s clear the Democrats internal conflicts are bigger than the Republicans.  Yes, we Democrats are keeping it better under the covers than the George Wills of the world but the “unified voting front” you are hoping for has yet to materialize.  Palin has done more to unify the GOP then she has to unify us.

        • Droves;

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          p>1. a number of oxen, sheep, or swine driven in a group; herd; flock.
          2. a large crowd of human beings, esp. in motion: They came to Yankee Stadium in droves.

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          p>The Wall Street Journal editorial page has abandoned McCain? Please show me in that article where they have abandoned McCain and or support Obama, which is what you are implying.

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          p>The head of the National Review back in 1993. ok

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          p>Andrew Sullivan – RHINO (A Brit no less) Sullivan is known for his distinctive personal-political identity. He is gay, and considers himself to be a classical libertarian conservative who is often at odds with other conservatives in the U.S., a Roman Catholic,[citation needed] and a non-U.S. citizen who focuses on American political life. On a number of controversial public issues, including same-sex marriage and capital punishment, he takes a position typically shared by those on the left of the U.S. political spectrum.  Sullivan has said that he would like to become a U.S. citizen but is barred because of his HIV-positive status.

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          p>enough said.

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          p>I’ll give you Will, but certainly not DROVES.

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          p>Hyperbole

                • …and your violation of it is blatant.

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                  p>That said, you can rate everyone who disagrees with you down, but repeating the same thing ad nauseum does not make you right.  No matter how you slice it, Will and Sullivan are conservative thought leaders. Rush and O’Reilly don’t count — they’re Republicans, not conservatives.  Like EaBo, they’ll twist themselves into pretzels rather than admit McCain is in the wrong.

          • The only reason that Andrew Sullivan (like Brent Scowcroft and James Baker among others) is not considered a “conservative” is because clueless Republicans such as yourself seem to think it means “agrees with Bush/me.”

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            p>This phenomenon explains how it is that the Republican Party has come to lose its way so very badly.

            • It just means we have better BS meters than you and we don’t listen to liberals like David making outrageous statements like the one above.  

              • Your party would control both houses of Congress and be in the driver’s seat for November.

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                p>I suppose that you can pretend that George Will is just one guy and carries no one with him, and that he isn’t conservative, but that doesn’t make it so.

        • The obamacon list:
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

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          p>A new obamacon that is not on the list is Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley).
          http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2…

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          p>

          I’ve read Obama’s books, and I have been struck by how good a writer he is. I would be tempted to vote for him on those grounds alone, because someone who writes that well also, I think, thinks clearly. Now, Mr. Obama is left-wing. I am not left-wing. But I am probably going to vote for him on the grounds of his thoughtfulness, my hope being that once he inherits this mess-and it’s going to be a mess: he inherits a country at war and in its worst financial crisis since 1929; are you really sure, Mr. Obama, you want this job?-that his instincts and his thoughtfulness will lead him toward creative, non-ideological solutions.

  3. As Bush invoked the magical mantra “9/11!” to deflect criticism as he launched a fraudulent war, awarded no-bid contracts to friendly corporations and pillaged civil liberties, McCain invokes “POW!” whenever he gets in a jam. Outside his war hero persona, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between McCain and run-of-the-mill conservative Repubs. Even the maverick identity has been put out to pasture with his cave-ins on the Religious Right, use of torture, etc.

  4. The petulant child (McCain) rides again!

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    p>Keating Five much?

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    p>Geoerge Will is calling it like it is for a change.  Even Will, with his conservative colored glasses, can’t ignore the obvious about John McCain.

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    p>George Will is speaking tonight as part of the Salem State College Series.  As of a few days ago, there were still tickets available.  That is if folks don’t have something better to do.

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    p>I know I have a Peabody Democratic City Committee meeting to go to where the Obama-Biden Peabody coordinator is making a presentation at the AOH Hall, 58 Lowell St. Peabody, MA.

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    p>Go Obama-Biden!

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    p>

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