« Can't Touch Dis--Obama and McCain Dance It Off | hrebendorf's Blog | Boehner Call Obama's Votes "Chickenshit" »
David Frum: This Ship Is Sinking! Save Yourselves!
This is an absolute must-read:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302081.html?nav=hcmodule
"The themes and messages that are galvanizing the crowds for Palin are bleeding Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Gordon Smith in Oregon, Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Susan Collins in Maine. The Palin approach might have been expected to work better in more traditionally conservative states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, but they have not worked well enough to compensate for the weak Republican economic message at a moment of global financial crisis. Result: the certain loss of John Warner's Senate seat in Virginia, the probable loss of Elizabeth Dole's in North Carolina, an unexpectedly tough fight for Saxby Chambliss's in Georgia -- and an apparent GOP surrender in Colorado, where it looks as if the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already pulled its ads from the air.
The fundraising challenge only makes things worse. The Republican senatorial and congressional committees have badly underperformed compared with their Democratic counterparts -- and the Republican National Committee, which has done well, is directing its money toward the presidential campaign, rather than to local races. (It was RNC funds, not McCain '08 money, that paid the now-famous $150,000 for Palin's campaign wardrobe, for example.) This is a huge mistake.
In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302081.html?nav=hcmodule
"The themes and messages that are galvanizing the crowds for Palin are bleeding Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Gordon Smith in Oregon, Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Susan Collins in Maine. The Palin approach might have been expected to work better in more traditionally conservative states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, but they have not worked well enough to compensate for the weak Republican economic message at a moment of global financial crisis. Result: the certain loss of John Warner's Senate seat in Virginia, the probable loss of Elizabeth Dole's in North Carolina, an unexpectedly tough fight for Saxby Chambliss's in Georgia -- and an apparent GOP surrender in Colorado, where it looks as if the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already pulled its ads from the air.
The fundraising challenge only makes things worse. The Republican senatorial and congressional committees have badly underperformed compared with their Democratic counterparts -- and the Republican National Committee, which has done well, is directing its money toward the presidential campaign, rather than to local races. (It was RNC funds, not McCain '08 money, that paid the now-famous $150,000 for Palin's campaign wardrobe, for example.) This is a huge mistake.
In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first."
Advertisement
Good. Let the miserable criminals go down to perdition wrapped in lambent flames! Let their criminal enterprise, the GOP, fall and never rise again!
They are the dope-pushers of American politics, but the dope they addict people to is hate and fear and divisiveness and nativism.
They have retarded our country's natural progress and social evolution by at least half a century
No fate is bad enough for them.
October 26, 2008 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Frum's complaint about McCain could have been predicted 1 year ago. McCain is going to be the (unfortunate) scapegoat for the failed policies and tactics that the GOP has had no problem using in the past -- and that Frum helped promote, especially in his work for the Bush White House.
The GOP wanted McCain farther to the right -- now that he has moved there, the GOP is blaming the poor election progress on him.
Colin Powell said it best when he remarked that the GOP is sliding farther to the right -- as a result of voices inside the party. Even the most die-hard liberal would have to acknowledge that McCain was not primarily responsible for bringing us the campaign as we have seen it. This is where the GOP -- as a party -- wanted to go.
Frum wants to blame McCain. I say, let's blame the GOP. This election, at large, is a reaction to what the GOP has wrought. For us to pile-on and blame McCain won't help the national dialog. For us to repudiate the right wing of the GOP party will. And making such comments to right-of-center people might help them clean house a bit.
October 26, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain is going to be the (unfortunate) scapegoat for the failed policies and tactics that the GOP has had no problem using in the past -- and that Frum helped promote, especially in his work for the Bush White House.
_____
McLame is the appropriate "skapegoat": it was he who chose Palin -- the poster child for the lunatic fringe wing of the Republican Party -- those inside the party who want to push the party even further to the right.
Everyone of them needs to be exposed for what they are -- which includes McLame: he's been a "maverick" for how long? -- yet supported the Bushit criminal enterprise by his own admission 90 per cent of the time.
Let them all go down together, regardless whether he collapses onto the party as its rotten cherry, or that party collapses onto him.
Screw them all: they are the party of racist hate, and McSlimer has shown he is identicial with the party in that regard.
October 26, 2008 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I feel like a giant weight has been lifted from my burdened shoulders.
October 26, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read this today, without noticing who the author was. When I discovered it was Frum, I was quite surprised. I never thought I'd see the day.
October 26, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then you've misread it. It's not about Frum trashing the GOP... far from it. It's about Frum placing the entire bad history of the GOP onto McCain's shoulders. It's a trick to preserve the same tactics and strategies for next time. It's not a repudiation of anything at all.
October 26, 2008 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course its Frum attempting to blame McSlimer -- who is properly to blame -- in effort to pretend the party itself, "separate" from McSlimer, isn't to blame.
I don't know who needs that explained unless they want an effort to absolve McSlimer of his continuation of the exact same tactics of smear and name-calling as substitute for thought, ideas, and policies.
October 26, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Frum tosses his comrades an anchor. Bravo!
October 26, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Frum should have his famous "axis of evil" stuffed somewhere up his nether regions.
His mother (a national heroine from the CBC in Canada) is turning (over & over & over) in her grave.
October 26, 2008 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a victory for community organizers all over the country. Remember when Palin bemoaned community organizers a few months ago? She was naming the very thing which I believe has become the one thing that has helped shift this race from a Democratic candidate leading in traditional "blue" states to a race in which the Democratic candidate has used an elaborate ground game to make some deep red states purple at worst, light blue at best. It helps that some things beyond the control of Obama or his army of ants have showed the hollow bones of the Republican message for all it's worth, and looking back that may well be what helped make it the way it has been. We still have yet to have the final votes cast, and to see what lays in store on that fateful November 4. The way we're heading looks good, but we must get out there and make sure that we do all we can to ensure our man wins on that day.
October 26, 2008 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
She more than bemoaned them -- she mocked and belittled the people who are, you know, kickin' her ass back to Alaska.
October 27, 2008 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
When Palin attcked community organizers -- how ignorant is she of how many there are, and how much they do in the community -- she signed the death warrant for the McPalin campaign.
Again.
October 27, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a victory for the left mostly by the absolute failure of the right to let Grandpa McCain be himself and pick his first choice for VP, "Traitor Joe." The Rovians put so much fear in McCain that he would lose the core that he ended up going to the extreme right to keep them. The problem was the right were never going to vote for a black man, a woman, or a democrat as president. At worst, a few would have stayed home. HE HAD THEM NO MATTER WHO HE WAS! His idiotic pandering to the hard right and theocrats, who he once referred to as "bible thumping morons" only drove the moderates and independents away. Now the republicans are left with hoaxes and vote theft in order to win. A far better and cheaper strategy would be to dump Palin and let McCain be himself and go with his old ideas and original plan for VP. Nothing less will bring the middle back to Maverick McCain and a possible October surprise of a turn around in the poll numbers.
say the same, say it with shame
PALIN/mccain? 2008
October 26, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah: let McSame be himself: Bushit III.
October 27, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
What Frum didn't mention (at least, not forcefully enough) is the staggering and obvious degree of incompetence that both the McCain campaign and the GOP have exhibited. It isn't just a matter of wanting to to the wrong things-- it's a matter of being unable to do them effectively. The Sarah Palin wardrobe episode is perhaps the most telling example. How could anyone not have seen what a disasterous faux pas that was? Republicans have lost their sense of the absurd, and with it, their credibility as a governing entity.
October 26, 2008 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans have never been credible. They have been "believeable" for those not concerned with credibility.
October 27, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I like to see Republicans fighting each other. But I hope Frum's faction wins -- by 2016 or 2020, if not 2012.
We need a decent opposition party -- a party that has actual ideas to offer, not just smears and fears.
October 26, 2008 10:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the problem for them is that they had a chance to try out their ideas, and the ones they put into effect i.e. financial market deregulation failed miserably. The ones they didn't try i.e. banning abortion they just gave lip service to. I mean where do they even go from here?
October 27, 2008 4:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Then you'll have to hope for a third party. because Republicans are never going to fill the bill, either as to "decent" or as to "actual ideas".
October 27, 2008 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think we're seeing the utter dead-ending of the republican party due to their own reprehensible tactics finally sinking themselves. (And we're lucky they didn't sink the ship of state as well.)
October 27, 2008 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink