President McCain? Noooooo!
A quick glance at RCP poll averages for Super Tuesday makes it clear that we need to start girding ourselves for the contemplation of a prospect truly terrifying—President McCain. Our friend Leon Hadar has already started starring into the abyss:
For those of us who opposed the Iraq War and W’s foreign policy—and for opponents of Big Government, in general—all of this [the coming McCain GOP nomination] is VERY BAD news.
Bush is basically a lazy person with little interest in global affairs and all his warmongering was all about winning elections, not about fighting wars. He really doesn’t like sitting late at night in the Situation Room ‘managing’ a global crisis. He prefers to go to bed (to sleep).
But McCain LOVES all of that. Another Cuban-Missile-Crisis-like atmosphere in the White House where he could play the War President. It’s a form of Viagra for this mummy-like creature. It could keep him alive and kicking for eight more years during which the Warfare State will run amok, including the … reinstatement of the draft. Sometime in 2010 we’ll have no choice but to admit that we are really starting to miss W.”
We should be wary of any dailykos-like rants about “the Republicans are going to reinstate the draft and install fascism ahhh!” but I generally think that Hadar is raising a real possibility. As Justin pointed out last night in his live-blogging, McCain’s war-hero identity often leads him to conflate politics with military duty. His “I led for patriotism, not for profit” was, of course, a thinly disguised shot at Romney, Mr. multi-millionaire. But what is McCain actually saying here? I don’t know how useful McCain’s experience leading a military brigade would be in the White House—unless one imagines the president’s central role as dealing with soldiers in a series of war crises. (Moreover, McCain statement begs the question, would Romney be more qualified for the presidency if he had notprofited during his time in the non-military sector? Is McCain bringing into doubt the leadership of every person who’s been so slimy as to make money from a business transaction?)
Anyway, the point is that while Bush wanted us to fight terror by going shopping, McCain might try to revive that old 9/11 feeling through enlistment.
Hadar goes on:
“Finally, I do hope that Dr. Paul runs as a third-party candidate and makes it more likely that the Republicans lose, providing them with an opportunity to reinvent themselves.”
From what I’m hearing, a third-party bid is not very likely—Paul doesn’t have particularly good memories from his Libertarian candidacy in ’88, and judging from his recent debate performances, his heart no longer seems to be in his current run.
This aside, Hadar thinks a Ron Paul third party would be positive only in that it would derail a likely McCain victory in November. In Hadar’s mind, the senator will win with Bush’s ’04 strategy: using “foreign policy/national security— especially against the backdrop of a possible confrontation with Iran … and the alleged ‘success in Iraq—to bash Hillary and the Democrats as ‘appeasers’ etc.”
While I think McCain would probably run like this, I’m not so sure it would work. I generally think the public is tired of the 9/11 paradigm. Whatever you want to say about Huckabee & Obama (I don’t have much of anything good to say about either), they’ve beaten the establishment’s erstwhile “inevitable” candidates by running outside the 9/11 box—no Kerry-esque “reporting for duty” here. Moreover, Romney has consistently finished second on “change” + “Washington is broken” rhetoric. The fact is that a McCainian GOP would probably lose hard in November with or without a Paul third-party run. Nevertheless, whether the establishment and base is really willing to “reinvent themselves” afterwards is doubtful—as what? led by whom?
Still, there’s a certain bleak fatalistic fun in contemplating the composition of a McCain admin:
As Hadar see’s it:
Vice-President: Rice or Huckabee or Lieberman.
Pentagon: Giuliani or Rice or Lieberman.
State: Robert Kagan.
AG: Giuliani.
CIA: Giuliani or Gary Schmitt.
Colonial Office: Niall Ferguson.
Treasury: Robert Zoellick.
Representative in Israel: Bibi Netanyahu
I’ll nominate Denis Miller as Minister of Culture and John Podhoretz as Poetic-Reference-to-1938 Laureate.
Comments
If the economy is going to tank big time, why not leave Obama, who is pro open borders, the most leftist man in the Senate, and the poster child of the diversity crowd, holding the bag? Or Hillary for that matter. They both have negatives that are high enough to leave the congressional GOP in a position to block major legislation. One hates to lose an election, but there can worse fates. Example, winning in 1928.
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The prospect of a McCain nomination and presidency has scared me into voting for Romney on Super Tuesday. Huckabee is finished, so Romney is the only competition for Insane McCain.
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You read it here first McCain Romney is the Republican ticket.Romney withdraws after super tuesday and endorses McCain.McCain is the neocon and Romney is the Rockefeller candidate.The real conservatives and libertarians are screwed again.The democrat ticket is Obama Bayh,pretty atractive.
Paul-Buchanan one last run, please as the Constitutional Party Candidates.
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“Paul-Buchanan one last run, please as the Constitutional Party Candidates.”
Yes!
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Ron Paul 2008. Don’t give up hope. Ron Paul running does not give either Republican or Democrat a better chance of winning.. I will not be voting Republican if Ron Paul is not the man so they are not losing my vote. They fix the game but we don’t have to play. We can force them to play our game or at least play fair.
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What I dont get is all these people are against McCain, where are these votes coming from?
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Great piece, just one quibble: McCain was a Navy pilot, you remember, who was shot down over Hanoi and spent some years there in the Hanoi Hilton undergoing a number of gruesome rigors. He did not lead a brigade, which is, of course, an Army formation
We actual Army people who were there in the late republic (I was in Thua Thien Province, near Hue, riding a chair) used to listen to McCain’s name invoked with some degree of sympathy, as we recalled that his father, who was then CINCPAC, ourt commander over Gen. Abrams, had to suffer the imprisonment of his son, and thus undergo the hardships of the war as we were.
This is not a campaign endorsement, just a historical recitation.
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I’m with Jet - where is McCain getting his votes? Are there that many sheeple in the US? Are there that many neo-conned people? I’ve read that voters in the Florida primary stated they voted for McCain because he would be the toughest on immigration. This is all a bad dream - pinch me when it’s all over!
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