Truer word have never been uttered, indeed. Your point is sound and excellent. Thanks for sharing….
]]>Whatever you think about those issues and who was right or wrong in each case, the way in which he handles himself does nothing but make enemies - OR make huge fans amongst those on the left. And what impression does this leave on the base?
I understand that, but it’s the kind of thing you either love him or hate him for. If you agreed with him on the issue, you’d cheer him for refusing to kowtow to people (I’m not saying you personally would, just saying that a lot of people would- conservatives in particular tend to be that way, because they like someone who’ll speak their mind and want to know that he’s not saying things just to pretend agreement with someone that he needs to call in a favor with later.)
As to him making a calculated move as you suggest, with his eye on the presidency, I really don’t buy that either. For one thing, he’s the one candidate who didn’t act desperate when his campaign wasn’t going well- he was resigned to the fact that if it didn’t work out for him, then he’d accept that. He didn’t start changing at that point when that master strategy you attribute to him wasn’t working out- instead he doubled down on it. That indicates to me that he’s principled, even if you don’t agree with his principles (and I don’t always either.) The people that I’m more skeptical of are the ones who will change their position when it’s not working to their personal advantage.
It seems to me that if that was a strategy, it was an enormously risky one (or at least, a longshot.) And if it works, it’ll only be because the party is in disarray- and I have a hard time believing that he predicted that those circumstances would exist. If he is that brilliant, then I’ll subtract a couple of points for the ruthlessness, but I’ll say he must be a genius so let’s get him to the White House ASAP! LOL
]]>Oh, I absolutely agree with you that 100% party loyalty is not a good thing. I want someone with principles. It was Republicans lacking in principles that led to many of the current problems they are having. In fact, I’d argue that the 2006 election results were as much about that as they were about anything else. That doesn’t match the media’s meme I know, but quite a few of those bloggers and pundits that you say you didn’t hear complaining predicted it- and predicted it for those reasons.
I completely agree with you- at least on the R side, that’s what the 06 elections were about. And again, I’m not arguing that ALL pundits were watercarriers- I can remember people like George Will and Bill Buckley certainly speaking out early on. But a lot of the newer generation people seemed to me to hold out until they could no longer maintain a shred of decency or integrity, and then finally admitting there was a problem.
I think personal perceptions are a part of the disagreement. You think that those who disapprove of McCain do so because he lacks party loyalty - they would say they disagree with him because he lacks principles - or, at the least, because he just doesn’t agree with them on many of the major issues.
True, but there too I have a problem: the arrogance of saying that theirs is the ‘true conservative position’. I could certainly argue, as a social conservative (I don’t narrowly define myself that way and disagree with a lot of other social cons, but still agree on many issues with them) that abortion should be such a litmus test- but I don’t. I do agree that the party has to have some standard of what it stands for, but it needs to be broader than the way some of these people are defining it. It boils down to this: parties are collections of coalitions who agree on some core issues and then can agree to disagree on a few other things that are of importance to some of the subgroups. You have to respect those differences; you can’t have one group crying foul when one of the other groups uses a litmus test but then they do the same thing. And on abortion, for example, the fiscal cons expect the socons to accept even candidates who don’t abide by the party’s platform- yet they’ll call someone a traitor if they don’t tow the party line on something that doesn’t necessarily even violate a core principle as they try to claim that it does.
]]>I think personal perceptions are a part of the disagreement. You think that those who disapprove of McCain do so because he lacks party loyalty - they would say they disagree with him because he lacks principles - or, at the least, because he just doesn’t agree with them on many of the major issues.
As for the political expedience issue - you think it would be a risk to his career to go against his base on these issues and therefore, he would never do it for the small benefit it would gain him. I think the opposite - it was a small risk for a possibly huge gain - the Presidency.
I think he is nearing the end of his career. I also think there is little he could do that would put his seat in the Senate at risk - he’s an institution at this point and he knows it. Not to mention the incumbant-protection act McCain-Feingold Act.
Let me use a comparison to make my next point. About 4 or 5 years ago Hillary made a hard tack to the right, correct? Every pundit out there, left right or center agreed that this was a strategic move on her part. The assumption was that with her natural leftist ideology she could never win a national election - she needed to move towards the center. Nobody thought she did this because she had a personal revelation and now held new political beliefs - it was political expediency to move away from her base in order to capture more of the center.
I think that this is what McCain has done. The difference is that both parties have been moving to the left for a long time (really, what party would JFK and his policies fit in now?). For some people, this move of his is just too far - he is no longer in accord with them on too many important issues.
And yes, the way he handles himself when questioned has made it personal for a lot of people - he takes it to that level himself. Those that questioned him on the immigration bill were ‘racists’. Look back on every major issue that he has differed with a significant portion on the base on, and see what he said about his constiuents who dared to disagree with him - what did he say about the swiftboaters? What did he say about the fatcat republicans against McCain Feingold?
Whatever you think about those issues and who was right or wrong in each case, the way in which he handles himself does nothing but make enemies - OR make huge fans amongst those on the left. And what impression does this leave on the base?
]]>Because honestly I don’t think that 100% party loyalty is a good thing, at all- particularly when a party holds the majority for too long. There’s too much of a tendency for the agenda itself to get corrupted- and then the powers that be can create a furor among voters for one of the reps or Senators to be labelled a RINO if he’s not going along.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I think that McCain is the purest of the pure, or that his contrarian votes were always reform minded. But in some cases I do think that- and in some of the cases where I disagreed with him I still never felt he was casting votes for political expedience (as I said before that doesn’t make sense to me- yeah, he may enjoy the media attention and the maverick label, but would he risk his career for that?)
At the end of the day I suspect that the backlash against him is really about two things: one, that he did vary from the party on a few key issues that some hold as dogma, and two, that he’s not even sorry for it. My issue with that is that it’s too personal and that no particular issues should be held against anyone to that degree- I mean, don’t you think people go overboard when they say he’s like a Democrat in disguise (or one fellow at NRO said that he dreams at night of insulting conservatives or some such nonsense.)
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