It really is no surprise that John McCain and Joe Lieberman like each other so much. They’re cut from the same cloth of standing on whichever side of an issue seems most advantageous at the moment. McCain was asked whether he would support his former running mate Sarah Palin if she ran for president in 2012.
“I can’t say something like that. We’ve got some great other young governors. I think you’re going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party,” he said.
He then mentioned governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Jon Huntsman of Utah.
McCain said he has “the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family, and it was a great joy to know them.”
“She invigorated our campaign” against Barack Obama for the presidency, he said.
McCain was pressed on why he can’t promise support for the woman who, just months ago, he named as the second best person to lead the nation.
“Have no doubt of my admiration and respect for her and my view of her viability, but at this stage, again … my corpse is still warm, you know?” he replied.
And that political corpse was largely blamed on Palin after their defeat. Which- as vile as she is as a politician- was a bit unfair since he was the person that put her in that position in the first place. Don’t blame the employee for your lousy hiring practices.
Further attempting to distance himself from the shenanigans of the later stages of his campaign, McCain has chastised the Republicans for their treatment of President Elect Barack Obama regarding the Blago fiasco. So sayeth McCain:
“I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.”
Uh oh. Looks like someone is trying to get back their (completely fabricated) Maverick credentials.
George Lakoff wrote in Don’t Think of an Elephant that the Republican Party has (traditionally) been better at appearing cohesive from the outside despite existing inner turmoil. Republican groups with different agendas would work together with the understanding that the needs of all would eventually be met if groups waited their turn. This election cycle knocked down the wall around the Republicans, exposing their infighting, weaknesses and the last gasps of a party on life support.
Why did the wall come down now? George W. Bush- easily blamed for most things wrong with this country- wasn’t a major factor here. It started with the comically lackluster group of politicians that entered into the Republican primary contest. Then John McCain- who could be called a Reformer if only for the fact that the Traditionalists didn’t see him as one of theirs- won the nomination. Even if his “maverick” nature had fans among the Reformers, he soon cut those ties of affection by veering quickly (and sloppily) toward the Traditionalist agenda. The Sarah Palin choice speaks of his attempt to seduce Traditionalists- particularly their Christian fundamentalist subset.
But the saner minds among the Traditionalists weren’t really buying it. The McCain-Palin ticket had managed to alienate both of the major factions of their party, leaving them with those who merely wanted to vote “not Obama” and the hate filled ignorance that came to characterize their rallies.
The Republicans lost the election in a major way, shedding Senate seats along with the White House. It would appear to be a time for the party to do a major overhaul, building the new agenda more around Reformer policies- like economic equality, inclusion and global warming policy- that would appeal more to the modern electorate than the Traditionalist model does. And when it comes time for that shift to happen, Democrats should be as supportive as they can be of the change. An enemy of an enemy is our friend and the Reformers want to cut off their crazy wing as much as we’d like them to.
After their election day defeat, the Republicans set up a website proposing ways the party can be restructured and asked for the public to submit their own ideas. The reoccurring themes in the suggestions are inclusion (of youth and minority voters) and exclusion (of the neocon/fundamentalist wing). People would rather see the party focus its attention on economic solutions, a smaller government and Constitutional rights. In other words, the tide is shifting in the direction of the Reformers.
But it could be awhile before the Reformers have their day in the spotlight. As David Brooks says in the NY Times, the Traditionalists are the ones still in Congress and they also have the access to the donors and institutions. The Reformers are having to start from behind- without much funding or structural support- while trying to convert (or overtake) Traditionalists who don’t see the problem as being that they aren’t modernized but rather that they should become more ”traditionally” conservative (see: Rep. Mike Pence, who thinks the party should be rebuilt around marriage “sanctity” and pro-life agendas).
McCain’s concession speech is on now, and he’s being quite gracious — this is the McCain I remember from 2000 and haven’t seen since.
Update 8:23pm
MSNBC has just called Ohio for Obama. Wow. That’s pretty much game over, barring any kind of west coast shock.
Nice. Now it’s all about the House and Senate races. More later…
Update 8:15pm:
Wisconsin got called amazingly fast, faster than it’s been called in the last two cycles. I take that as a good sign… Basically, all Obama has to do to win at this point is to take Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, and the West Coast states — which he’s been projected to do for weeks now. But it’d be nice to know for sure…
7:30pm
Looking good so far…
We can start to breathe normally again, I think… MSNBC has called Pennsylvania for McCain, as has CNN, and he’s looking strong in Indiana — and if he’s looking strong in Indiana, things look mighty fine indeed. At the moment, I’ll stick with my prediction of 351 electoral votes.
In addition, looks like Kay Hagan has unseated Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and Jeanne Shaheen has beaten Sununu the Younger in New Hampshire.
And yeah, I found wireless. More later, depending on whether I can find it again in other locales…
Update from Acallidryas: I may have to revise my EV estimate upwards…
Here, dear reader(s), is a handy-dandy quick reference list of which states close their polls at which hour. I’ve also included some annotations on what to expect at various points of the evening, but take those with a grain of salt.
(You could, of course, also download the delightfully festive color-coded map from Swing State Project.)
All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST). Note that in some states polls close at different hours; the times given are generally the times of the last poll closings in that state (but in some cases the networks may be making calls earlier). Bear in mind that odd events (court-ordered extension of times, etc.) may play havoc with the accuracy of this.
Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday’s first minutes. The town of Hart’s Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul.
…and poor old Ralph Nader got shut out.
So is this a key indicator, a good omen, a portent of things to come today? Naah, just some late-night election geekery. All in all, it’s gonna be a long, interesting day. Enjoy!
Catching up on some reading, I noticed Skippy ruminating about the McCain camp’s unbridled/unhinged optimism heading into Tuesday. He goes on to quote John Dickerson over at Slate, dutifully reporting the uptick of that thing called, um, Hope on the Straight Talk Uncomfortable, Dangerous Local Express:
mcinturff released a memo yesterday that outlined his case for why it’s still possible for mccain to pull a rabbit out of his hat. here’s what he sees: his poll of battleground states shows obama with such a small lead, it’s within the margin of error, which means it’s effectively tied.
Like everything else put out by the McCain campaign lately, the memo is a huge steaming pile. As pointed out by both Skippy and Stan Greenberg, McCain has to pull something out of somewhere in order to win, but it’s not a rabbit and it won’t be extracted from a hat.
Skippy’s basic conclusion is that this kind of pronouncement from McInturff is a result of the campaign believing its own BS which is, in turn, a byproduct of the Republican ruling mentality. That’s definitely at work here, but I’d like to toss in an additional thought: it may just be simple Late-Stage Campaign Delusion.
McCain campaign spokesperson Michael Goldfarb was interviewed by CNN’s Rick Sanchez yesterday with hilarious results. Sanchez was trying to push an “Obama hangs with anti-Semites” narrative by bringing up Obama’s purported relationship with Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi is a Palestinian scholar (and- oddly enough for a man accused of being anti-Semitic- a Semite) and the subject of a tape that the McCain camp has been throwing a hissy fit over because the LA Times won’t release it (non-release was a condition of their source).
Though he disappoints by not mentioning the facts missing in the McCain backed Khalidi story line (that he’s a Semite, has denied any involvement with the PLO, etc.), Sanchez does point out that McCain has his own ties to Khalidi. And he does a fantastic job of pressing Goldfarb for a name of another anti-Semitic individual that Obama has ties to. Goldfarb, of course, can’t name anyone and the interview devolves into hilarity as Sanchez reaches the point of exasperation that many people hit when dealing with someone that is being deliberately (or unintentionally) obtuse.
Former Republican Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger has a last name that sounds like a dish served at a sketchy truck stop in the Appalachians- which is enough on its own to earn a small bit of affection from me. But his new found habit of bluntly stating what the American people have known for awhile- that Sarah Palin is incompetent- has warmed my heart so that he may be my new favorite card in my Heartthrobs of the Bush Administration: Vol. One deck.
Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and whose endorsement is often trumpeted by McCain, said on Thursday that the Alaska governor is not only unprepared to take over the job on a moment’s notice but, even after some time in office, would only amount to an “adequate” commander in chief.
“And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested,” he added for good measure — referring both to Palin’s policy dexterity and the idea of McCain not making it through his time in office…
The remarks took place during an interview on National Public Radio that was, ironically, billed as “making the case” for a McCain presidency. Asked by the host whether Palin could step in during a time of crisis, Eagleburger reverted to sarcasm before leveling the harsh blow.
“It is a very good question,” he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: “I’m being facetious here. Look, of course not.”
Eagleburger explained: “I don’t think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency. I can name for you any number of other vice presidents who were not particularly up to it either. So the question, I think, is can she learn and would she be tough enough under the circumstances if she were asked to become president, heaven forbid that that ever takes place?
“Give her some time in the office and I think the answer would be, she will be [pause] adequate. I can’t say that she would be a genius in the job. But I think she would be enough to get us through a four year… well I hope not… get us through whatever period of time was necessary. And I devoutly hope that it would never be tested.”
What makes this all the more magically delicious is that the McCain campaign has been holding Eagleburger’s support of the ticket as evidence of party unity and the belief that the foreign policy circle has in the ticket.
JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. – With days still to go in the White House race, backers of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin are talking her up as a possible contender in 2012, speculation that irritates other Republicans who contend she’s a drag on the ticket and that her lightweight image — unfair or not — will be hard to shed.
The Alaska governor has done little to quiet the talk. In fact, she fueled the discussion this week when she signaled that she will remain on the national political scene no matter what happens Tuesday. “I’m not doing this for naught,” she said in an interview with ABC News.
This, kids, is the biggest argument against marriages of convenience I can think of.
Now, I’ll be blunt and say I’m looking forward to the end of this election as much as anyone, but I do have to admit that I’m going to miss the spectacle of these two throwing each other under the bus on a daily basis. Most soap operas don’t hold a candle to this.
The guys from Five Thirty Eight have been on a road trip for these last few weeks of the election season, bringing readers the story from the ground. They attended John McCain’s rally in Miami (held at Everglades Lumber) and witnessed the kind of hate-filled aggression that has become typical of the McPalin Mob:
After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that’s what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.
The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.
“People were screaming ‘Terrorist!’ ‘Communist!’ ‘Socialist!’” Sorando said when we caught up with him. “I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me.”
Asked what had precipitated the event, “We were just chanting ‘Obama!’ and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy.”
Garcia told us that the man who originally had warned the two it was his property when they had first tried to attend the rally with Obama T-shirts was one of the agitators. Coming up just before the scene started getting out of hand, the man whispered in Garcia’s ear, “I’m gonna beat you up the next time I see you.” Garcia described him for us: “a big stocky man wearing a tweed jacket.” He used hand motions to emphasize this was a large guy. We went back to look for the gentleman twenty minutes after the incident but didn’t find him.
I attended a Michelle Obama event in my hometown over the summer. There were a few “protesters” outside: people standing nearby that were holding up signs or attempting to hand out pamphlets. The crowd exiting the event just walked past them, politely ignoring or avoiding them. No one tried to engage them in any way. Because that’s the sane and intelligent response to people standing idly by with signs you disagree with. If your worldview is so flimsily defined that a piece of cardboard can make you blind with rage, you need to work out some issues, stat.
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