GOP Pres Candidates Breaking Bad

Pols for GOP nomination are lame, or not sufficiently crazy

Update: See also Sarah Posner's Christian Zionists, Bibi, Obama, and Armageddon at Religious Dispatches.

The weakness of the field at this point is comparable to December 2007 when many on the right were trashing Mike Huckabee in the twisted objections then twirling in leading Republican minds.

Sarah Palin is the recipient of similar derision today, though from different players.

As Chris Cillizza wrote then of the GOP field: "Someone Has to Win the GOP Nomination."

McCain won and lost, the target of McCaincon—a plot by authortarian (ostensibly religious) Movement officers to sabotage the GOP nominee for not being sufficientally crazy, though McCain tried mightily and got a bum rap by the right in this respect.

The parallels between the '08 and '12 nomination race are striking.

The most striking analogue is Mitt Romney.

The Ken Silverstein cover story of the November 2007 issue of Harper's seems like it could be rerun today without anyone noticing.

November 2007

Writes Silverstein: “(Romney) says all the right things, his speeches run through the litmus test on conservative issues, but there’s no conviction behind it. …,” said Cyndi Mosteller, a social rightwinger and GOP politico in South Carolina.

Add to this lack of conviction a dose of Christian religious bigotry against Mormons and you have a political Loser, now leading the current pack of crazies. [Palin, Paul, Gingrich, Cain, Pawlenty, and Bachmann]

Let's say Romney wins the nomination. Will he then pull a McCain and court the endorsement of John Hagee, another whack who says the Holocaust was part of God's plan, among other charming nonsense?

ADL in 1994 Hits Crazies

Being Christain Zionist and anti-Tolerance, anti-Pluralistic and just plain nuts, as Hagee is, sits fine with elements of the Lobby now-a-days—now making noise to align with the GOP nominee [certain to be anti-pluralistic] as long as the Christian right-endorsed candidate advocates war against Islam or at least employs the term "Islamofascism" with some frequency.

The ideologues—who may fall together into a motley coalition looking for an endless war against terror, Satan, Muslims, [maybe even South America]—look to conjure some GOP chimera.

But they may find that the vast majority of Americans are not apocalyptic, war-mongering nuts who, as Noam Chomsky wrote in 2002, do not accept the "increasingly desperate claim that everyone is following them in their depraved subordination to power" and more war.

One aspect of the American political culture persisting is the hope that people can compete with power; that the remnants of our democracy are sufficient to knock down a religious zealot like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Medicare-destroying ideologue like Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), rightwing billionares like the Koch brothers, and the eventual Republican nominee for president.

John McCain: Straight-up, He's a Crook and Liar

Sure, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is corrupt, self-important, and narcissistic. Most politicians are.

But few in politics have so successfully hyped the maverick-reformer brand from which reality is at such absolute variance with the cultivated image.

Mainstream political columnists are now figuring out the truth about McCain the Petulant One, the kind of guy whose best friend could be Joe Lieberman.

A quick review: McCain has been dead-wrong (he lied) on major foreign policy areas that he presented to the nation as evidence of his wisdom in his run for president.

As outlined by NYT columnist Frank Rich last year:

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war ‘easily.’ Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would ‘probably get along’ in post-Saddam Iraq because there was ‘not a history of clashes‘ between them.

Even rightwingers didn't trust McCain though he embraced the Rev. John 'Hitler Was God's Will' Hagee, brought us the brilliance of Sarah Palin, and has been a champion of Israeli militarism along with the odious Lieberman.

In the 2008 campaign George Will blasted McCain writing, "It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. (September 23, 2008)."

In the mid-1990s McCain jumped on a first-term Sen. Russ Feingold's (D-WI) crusade for campaign finance reform because McCain had rightfully been branded as corrupt by the Keating Five scandal.

When the Supreme Court issued its outrageous decision in Citizens Unitedeffectively eviscerating McCain-Feingold—McCain's signature credential as a reformer—and legalizing corruption and the foreign purchase of American elections, what was McCain's reaction? Whatever, "I respect their decision." I bet you do.

Dana Milbank's column in the Post this weekend well reflects the establishment's disenchantment with McCain's bs which veterans and progressive commentators have been blasting for years.

From Milbank (Feb. 5, 2010):

I miss John McCain.

I miss the McCain I sat with on a flight from San Diego to Phoenix back in 1999, when he defended his oft-ridiculed belief that campaign finance was the most important issue in America: because the corrupting influence of money in politics was preventing all other issues -- taxes, abortion, you name it -- from being solved.

'Until I draw my last breath, I will fight for it,' he liked to say back then.

A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued a rulingthat gutted the McCain Feingold campaign-finance legislation, essentially destroying the cause that had been so dear to McCain. His response: Whatever.

'I don't think there's much that can be done, to tell you the truth,' he told CBS's Bob Schieffer. 'It is what it is,' he added.

'Reform is dead?' Schieffer asked.

‘Oh, I think so,’ McCain answered, at least for now. ‘The Supreme Court has spoken. I respect their decision.’ So much for that bit about ‘last breath.’ ...

When he endorsed his former rival George W. Bush in 2004 and when he spoke at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 2006, I chalked it up to the exigencies of Republican politics.

I convinced myself that his lurch to the right and his fear mongering in the 2008 presidential campaign was really the work of his Bush-trained handlers.

When he continued on his hard-right course after the election, I figured he was bitter about the loss.

Now, the most generous explanation is that McCain needs to protect his right flank because he's facing a primary challenge in Arizona from a ‘birther’ Republican, the radio broadcaster and former congressman J.D. Hayworth.

But each time it gets harder to hold on to the hope that there's still an iconoclast in there somewhere. ...

Last week, it was time for McCain to shed his views on gays in the military. A few years ago, he had said of the ‘don't ask, don't tell’ policy: ‘The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.’

At Tuesday's hearing, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen did just that, saying he thought lifting the ban was the ‘right thing to do.’ Colin Powell later said the same.

But McCain was enraged, hectoring the admiral at the witness table and challenging his integrity.

A week earlier, the topic was the national debt, another traditional McCain issue. He had been a co-sponsor of a bipartisan plan for a debt commission. But just before it came up for a vote, he pulled out and aligned himself against the proposal.

On a full range of issues, McCain has switched to reflexive opposition. His presidential campaign expressed ‘full confidence’ in Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke; McCain voted against confirming Bernanke to another term. During the Bush years, former POW McCain fought against abusive interrogations; last week he scolded the Obama administration for inadequate interrogation of the underwear bomber.

On immigration reform, another signature McCain issue, the senator has lost his tongue. Back in Arizona, McCain's bombastic buffoon of a primary opponent has been attacking him for his ‘Washington agenda’ and as somebody who has ‘been in Washington too long.’

But it is Hayworth whose political career far more closely fits the current fashion in political Washington: constant partisan warfare, scorched-earth politics and legislative paralysis.

The John McCain that I miss was a refreshing antidote to that Washington, one of very few in this town who could be the transformational leader we need to get out of this stalemate.

Before writing this column, I reached out to many of McCain's closest aides from the 2000 campaign to see whether they thought there still was such a man inside McCain. Most of them begged off, some saying they had lost contact with him or become estranged.

I may be the last one who still holds some hope that McCain, long before he draws his last breath, may yet rejoin the fight.

Dana Milbank will be online to chat with readers Monday, Feb. 8 at 1 p.m. ET. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

For more background on McCain, see also:

- The Horrors of John McCain

- Douglas Valentine: McCain, War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

- Alexander Cockburn:McCain, What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

- William P. O'Connor: The Legend of John McCain

McCainCon Conducting System Testing

Team members of McCainCon are conducting last-minute system testing though the objectives have already been met: John McCain's campaign is dead.

The plot to sabotage the GOP nominee for president of the United States by conservative movement officers, rightwingers and anti-McCain allies is brilliant. The members participated with faint energy in the McCain campaign, holding back, watching a man they dislike take the fall in a Goldwateresque election for the GOP.

After the election, McCainCon begins the acceptance phase that results in finding the man who they want as the next president in 2012: Sarah Palin.

Watch out for subplots and counter-espionage, and for Kirk Douglas to emerge out of the wreckage of the McCain campaign and blow the whistle.

McCainCon Nearing Completion

Poor John McCain.

His campaign embraces McCarthyite tactics; appeals to fear and racism, throws around the GOP charges of voter fraud, and the rightwing still hates him.

As we have noted here before, though there's no open talk from GOP insiders: There is a secret let-McCain-fall program: Call it McCainCon [a play on the secret EComCon conspiracy from the Seven Days in May movie based on the Fletcher Knebel-Charles W. Bailey II book].

McCain is a fatally weak GOP candidate to face Obama, and it’s likely that many GOP movement wingers see him as a 2008 sacrificial sheep happily slaughtered to the 2012-2016 gods.

That appeared clear months before.

Now, McCain has really miffed the rightwing. The Hill reports that McCain

has alienated the Republican base by supporting a $700 billion Wall Street bailout and proposing that the federal government buy mortgages facing default, conservative lawmakers and observers say.

Three conservative House Republicans (speaking on background) said Sen. McCain (Ariz.), the party’s presidential nominee, missed an important opportunity to prove his credentials as a proponent of limited government by opposing the massive bailout.

I'm suggesting a plot by conservative movement officers to sabotage the GOP nominee for president of the United States.

And many conservatives need only participate with faint energy in the campaign to add their support to this McCainCon conspiracy, watching a man they dislike take the fall in a Goldwateresque election for the GOP.

I wonder if the Council for National Policy and other McCainCon operatives will watch McCain fall with modesty and grace.

- via mal contends

George Will Blasts John McCain

Though taking care to hit the American left and to not veer from his own residence in market-based unreality, George Will lets McCain have it today in the Post.

"It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency," says Will.

My Friends, McCainCon Is in Motion

Update: Novak - McCain's Christian Problem

Obama advocates concerned about the recent pro-McCain coverage on CNN and MSNBC as a precursor of biased media treatment to come in the general election can relax.

McCain is a fatally weak GOP candidate to face Obama, and it’s likely that many GOP movement wingers see him as a 2008 sacrificial sheep happily slaughtered to the 2012-2016 gods.

There's no open talk from GOP insiders of course, but there is a secret let-McCain-fall program: Call it McCainCon [a play on the secret EComCon conspiracy from the Seven Days in May movie based on the Fletcher Knebel- Charles W. Bailey II book].

I'm suggesting a plot by conservative movement officers to sabotage the GOP nominee for president of the United States.

And many conservatives need only participate with faint energy in the campaign to add their support to this McCainCon conspiracy, watching a man they dislike take the fall in a Goldwateresque election for the GOP.

Consider some structural election facts and Democratic capabilities.

GOP Coalition

McCain has always been one of the least likely candidates to assemble a winning GOP coalition for a presidential run.

Consider the religious right.

"Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who reiterated his determination to not work and vote for McCain a few weeks ago.

And religious right leaders have not forgiven McCain for his wildly unpopular McCain/Feingold bill, and his April 9, 2000 speech trashing the religious right (that’s the Robertson/Falwell “agents of intolerance” speech).

Looking forward to the Ohio/Texas races this Tuesday, its bears noting that in the last GOP primary in Wisconsin (Feb. 19), McCain barely exceeded the margin of victory over Mike Huckabee that Obama scored over Hillary, 18 percent, and 17 percent respectively.

With respect to the religious right, the question is not whether, but how badly McCain will underperform in the general election. In McCain the GOP has picked a candidate arguably as bad as Rudy or Romney.

And John McCain’s courting of and endorsement by John Hagee who awaits a coming world war that will usher in the second coming, calls the Catholic Church the "anti-Christ" and "great whore," and says Jews are responsible for their persecution, will not help McCain with either the religious right or the casually political independents and working class Catholics—all with whom McCain needs in order to excel in the general election.

Iraq

With overwhelming majorities (including active duty personnel and veterans) calling for a pull-out from Iraq, how do you think an anti-Iraq War, pro-veteran Obama will do against a man calling for troops in Iraq for as long as 100 years?

Bush

McCain has now tied himself so intimately with Bush with accompanying flipflops on torture and tax cuts for the super-wealthy, that no amount of September/October spinning can extricate McCain from the political sinkhole that is George W. Bush.

No Election for Old Ways

On both style and substance, Obama offers a change away from the last eight years of government under Bush/Rove/Cheney. Does anyone believe that McCain in both style and substance offers something different than the Bush regime?

Conclusion

There are other weaknesses—the economy, unemployment, education, health care, as well as desired changes of political tone, attitudes toward government being the peoples’ instrument, and pro-Democratic disparity in party enthusiasm—in which McCain offers no match for Obama.

Honest GOP players know this, though saying it out loud would be silly; and the fact of the matter is that many GOP movement warriors simply do not like McCain for a variety of personal and political reasons and are happy to watch him take the fall in a silent and deadly political plot of inaction.