McCain vs. North Carolina

Just when I had decided to back away from posting about McCain for a few days out of fears that I was beginning to sound like a one-note-symphony Crazy John has to go and thrust himself into the news again by viciously smearing his fellow Republicans. The issue is the devastatingly effective, and totally appropriate, ad being run by the North Carolina Republican party. Let's watch it just to review:



Now let's remind ourselves what McCain has to say about the NC GOP:

Republican US presidential candidate John McCain accused North Carolina's Republican Party of being "out of touch with reality" over its refusal to pull an advertisement criticising Democrat Barack Obama. . .

"They're not listening to me because they're out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable," McCain told NBC's Today Show.

"I've done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue," he added.

Asked if the state party's unwillingness to heed his call raised questions about his leadership, McCain replied: "I don't know exactly how to respond to that."

So as far as Crazy John is concerned if you don't immediately say "how high" when he says "jump" you are out of touch reality and the Republican Party?

John McCain is not even a real Republican! What the hell does he know about being in touch with the Republican Party?

And as long as we are talking about people's grips on reality McCain wants people to think that he is a conservative. How fraking delusional is that?

Watch the ad, listen to it. It is not racist. Not unless you consider it "racist" to take note of the fact that someone else is a racist. By that standard every organization that has ever existed to fight racism (from Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Council to the NAACP to the EEOC) would be racist itself.

Yet McCain is willing to tar the entire NC Republican party as racist. Why? Rush Limbaugh talked about this on his show Friday. Let's look at some of what he said:

This is very, very tough for me, folks, but I think Senator McCain has a responsibility now to explain exactly what is racist about this ad. This is precisely what the Drive-Bys want in the Democrat Party: they want any criticism of Obama to be disqualified and not permitted because it's racist, and McCain's falling right in line. And don't tell me he's got some grand strategy here to pick up a lot of black vote in the general election.

That's not what this is. If you think there's a grand strategy here, you're missing the point. Keep listening. Senator McCain owes us an explanation. Tell us what is racist about this North Carolina ad. He sounds just like a liberal, asking that we may take inferences about the North Carolina Republican Party and the people that run it. I take from this several things. Number one: it appears to me that Senator McCain is back to his usual tactics of using Republicans as foils. He's attacking the president over Hurricane Katrina. Not the mayor of New Orleans, but the president. He's trying to prove to the liberal media, the so-called independents and Democrats, that he's the eventual nominee of the Republican Party but that this is all about him. It's not about Republicans, not conservatives, so no need to worry about him being too much of either. He's sending a message to Democrats and independents whose votes he wants: "Don't worry about me. I'm not one of these wacko conservative right-wingers." It's about him, not about a grand strategy here.

That's why he is relentlessly pounding away at the North Carolina party now. This is a tactic. He's creating an image of himself at the expense of others, and he does this all the time. Now, I take from this -- if you do want to talk about strategy -- that McCain believes he has the South in his back pocket even though he didn't win it in the primaries. Huckabee did. He wouldn't risk alienating Southerners over an ad that clearly is not racist if he didn't think he had the southern vote in his back pocket. I don't think he understands how livid North Carolina Republicans are about this, and Republicans everywhere. Now, it is obvious to me (and this has been one of my concerns from the get-go) that Senator McCain has no interest in rebuilding the Republican Party as an institution. He intends, instead, to use it to achieve his ends and leave it in whatever state it is when he is done. Now, we know this. What was the purpose of McCain-Feingold? It was to cripple the party system.

It was to cripple the party system. It was McCain's revenge when he lost the 2000 GOP primary which he blamed on party officials and Bush. It's interesting. Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal has a piece today on how McCain has been hoodwinked by his own McCain-Feingold restrictions, and is now finding ways to get around his own restrictions in McCain-Feingold in order to raise money and keep up with Obama. Now, a question I have for Senator McCain and his handlers: "Senator, you love being praised as a 'maverick;' you love being praised as an independent. Why can't the rest of us be independents? Why can't the rest of us be mavericks?" I want to be very clear about this, folks. If Senator McCain is campaigning not as a Republican or conservative, but as a "maverick," and an "independent," why shouldn't we behave in the same way? Why do we have to fall in line with whatever he dictates? Why does the North Carolina Republican Party have to fall in line and do what he says; when he is free to abandon us at any and all times, on the basis of his own desire?

Why should Republicans vote for McCain? Just because he's a Republican? McCain himself teaches us that's the wrong thing to do! His recent Senate career is based not on voting for people or things because they're Republican, but rather other criteria. So why should conservatives get behind McCain? Just because he claims to be conservative? He teaches us that's the wrong thing to do as well. If McCain isn't going to be loyal to his own party, and if he isn't going to be loyal to conservative principles, why should Republicans be loyal to him? Why should conservatives be loyal to him? The way I see it, folks, we are all mavericks and we are all independents, now. Senator McCain, with these outbursts last night and today, seems to have reserved the right to dictate to all Republicans what they should say, what they shouldn't say, what they should think; while at the same time reserving for himself the right to abandon the Republican Party whenever he so chooses.

So we're supposed to do what he says. We're supposed to not run commercials that he doesn't like. We're supposed to not criticize Obama in a way he doesn't like. We're only supposed to do what he tells us to do, but then he's free to wander off the reservation any time he wants, and we are not to be critical of that. So it's almost as though that he is demanding, McCain is demanding, that we follow a cult of personality here. But since we're not Democrats and since we're not liberals, we don't do that. We don't follow cults. Those of you who are conservative Republicans follow ideas. We follow issues. These ideas and issues that we believe are the best for the future much America and its people. We're not interested in following a cult of personality because he makes us feel good, or because we think he cares, or because we think he's some kind of messianic figure. If you want the support of conservative Republicans, if you want the loyalty of conservative Republicans, you have to earn it. You don't get it by commanding we be loyal while you aren't at the same time.

[. . .]

So McCain is out there chastising the North Carolina Republican Party. They're not listening to him. He's upset about it. We're supposed to do everything he says, but he's allowed to be the maverick. He can cross the aisle. He can make deals with Democrats left and right. He can sell out his own party. He can leave his party in the lurch. But we? We are supposed to sit there and follow the orders as dictated by the enemy campaign. We're not to run ads he doesn't like. We're not to say things he doesn't like. We are to say things he does like. He's free to abandon us; we have to stay loyal. He can be a "maverick." Well, Senator McCain, we are all mavericks now. We are all mavericks and independents, and that's that.

Remember that Rush Limbaugh has been working hard with his Operation Chaos to get McCain elected yet even he can't stomach McCain when he comes out and shows himself as he truly is.

Limbaugh is exactly right about McCain. John McCain has no intention of building up the Republican Party as an institution nor does he have any intention of advancing the interests of the conservative movement.

He is lying to Republicans and conservatives and using them as nothing more than stepping stones to the White House. He will leave the Republican Party critically damaged fractured, demoralized and bereft of its conservative base. McCain knows this and not only does he not care he is counting on it!

Please listen to me. The United States has come too far down the road to socialism to be able to survive a 20 or 30 year period of unbroken rule by socialist left-wing Democrats. There would still be a place on the map called the USA, but it would not be a free nation nor would it be a prosperous nation. It would not be the nation bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers.

Without a Republican Party which is both viable and conservative the long term prospects for the survival of the US as a free and prosperous are nil. Zip, Zero, Nada.

The election of John McCain as president will leave a Republican Party which is neither viable nor conservative.

For the sake of our nation's future we have got to accept a president Clinton or a president Obama and "screw our courage to the sticking place" and fight the worst of their socialist excesses in exactly the same way we fought socialized medicine under Clinton and amnesty under Bush. We will have to gut it out for two years until a Republican congress can be sworn in and restore some measure of sanity to Washington just as they did in 1994.

To do otherwise virtually guarantees that Ronald Reagan will have been our last conservative president and the 1994 congress our last conservative legislature.

Now, I will back off McCain posting for a few days - unless he sticks his snout into things again in such an egregious way that I have to take notice.