The Republican Dilemma

I am hoping for a great implosion of the Republican coalition this year - not really because I think that the Demos will have all that much to offer us, but because I now believe that the Republicans have become toxic. I hope to explain that in more detail over the coming weeks, and what I hope a real drubbing at the polls will do for the Repubs, but for the moment let's just look at the Republican pundits and their reaction to political reality. In this case in the person of John McCain as the likely nominee and a possible victor over Clinton or Obama.

Mona Charon is a conservative pundit who appears occasionally on TV and on National Review's web site. After writing at NRO about the blistering e-mails she got from readers for suggesting that McCain was trying to meet conservatives more than half-way, which they clearly thought was not enough, she writes ...

The problem with John McCain is not just that he strays. George Bush has strayed from conservatism too. So has Fred Thompson, and certainly, Mitt Romney has as well. But Senator McCain has a knack for saying things in just the tones and accents that liberals prefer.

In 2000, he condemned the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.*” In 2004, when Sen. John Kerry was getting his comeuppance from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, vets whom he had known during the war and who couldn’t remain silent as the Democratic nominee distorted his war record**, John McCain weighed in by calling them “dishonorable and dishonest.***” When the Bush Administration was being vilified as a nest of Torquemadas for using waterboarding on three occasions, McCain came forward to condemn waterboarding as torture****.

Interesting, if true, as someone once said. She then makes what I think is an accurate point about McCain and the conservatives:

his return from the political grave can probably be traced to the moment (October 22) when he joshingly referred to having missed the Woodstock music festival in 1969 because “I was tied up at the time.” In that instant he came to personify (for many) the conservative side of the great 1960s chasm that (Obama’s irenic rhetoric notwithstanding) continues to divide our society. Not only was he not smoking pot and lolling in the mud with his girlfriend, you could almost hear Republicans telling themselves that he was standing up to torture at the hands of America’s enemies.

And that may explain the otherwise inexplicable animus out there - some are refighting the 60s era. Now mind you, very few of those who are so het up about 'liberals at Woodstock' served in uniform, though they are willing to trash the reputation of those who did if it suits them (e.g. John Kerry, Al Gore, and even ... John McCain). It's no deeper than a lifestyle thing. Perhaps as Henry Kissinger said about academic battles, such struggles are so vicious because they are about so little.

But what does M. Charon think of McCain herself?

There is a strutting self-righteousness about McCain that goes hand-in-hand with a nitroglycerin temper. He flatters himself that his colleagues in the Senate dislike him because he stands up for principle, while they sell their souls for pork. Not exactly. He is disliked because on many, many occasions he has been disrespectful, belligerent, and vulgar to those who differ with him.

So there you have it. God, I hope thousands and thousands of conservatives think like she does. Otherwise, the Demos may be in more trouble than they may think at the moment.

* they are
** he didn't
*** they were
**** it is


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