Accepting Reality

By Ron Beasley

Now the Republicans as we know are not very good at accepting reality.  Well David Frum may be a temporary exception - he advises the Republicans to write off John McCain and spend the money they have trying to save a few Senate seats.

There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.

A year ago, the Arizona senator's team made a crucial strategic decision. McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography. On policy, he'd hew mostly to conservative orthodoxy, with a few deviations -- most notably, his support for legalization for illegal immigrants. But this strategy wasn't yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice.

That didn't work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain campaign has Palinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.

So none of it's working and McCain is going to lose big and take a lot of other Republicans down with him.  So what should the Republicans do?

In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

Of course he's right but I hope nobody listens to him.  Of course even though he came to a logical conclusion it was for all the wrong reasons.  I think Robert Stacey McCain is right when he blames John McCain's ill fortunes on Sarah Palin and not on McCain's erratic reaction to the financial crisis.

Comments

[Peter G.]

Do all McCains have those curiously androgynous middle names?

[Peter G.]

Stacey McCain's analysis is sadly unsupported by the demographic drift of women away from the McCain campaign once they got a good look at the Moose Hunter

[Ron Beasley]

Peter G.
I certainly don't think the Palin nomination helped but in reality it mostly alienated Republicans. I think that R.S. McCain's observation that it was the economy and John McCain's reaction to it account for much of the decline in J. McCain's fortunes is accurate.

[distributorcap]

mccain would never be allowed to throw in the towel - even tho it is virtually impossible for him to win - fairly --

mccains fall can be attributed to many things - but primarily it is Palin - she alienated everyone except the same 22% who still actually like Bush --- he picked a person that emblemized all that was wrong for the past 8 years -- for what? mccain may be pissed enough that he doesnt mind taking the whole party down with him

[Robert Stacy McCain]

Uh, you've stated my argument 180 degrees backward: I believe that John McCain's support for the bailout cost him the election. I argued against the bailout, and said on Oct. 2 (the day the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan) that his Sept. 24 stunt was the direct cause of his collapse in the polls, an argument I reiterated Oct. 7 in an article with the blunt title, "How John McCain Lost."

[BJ Bjornson]

Yeah Ron, you did flip RSM's argument around in your post, though your comment seems to agree with what he actually said.

I, of course, do think Palin was the big reason behind his crash. She gave McCain a big bounce to begin with, but like Giuliani, the more people got to know her, the less people liked her. She took away McCain's best argument in being the experienced old hand and turned him into the gambler rolling the dice. When the economy started to melt down and he launched stunt after stunt, it fed directly into that image of someone who made choices on impulse, without thinking them through.

Ah well, it is an interesting exercise to figure out which of the two cost him more.

[Peter G.]

Well Ron I think you could argue this either way. Palin's job wasn't just to solidify support from the base it was also to bring in disgruntled HRC supporters and also any politically disinterested and easily swayed voters who would buy into the Governor/hockey mom theme. She manifestly failed to do this.I believe it is going to take a very serious statistical post mortem to determine which bullet was the cause of death of the McCain campaign. It's very hard to tell when the victim was standing in front of a machine gun.

[Peter G.]

One other thing I forgot to mention. I concur that the Palin VP choice has brought some disaffected Republicans over to Obama but look who it's bringing; the moderate thinking Republicans and there's not a lot of them.