Preparing For McCain

I've been one of those who thought that McCain would never get the Republican nomination because he'd burned too many bridges with the Theocons. But I underestimated his willingness to bend over for the extreme right. McCain is extraordinarily popular and I am beginning to think that he might actually have a chance. If he were the nominee, and were in his present political position as the "rugged independent," we would have no chance to win the election. None.

So it's time we thought about how to destroy this guy. Let's not wait until October of 2008 to take the risk seriously, shall we? There are 3 related arguments we can make against McCain. The first is that he is a faker- he talks a lot about independence, but he really buckles under and will do anything to gratify his political ambition. Just look at how he got rolled on the torture amendment. The other line of attack is that he is in fact a secret right-wing radical - we should hammer home is lunatic position on abortion in particular. With some skill we could foist the following dilemma on him: either he really likes the South Dakota law, in which case he is quite simply no moderate. Or he is only doing it to kow-tow to the right, in which case he is without principle (referring back to argument 1).

The third attack on McCain is that despite all of his protestations, he is a shill for George Bush. Bush is likely to be radioactive by 2008, so we should tie McCain as firmly to him as possible early. There are lots of pictures of him campaigning for George Bush and saying how wonderful W is. There is also his pro-Bush voting record, which is like 99%. We could say something like "you only voted against George Bush 3 times in 8 years. Is that independence?"

We would have to carefully balance these three lines of attack, but I think there is the embryo of an effective assault here. What people should avoid doing is attacking his age or supposed poor temper. The age thing didn't work against Reagan, and the temper thing can easily be turned around to feed into McCain's "real man" image.

So let's get to work!