0 Responses to “LIVE BLOG: When a Professional Talks to a Lunatic”

1. JohnR223 says:

   October 22, 2008 at 4:54 pm

   Conservative pundits giving up on McCain Palin will be no small contributing factor.
2. On the Right says:

   October 22, 2008 at 4:57 pm

   #1 — I don’t think so. I mean, do you know anyone (anyone at all) who switched to Obama because of (say) David Brooks, or Christopher Buckley?
3. RCAR says:

   October 22, 2008 at 5:01 pm

   On the Right Says:
   October 22nd, 2008 at 4:57 PM
   #1 — I don’t think so. I mean, do you know anyone (anyone at all) who switched to Obama because of (say) David Brooks, or Christopher Buckley?

   WFB Jr’s thoughts on the Iraq War(he compared to the French Wars in Algeria/Vietnam)certainly influenced my opinion about our strategic decisions.
4. Sirah Plain! says:

   October 22, 2008 at 5:04 pm

   Trust Fund jenny fair minded? What drugs are you on, Pete? Rubin has been the nastiest, meanest spreader of slander: “terrorist” “socialist” etc. In other words, לשון הרע

   Republican primary voters chose the most moderate of the pro-life candidates. they did not choose either nasty anti-Mormon Huckleberry, who is really Palin in drag, or even consider Mormon Mitt Romney, or homeland security pro torture supply side hardliner Giuliani. McCain’s mistake is that he pushed away the moderates under the mistaken theory that the base had anywhere to go. No way was any base Republican going to stay home in 2008 against either Clinton or Obama.

   Keep up your purity ideological tests, you are so much like your Trostskyite parents it’s hilarious, especially Trust Find Jenny.
5. Elliott A Green says:

   October 22, 2008 at 5:22 pm

   Of course the world financial crisis is the main factor in McCain falling behind The One. But McC made a mistake in my view in not stressing “neighborhood organizers” like The One were responsible for the subprime collapse which led to the financial crisis. Groups like ACORN were pressuring banks to grant large mortgages to folks with weak credit histories, poor credit risks, limited ability to pay back loans, etc. These were obama’s guys who bear a great deal of the guilt for the subprime crisis. Why didn’t McC point this out? Did some Republicans too, maybe even McC himself, vote to ease lending restrictions on banks? If so McC could have used this to spread the guilt, point out that it was a reckless notion originating in the foolish or nasty minds of ACORN types. If he had forthrightly examined the causes of the subprime crisis, maybe even Bush admin policy, maybe he could have turned public anger around.
6. Alexander Almasov says:

   October 22, 2008 at 5:44 pm

   #4: Yeah, of course, given the choice it’s always better to go with Vissarionych. After all, even Rosenfeld called him Uncle! (Or was it cried uncle?)
7. Typical Obama Sycophant says:

   October 22, 2008 at 5:54 pm

   Trust Fund jenny fair minded? What drugs are you on, Pete? Rubin has been the nastiest, meanest spreader of slander: “terrorist” “socialist” etc. In other words, לשון הרע

   Republican primary voters chose the most moderate of the pro-life candidates. they did not choose either nasty anti-Mormon Huckleberry, who is really Palin in drag, or even consider Mormon Mitt Romney, or homeland security pro torture supply side hardliner Giuliani. McCain’s mistake is that he pushed away the moderates under the mistaken theory that the base had anywhere to go. No way was any base Republican going to stay home in 2008 against either Clinton or Obama.

   Keep up your purity ideological tests, you are so much like your Trostskyite parents it’s hilarious, especially Trust Find Jenny.
8. joe says:

   October 22, 2008 at 8:40 pm

   Had McCain not “suspended his campaign” he might have mitigated the harm by the financial meltdown, but it was the financial meltdown that hurt him.

   As for the Palin pick, obviously she helped enormously with the base. She was mishandled by the McCain campaign initially. That was a huge mistake. Over playing Obama’s “pig with lipstick” comment was a mistake, but a minor one. How she was trotted out to Gibson and Couric…well that was a more serious mistake. Better to have done mini press conferences at events and talk radio (which is what she is doing now) from the beginning.

   Would Mitt Romney have made a difference as the Veep choice? Obviously Romney is a lot more savy on discussing economic issues than Palin or McCain. Hindsight is 20 20, but Mitt would have made a better VP choice given this meltdown. Some suggest Romney should have been the nominee, but I doubt he would be better than where McCain is at this point.
9. J.E. Dyer says:

   October 22, 2008 at 9:34 pm

   While I don’t think McCain would be doing better if he had blamed the financial crisis on ACORN instead of Wall Street and Chris Cox, I do agree with many among the contentions regulars that this crisis originally presented a superb opportunity to make a distinctive policy point, and one that would have resonated with voters.

   The average American thinks it’s downright F-ing stupid for the government to: push lenders to make loans to bad credit risks, imply that it is going to guarantee those loans, threaten lenders with lawsuits if they won’t make high-risk loans, and remove all the systemic brakes on using bad loans to expand “virtual” capital, so that the carelessness the government wants lenders to exercise looks more and more profitable by the year.

   Yet so far, Congress has done nothing practical to stop these practices. The bail-out is, in fact, meant to enable us to CONTINUE doing the same things that brought us to this pass. Congress wants to ensure credit will be available to bad credit risks, on substantially the same terms on which it is available to good ones — and not one proposal has been put forward to change that unnatural and unworkable aspiration, the central source of the current credit mess.

   It doesn’t matter whether ACORN is pushing this agenda or the Heritage Foundation is. (The Heritage Foundation isn’t.) The agenda is what’s bad. McCain could have made a tremendous point with the public by putting it in these POLICY terms. Instead, he applied himself zealously to the effort to avoid coming to grips with our basic policy problem. He not only voted to bail out the leaky boat, he put his stamp all over the process.

   We shouldn’t be surprised that such limitations of vision fail to inspire voters. If Obama had appeared to have any sort of a clue about the financial crisis at all (who remembers anything he has said about it?), he might indeed be running away with the polls today. Fortunately, he has only managed to look like a tax-and-spend leftist no matter what the economic topic.
10. MARCU$ says:

    October 23, 2008 at 1:59 am

    Sigh.

    Every single right wing partisan in this forum seems to assume the problem is McCain did not “blame” the usual bogeymen (Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Frank/Pelosi/Reid) strongly or often enough.
    I think former McCain campaign strategist Mike Murphy gets it: the problem is the McCain campaign does not have a positive message and does not really offer solutions to the nation’s current problems. Not a good thing, considering McCain is trying to persuade voters another Republican deserves the presidency despite the abysmal approval ratings of the incumbent president…

    You folks might not like Obama/Biden’s vision of “change”, but at least the Dems have been vigorously pushing their proposals and solutions during the banking crisis. What does McCain care about? His number one hobby horse seems to be congressional earmark reform and now also “Joe the Plumber”. Not much there, I’d say.

    MARCU$
11. J.E. Dyer says:

    October 23, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    MARCU$ — actually, you are wrong in your comprehensive claim about “every single right wing partisan in this forum.” See my #9 above.

    Regarding Obama/Biden, please articulate what “proposals” and “solutions” they have been vigorously pushing during the banking crisis.