Yes, We Have An Opponent
- 05.09.2008 - 10:58 AMThe RNC has come out with a new ad mocking the “Yes, we can” chant. It raises a number of questions about Obama’s “present” votes in the Illinois state senate, his spending plans, his votes to cut troop funding, his Snobgate comments, and his lack of national experience. What is not clear yet is the overall picture the Republicans are trying to paint. Are they going down the “experience” route? (Didn’t that bomb for Hillary Clinton?) Are they going to fight the culture war again?
For now, they have just thrown some issues against the wall. But it helps to have some consistent message. In 2004 Republicans painted John Kerry as an effete flip-flopper. In 2008, John McCain is being decried by Democrats as an out-of-touch George W. Bush clone. But what is the Obama image the Republicans want voters to conjure up? We’ll find out in the weeks ahead what that core message about Obama will be–or if there will be one at all.
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May 9th, 2008 at 11:09 AM
Going down the “experience” route did, as you note, bomb for Hillary. And it may well bomb for McCain, too, but I think you could make a case that it’s at least worth a shot. The case is that he’s dealing with a different audience, facing a different choice. Hillary was dealing with an audience of Democratic primary voters, facing the choice between her and Obama. Many of those voters may have been looking for any excuse to vote for someone other than Hillary, who, it turns out, was not as popular as she thought she was within her own party. McCain is dealing with an audience consisting of the whole electorate, including independents, facing a choice between Obama and McCain. There may be a different dynamic at work.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:10 AM
What’s the use, Jennifer? Not only will Obama win the Dem nomination (more or less a foregone conclusion), but will WIN THE PRESIDENCY. You have to, you MUST, realize that it’s been awhile since the Left has shown everyone their failures. We on the Right, however, are showing our failures in rather vivid living color, right now. Combine that with the rather obvious history that can be made by electing Obama President, and the GOP will be rather lucky to keep the losses under 3 in the Senate, and under 20 in the House.
It will take a couple of years before the GOP can regain the trust of the people, and THAT will only happen because Obama will eventually need a strong check applied to him.
If there is some good news coming from this, it’s that Clinton’s defeat will also end any chance that Jeb Bush ever had of getting into the Presidency. Free from that threat, GW Bush (and Bill Clinton, for that matter) will get a fairer historical analysis of his presidency than he’d otherwise have a right to expect.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:20 AM
I don’t know how to get this through to you. We MUST realize that, in the modern political era, the Republican Party is not meant to be a global leader of our nation’s historic role. Look, Bush arguably became the first Republican since Theodore Roosevelt to be a global leader on the scale that leaders like Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy were able to project. And during the time of those leaders, Republicans were allowed to have loser “America First” sentiments, but at the end of the day were EXPECTED to salute everything those leaders ran up the flagpole while saying “Politics stops at the water’s edge.” Not only could Democrats never say “Politics stops at the water’s edge,” but also actively engaged in enough sedition to wear the GOP down and throw it off the global leader role these last four years.
It’s very simple: Republicans and conservatives are better suited to say “Me, too” to leadership by the Dems. The Democrats will NEVER, EVER, say “Me, too!”
So, Republicans, when Obama runs something up the flagpole, will you salute? Or will you be MEN for once in your lives and actively RESIST?!
May 9th, 2008 at 11:31 AM
Wasn’t Reagan “a global leader”? If not, who triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union?
May 9th, 2008 at 12:07 PM
Going the experience route will be much easier to sell for McCain than Hillary. The latter had no serious experience to speak of, none, except a handful of years in the Senate mostly spent planning for and then running for president. The electorate as a whole will and clearly does buy McCain’s claim to experience as a major selling point. It’s not the only one, but it counts for a lot in contrast with his opponent.
But as I look at the RNC ad, it’s far more about wisdom, judgment, policy, and having the guts to vote on tough issues than it was about experience. On all these counts Obama clearly comes out the loser. In this respect, it’s a polite but hard-hitting ad that works.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:17 PM
1. Those with memories will recall that Nixon and Kissinger were active and often successful on the world stage.
The 1973 Paris Peace Accords were able to end the Vietnam War as a standoff; that is, until the Democrats in Congress removed all US military support for South Vietnam so as to insure its later demise. Democrats in Congress still have trouble grasping the idea of a responsible US role in the world. Some speak and ask as if we’re the enemy.
Nixon also OK’d the vital US military resupply of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
2. As regards the issue of experience, the nature (or even the existence) of Hillary Clinton’s experience in governing was always in question. This made it impossible for her to succeed in bashing Obama about his inexperience. McCain has done some genuinely good things. Obama has not.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:20 PM
Above in 1., s/b “speak and act”, not “speak and ask”.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Sorry, Brad, but that’s a very peculiar, a-historical view on the role of Republicans and Democrats regarding global leadership.
In historical terms, the Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty of failing to follow a “stops at the water’s edge” policy. Take a look, just to give one relevant example, at the savaging that Truman, Marshall, and others received from the China Lobby at the time of the Korean War: Charges of treason and the like were in common usage, by sitting congressmen and their allies, often brought up in direct connection to the Red Scare. In the meantime, the Lobby’s hero Douglas MacArthur was defying and ignoring the Truman Administration and the JCS, leading to the needless deaths of thousands of US soldiers and Marines among many others - yet was receiving hagiographical press treatment that would shame the most fervent Obamaphile and have given a Stalinist propagandist a run for his money.
If and when a President Obama makes good on his variously defeatist, inane, and insane campaign positions and promises, I would expect an exacting scrutiny of the results, and a torrent of payback criticism from Republicans and others. As I’ve said elsewhere, I wouldn’t expect him to retreat pell-mell from Iraq merely to preserve good relations with Code Pink, and actual or potential resistance from those with greater credibility on military matters (Odierno, Petraeus, and others) will restrain him to some extent, but I do think that his administration would make for a difficult and dangerous time in international relations, with a less than outside chance of doing grievous lasting harm to US interests.
It would have a lot less to do, however, with some intrinsic partisan calling to world leadership than a combination of inexperience, ignorance, bad ideas, and a false and shallow critique of current US policy.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
This discussion follows the earlier one on looking for a theme. I think a call to patriotism, American renewal, that echoes Reagan’s line “We ARE the change,” possibly the line itself, should be the theme - not just blatant flag-waving, though that, too, including lapel pins. A McCain/flag lapel pin should go up for sale yesterday, or maybe a campaign button in the form of a lapel pin… Against Obama’s call to warmed over liberalism and identity politics in the guise of change, the world-changing spirit of Americanism…
May 9th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
“We’re Americans. Got a problem with that?”