I wrote the following on February 19th, 2006.
Daily Pundit » A Deal Was Made
A deal was made. I don’t know where (I suspect Washington), I don’t know when (I suspect prior to the 2004 campaign), I don’t know what (I suspect McCain was to leave Bush a clear field in 2004 in exchange for Bush’s support in 2008).I can’t prove it, but a deal was made. I’m sure of it.
I elaborated on the idea here:
Ironically, the erstwhile “maverick” is pursuing an insider strategy, hiring George W. Bush’s consultants, lining up local party loyalists and shaking the same establishment money tree that, in the 2000 campaign, he complained had given Bush a pampered, rich kid’s advantage.And, I suspect, using Bush’s very own private Big Black Book to do it with.
I remind you of this as a prelude to my analysis of what is happening in the current GOP primary race, and why it is happening the way it is.
Do not be fooled. What you are witnessing today is a war for the soul, if it can be said to have one, of the Republican party. One one side is the GOP machine establishment - represented by the Bushes, the Roves, and all the family and political dynasty politicians and their strategists who have tried to keep control of the party over the years.
On the other side are those whom the establishment regards as the barbarians at the gates: the rabble who listen to the conservative talk shows, the talker hosts themselves, the “Reagan Republicans,” the Gingrich revolutionaries, and now the bloggers and their readers.
This is, in a nutshell, a war between those who value principle over power, and those for whom power is first, foremost, and nearly everything.
I have felt for quite a while that the Bushes made a deal with McCain - that in exchange for his support of the establishment (McCain is about as much a “maverick” as George Herbert Walker Bush or Bob Dole), Bush and the establishment would back him in his run for the Presidency this year. I’ve seen nothing to disabuse me of that notion.
The battle that shook everything up was the temporary defeat of the GOP establishment over illegal immigration during the past two years.
It has been an article of faith among GOP establishment strategists like Rove that the way to continued power is to enlist the waves of immigrant Hispanics, both legal and illegal, into the GOP. From their point of view, it looked like a slam dunk. They’d had no luck in prying other ethnic votes away from the Democrats - the black vote in particular - but the Hispanics were flooding in in such numbers they made the other ethnic voting groups look insignificant in comparison. And there was nothing in the Hispanic culture that necessarily favored the left. Hispanics tend to be old-line Catholic, and abortion is a big issue with them, a fact that favored the GOP, not the Democrats. Hispanics also tended toward hard work and entrepreneurial endeavors, again a cultural bias that tends to favor stated GOP principles, not vice versa - and that was even more true with second generation Hispanics, who assimilated quite well into the larger American culture.
These GOP strategists were also aware that other demographic trends were moving away from them. The aging of America will move tens of millions of Boomers into the group of net receivers of government largess, primarily Social Security and Medicare. That makes them prime territory for the left, no matter what their political tendencies might have been during their productive working years.
In short, the GOP establishment perceives the entire nation moving leftwards, and a long time ago made the decision to move the GOP to the left in order to keep in step with the culture at large. George Bush was the first of the “new breed” of GOP establishment characters to achieve the White House, with his doctrine of “compassionate” (liberal) conservatism. And it seemed to work. At least, it kept him in the White House for two terms, if only with razor thin wins each time.
So imagine the shock of the establishment when the single biggest building block of their “new GOP coalition” was dealt a shattering blow by the defeat of their attempt to legalize, via amnesty, the status of some ten-twenty million illegal Hispanic aliens currently residing in the U.S.
Suddenly, staring them right in the face, they saw the ruination of all their carefully constructed plans, and with that, a concomitant loss of power! And what - or who - was the cause?
Those damned barbarian conservatives, who don’t understand that principles don’t win elections, nor are elections about anything other than who gets to exercise power. Rabble! Principled fools!
And thus the battle lines were joined for real.
John McCain is the standard bearer this year. The establishment GOP machine is one hundred percent behind him. Opposed to him is the conservative coalition of talkers and bloggers and their consumers - it is a battle between the media and ideological assets of both sides.
The conservatives won the immigration battle with a shocking defeat for the establishment. Now the battle is joined again over the Presidency - and if John McCain is nominated and then wins the general election, the American conservative movement may never recover. On the other hand, a crushing McCain defeat in the general, attributed primarily to the refusal of the conservative movement to support him, will be an equally crushing defeat for the GOP establishment attempting to remake the party in its preferred liberal-conservative image - an image in which the “conservative” part is mostly window dressing for the suckers.
I’m posting this in an effort to demonstrate to you what is really at stake here: It’s not whether McCain is marginally better or worse than any Democrat candidate. It’s what the future of the GOP will look like. And what your future will look like.
Next up: What conservatives must do to win this war.
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Which is why I don’t give a rat’s *ss what the Anchoress, Rachel Lucas, or Bill Whittle (follow the link to Rachel’s and scroll down) say: If McStain’s the nominee, I vote straight democrat.
No one has yet explained to me why the “American” people shouldn’t get all the socialism they want, until they choke on it and revolt.
Exactamundo!
What I don’t get is why so many are suckered in and can’t see this. “Oh, we HAVE to vote the GOP, no matter who the candidate is or what the policies are! Otherwise those EVUL Democrats (John McCain’s best friends) will get in!”
I hate to be cliche, but Ditto! The moment you start voting for a part BECAUSE it is the party, not what the party stands for, you lose all moral authority, and give your proxy to the power mongers at the top.
As I’ve said before, right now it’s just a question of how quickly we fall into socialism. The faster we hit rock bottom the faster we can clean up the mess. It only took us what, 30 years to figure out that lifetime welfare is a bad idea. Hopefully reality will hit faster this time.
The moment you start voting for a part BECAUSE it is the party, not what the party stands for, you lose all moral authority, and give your proxy to the power mongers at the top.
That’s why I don’t understand how anyone who was willing to vote for Bush, especially the second time around, thinks they have any moral authority from which to complain about the power mongers at the top continuing in a direction that voters endorsed. For the GOP to put up McCain isn’t a sudden reversal, and couldn’t have been done without people willing to compromise their principles year after year. And Huck’s success is similar. Bush got a lot of votes from people who just looked at the fact that he claimed to be a Christian and didn’t look any deeper than that. That attitude was heavily cultivated. And Huck is just riding that wave.
To borrow a punchline from an old joke, “We’ve already established that you’ll support a RINO, now we’re just haggling over the name.”
asdffdsaa
Dear Dumbass:
Glad to know you are still living your life unchanged from everything you thought and believed when you were five years old.
Actually, that seems to be exactly what you are doing.
Bill I do not think it is just the GOP, the Dems seem to be in the same leftward spiral. The old guard of both parties is so afraid of losing power and that is what these elections are about, who gets power. It does not just show up at the presidential elections it is inherent in all of them. These next couple of election cycles are going to be truly brutal if the “people” do not start paying attention.
Generally when someone makes a mistake, learns from it, and then corrects it, that’s called growing. What do you call it when you make a mistake, realize it, but then do it again because “well I already messed up once, might as well as continue to do it for the rest of my life.”
Insanity
Just started watching “Ghandhi” on TCM, in an early scene he’s amazed that Nehru would hire a white lawyer that he couldn’t walk down the street with. The room is looking decidedly status quo.
Next scene Ghandhi is burning his required pass, then Nehru burns his… and they’re off to the races — and we know how it turns out (though they’d all have been slaughtered if they tried that vs. our current enemies).
I feel that voting for McCain is keeping my GOP pass in my wallet, even though it’s quickly morphing into a DNC card before my very eyes. A McCain vote ain’t gonna happen here.
Amazing — I posted essentially the same sentiment not 15 minutes ago at Wizbang. For me, voting for McVain represents an abdication of moral authority and entrustment of What Must Be Best For Us All to the party machine. Which would pretty much make me …a Dhimmicrat, no?
And how many of you campaigned for your candidate? Donated money?
The fact is, the nomination process is democratic. Your guy lost because you did not work hard enough. Don’t blame the Bushes, Roves and the “establishment”. Blame yourself.
Hell, look at what a few motivated supporters were able to do with the Paul campaign. For a neo-nazi to get 10% of the vote in any state is quite an accomplishment.
Those who would wish harm upon the United States deserve neither my sympathy or respect.
Rot in hell. You’re no better than Osama.
Mustang, you jackass.
This blog worked tirelessly for Fred Thompson, and with reasonably small readership we still managed to raise nearly five thousand dollars for his campaign.
Fuck off. You morons who wish to see the US run by the Republicrat party are the true danger to our future. One party, right or wrong (or left, which is how it will really turn out).
Rot in hell. You’re no better than Obama.
Right there with you, Roy. But what if we have to choose between a near-term harm and a long-term, perhaps even existential one?
Consider — would you rather your just-of-legal-driving-age son:
a) get in a notable wreck on one of his first experiments driving like a maniac, and come out of it with relatively minor injuries yet having learned a vital life lesson, or
b) get lucky for 15 years of driving more and more like a maniac, until he one day wraps his car around a tree — perhaps orphaning a wife and child of his own?
Admittedly a not-perfect analogy, but I hope it at least illustrates the frame of mind: if some relatively minor pain in the near term can wake us up as a country, re-center us on our founding principles, then I’m more than happy to sign up for that if it can help us avoid going down in history as Rome: The Sequel.
Agree or disagree with my POV, but I hope you at least understand the point.
Well I’m just hoping that Clinton/Obama becomes Carter II. We survived that and what came next was Reagan. While the Dems are shaky on foreign policy I don’t think they’re Ron Paul level nuts. Sure they won’t deal with Iran or Syria but it’s not as if the RINOs are going to do anything either. That leads them free to fully implement their socialist insanity. If it’s McCain then we’re going to be sliding but not fully into it the way we would be with the Dems. And my great fear is that looking at McCain’s failure will lead people to think that he just wasn’t socialist enough, which will only prolong the pain.
It’s like beating your wife to make her love you more. Beating us with the big Hillary stick will not make us more amenable to your viewpoints.
A couple of points:
1) It won’t be relatively minor pain. The Hillary stick hurts and it will leave a scar (Universal Health Care, SC Justices).
2) Why would it re-center anything within the GOP? None of us wants socialized health care. Before or after Hillary 44.
We will vote for the best candidate regardless of whether we lose or win 2008. If President McCain doesn’t deliver, we will run someone against him in 2012 (a la Ford/Regan ’76). If President Hillary doesn’t deliver on the conservative agenda (which, of course, she won’t), we will run our best against her in 2012. Why is even necessary to lose on purpose in 2008?
Bill, those who would use their vote to deliberately inflict harm on the United States by giving us tax increases, abortion on demand, defeat in Iraq, socialized health care and judicial activists are the jackasses.
What good is the power to vote, when an anointed inner circle of kingmakers tell us who we shall and shall not vote for? They choose the candidates, not us. THEY choose who will receive the attention of the media, not us.
And with every election, the difference between the lesser of two evils grows smaller and smaller.
No, it’s more like cutting off your child’s allowance so he can learn a lesson about the real world. Voting for McCain would be like increasing their allowance to try and teach them self-sufficiency… reinforces the wrong behavior.
No, it’s like cutting the brakes your kid’s car to teach him to drive more safely.
And that, you jackass, would be you, voting for John McCain.
As I said, rot in hell. You’re worse than Obama. At least he’s upfront about what he’s trying to do. You’re trying to wrap yourself in the flag while your actions are to burn it.
Mustang, at what point would the shit sandwich become inedible for you?
When the GOP runs a Hillary clone? An Obama clone?
What would it take for you to cease being a Shit Sandwich Republican?
Or can you?
No, Bill. I do not want a President that will do those things to the US.
You do.
Ron Paul.
Iraq is my #1 issue.
Leaving a suicidal moron like Mustang aside, here is the procession of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan:
1. Ronald Reagan
2. George H.W. Bush. (Read my lips!)
3. George W. Bush (Compassionate conservative)
4. Potentially: John McCain: Liberal conservative maverick.
Notice anything about that sequence?
Who’s next?
5. Olympia Snowe? (liberal)
6. Mike Huckabee? (Socialist preacher)
Hey, they’re all Republicans. Shit Sandwich Republicans will vote for all of them.
And then wonder what happened to the America they once knew - back before they voted it all away, along with their party.
The only voters more reliably stupid in voting against their best interests are the Democrat black voters. I didn’t think the GOP had a segment that brain dead, but obviously, it does.
But Ron Paul is a Republican! How could you not vote the party ticket? Would you rather have Hillary or Obama?
/sarc
Frankly, all things considered, Paul would be safer for both the party and, probably, the nation than McCain. All GWB has managed to accomplish is to get us mired in a fantasy of Iraqi democracy that will shortly be destroyed by Iran. The fantasy, that is. They want the oil.
Why, in God’s name? What do you think we are going to accomplish there? Something useful like destroying the Iranian and Syrian regimes, and putting irresistible pressure on the corrupt Saudi regime that is the wellspring of all Sunni terror?
If you think that, I can understand why you think McCain is a smart choice. And the tooth fairy is real.
I’m closing this comment thread. Every time I post something that doesn’t recommend slavish devotion to whatever shit sandwich the GOP is currently serving up, the thread gets hijacked by some moron like Mustang screaming that I am a traitor to everything he holds dear.
My two options are to make him vanish, or close the thread. Which would the rest of you prefer?
I just got here really so take this FWIW. I hate closed threads. To me, Mustang is just pathetically amusing but if he’s like this all the time I can see where it would get old. You can always “unvanish” someone should they send you an email demonstrating a willingness to be civil. Habitual thread-jackers and trolls really keep me from enjoying otherwise entertaining sites and I tend to move on if trolling is out of control. That’s just me though, YMMV.
Make him vanish. He has no manners, and is clearly only interested in shouting, not listening or discussing. If he wants to rant and rave with his low-grade logic there are endless sites where he can do that.
There is sometimes an echo chamber quality to this site, but in this case I don’t regard that as a bad thing. This site is mostly about presenting a very sane, thoughtful, and experienced point of view. A LOT of people aren’t going to get that. But if you don’t post these threads, then no one benefits.
It’s interesting to contemplate what all these “Iraq is my #1 issue” people are going to do when GWB has us mostly out by November.
Glad you didn’t close the thread, I got here late.
If we conservatives (paleo- & neo-) can’t yank the GOP out of the hands of the Bush/Rove/McCain… cabal, we need to start a new party. Our best chance to take back the GOP if McCain is the nominee is to make sure the GOP suffers a massive Electoral College wipeout.
If McCain wins or even comes close, time to get serious about the new party.
FWIW Threads such as these for you Bill must be an absolute PITA but in my case they have made me evaluate my primary vote in a different direction than as just a protest. There are trolls that show up here that won’t listen and think but the commentary against them may make others see different answers to existing issues.
Decades ago Will Rogers quipped something about not belonging to an organized political party..allowed he was a democrat.
The same could be said today about what is left of the GOP. But I am not at war for the party…I have left it because I don’t think it is worth saving. I cannot support a party that would even consider embracing the likes of Huckabee and John McCain would not make a pimple on the butt of the old time fiscal conservative republicans.
I used to believe that the country was mostly politically “in the middle”…moderates that were socially liberal and fiscal conservatives. Now I wonder…it appears that government entitlements have become more important to the voters than freedom. I reckon the voters will get what they vote for…and hasten the time to lock and load.
Great post Bill. Tried to pingback but couldn’t get my standalone to accept anything. Either that or I can’t seem to figure out your pingback URL. Either way, I’m doing all I can to help defeat John McCain. Again, great post. Need More Evidence …
I’m still confused about the intensity of the hatred towards McCain. I know he has bucked the conservative movement on a few occasions but the level of animosity is amazing.
I hear and read from the right that his position on immigration is amnesty. I understand that label to a point, but that doesn’t really seem to be an accurate label for where he is now. If he had a stance in 2006 that he now admits was a mistake and he has adjusted his stance, why is that not allowed.
I want a politician who can learn from mistakes and what proof do we have that he hasn’t learned from the immigration fight of 2006?
Scott, why on earth would you believe the man? He is on record as saying he would sign the bill, today, if it were presented to him. He is on record saying he is closer to the democrat party than his own. He is endorsed by the NYT and other lefty’s.
Confusion? He is despised by conservatives because he is a liberal in sheeps clothing, pretending to be a conservative for the voters, legislating like any good socialist/fascist. It’s not “a few occasions”. It is a lifetime record.
Scott, I think the level of animosity has two primary sources.
First, if one has been paying attention to McCain’s career for a long time it becomes clear that he really is a conservative only maybe 10-20% of the time. And the other 80-90% he’s not a middle-of-the-road moderate, but rather in full agreement and collusion with far-leftists like Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. This is not something new. He has always been this way. I was living in his district in Arizona during the Savings & Loan meltdown and the Keating 5, and I’ve followed his career since.
You could also talk to party activists in his district. They practically spit at the mention of his name. Check this story in the Washington Post link
I concur.
Second, John McCain has spent the last 8 years going out of his way to poke conservatives in the eye, and calling them every dirty name in the book. And now he has the nerve to ask for the votes of the people he’s been vilifying? No surprise that they are taking a certain satisfaction in making the same suggestions to him that he’s been making to them all these years.
Beyond that, John McCain has zero chance of winning the election. You can see that a large number of conservatives will never vote for him. And if he becomes the nominee the MSM will turn on him and boy does his career provide plenty of ammunition. Keating 5, his temper, his age, his conduct with his Senate colleagues, etc.
My personal belief is that John McCain has Short Man Syndrome. His stubbornness, his need to throw his weight around, his insistence on being a “maverick” (nobody’s telling ME what to do!), his temper, his belligerence, his delight in poking people in the eye, his seeming compulsion to take deliberately confrontational positions, etc., etc. Even if I agreed with all his policies, he is mentally completely unfit to be CIC of the USA, nor to have his finger on the nuclear trigger.
You first.
When the majority of the people are no longer “Americans” because of demonstrated ignorance of the Constitution, what, exactly, are we wishing harm on?
America isn’t just a land mass, or a government. It is people who believe in the ideals laid down by the Founders. When the evil of plantation slavery had to be corrected, and no compromise would work, a Civil War was fought. We can do no less against the collectivist slavery that McCain, as much as Hillary or Obama, is a perfect example of.
To pick up on the driving analogies above, it’s like having a kid who drives pretty well at 15, with a one minor fender bender, so you buy them a car. Then at 16 they get into a few bigger accidents and total the car, so you buy them a new car. And at 17 they’re involved in several major accidents, but you buy them new cars (twice) and pay big bucks to a a high-powered lawyer to get them out of DUI charges to make sure they can keep their license. And of course while you’re doing all of this you’re sitting them down periodically for Stern Warnings.
Then at 18 you start to worry that maybe their driving record is getting worse and worse and you start to think maybe you shouldn’t bail them out again. D’ya think?
When the election rolls around there will still be some who are sticking to their guns about not voting for McCain, but a lot of the people all up in arms about McCain will hold their nose and vote for him (especially if the alternative is Hillary and Bill). And they will of course have Strong Words against McCain on their blogs, to make themselves feel better. It’s what they did to rationalize their vote for Bush, it’s what they’ll do to rationalize their vote for McCain.
So now after sliding down this slipper slope for twenty years, what would possibly reverse it? Sixty percent or so of Americans self-identify as “conservative” according to some poll that someone cited here recently, but what do they mean by “conservative”? To some it means the sorts of things that allow them to happily support Huckabee. Others might have a fairly reasonable understanding of what “conservative” means, and they would align themselves that way when convenient, but they aren’t so committed to any part of it that they can’t support McCain, or Giuliani (or they’re gullible enough to support Romney and hope the flips are real and the flops were lies of political convenience, rather than the other way around).
This is nowhere close to being ready to turn around. Eight years of Bill and Hillary didn’t turn this around and eight more years of Hillary and Bill, heaven forbid, won’t do it either. At best you might get a third party going, doing on the right what Nader did (and might do again) on the left, with similar percentages. Good luck with that.
asdffdsa and others. Go back to your history books. Lincoln proved there is no such thing as federalism. Teddy started socialism in this country. It’s not a 20, 40 or 60 year trend you’re bucking. It’s 145 years in the making. Rome took 300 years to die. I figure we might get her done in 200.
For those who just can’t understand why I won’t vote for John McCain under any circumstances, I’ve posted a few reasons here.
Hey, asshat, does the concept of learning from your mistakes exist in your world? Yes, I did vote for Bush in 04, and as Bill will attest, I defended him longer than some because I still believe that as bad as he’s been, he’s had plenty of help in being bad, chiefly from RINOs like McCain.
Sorry, I’ve looked at McCain’s record, and he’s worse than Bush ever conceived of being. At least when Bush does something, he’s sincere about it. McCain has proven he’s willing to abandon his oaths to his country, the Constitution, and even his first wife for money, power, and a BJ from Ted Kennedy.
Let the church say ‘amen’. The Problematic Harvest we’re now reaping wasn’t sown in the ’60s, or in Teddy’s New Deal, but even further back — I’d trace the Beginning of The End to the machinations worked into the resolution of the Civil War; most notably the 14th Amendment.
That we’ve managed to hobble along for as long as we have is a testament to the power of that original American spirit, burning bright in a majority of her people (aside: should I be referring to that majority in the past tense?) — the ability to continue to persevere in light of the gradual dismantling of the original system of government set up in 1776. Enough good people made it into various levels of government to keep the ship pointed in the right general direction — or, perhaps more accurately, at least kept the ship from sailing into a completely different ocean.
I fear, however, that at long last the momentum is beginning to drop away. Enough people no longer care about the original spirit of America that we may in fact be the generation (un)lucky enough to be able to perceive the tide going out.
Two quotes to chew on — and I’m betting that they won’t be new to some of you net-savvy patriots :)
(Not to distract, but note that I’ve attributed these to “anonymous”, even though they’ve appeared throughout the ‘net and even the past 50 years attributed to Toynbee, Tocqueville or Lord Tyler/Tytler — details here)
What does this have to do with McCain? Essentially nothing, and that’s the point: whether our next president is McCain or Hillary doesn’t matter. Both are bad for America, the only difference is the timescale over which the pain would be drawn out. The problems we are facing as a country and people are rooted in us: an ever-deepening schism in beliefs as to what America is and what it means to be an American. We as a country have been on this road before. We survived it then; I pray we will survive it this time.
There is another Choice if you are a True Conservative! When you go to vote look at your ballot its staring you right in the face! Fred Thompson send a message !! unless your a RINO then vote for a RINO if you are Conservative you will have to vote Fred Thompson save our Party !!! www.writeinfred.com
One problem with your theory, Bill. Romney’s campaign is FULL of Bush people.
Sorry, no deal.
You’ve raised a good point, Beth. We should be looking at the people surrounding a candidate, since that’s part of the pool from which the candidate will choose advisers and appointees. The caveat is that a significant number of people surrounding the campaign are election wonks who won’t be part of governing. For some candidates though, the political operatives never leave and drive policy when the candidate becomes an officeholder.