McCain has disenfranchised his party's base. I don't think there is much enthusiasm to elect him, and considering the gay marriage ballot card has already been played he doesn't have much of a chance. What really got me thinking about how McCain may mean a downfall and remodeling of the Republican Party is this writing by Matt Taibbi.

I'm not entirely enthused about Obama either, so don't drag this thread down with it. Save it for one of the many Obama threads.

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/s...prayer/?page=1

The remodelling of the Republican party is long overdue.

It may be Bush's only achievement, though not surprisingly completely by accident.

The religious and social far right has controlled the GOP for too long, which made it easy for the "neocons" to get elected so long as they did the pro-life/gays/jesus puppet show, and scared the grannies with Al-Quaeda boogeymen.

That disaster forced the libertarian republicans to get off their asses and subsequently you get a pretend Christian like McCain beating Huckabee even in some of the bible belt areas.

McCain got through because of what he isn't, ie. not mafia like Giuliani, not a christ-licker like Huckabee, not in a cult like Romney. Obama got through mostly because of what he is (though it helped that he was not a Clinton) so I can't see McCain pulling it off.

...black, eloquent, able to hide the fact that he's not even close to being a centrist?

Obama has a 2.8% spread in polling right now (Source:RCP Average). That's with a wishy washy Republican base. McCain can pull this off if he can try to force Obama into broadcasting more of his positions. Obama's magic lies in that his position is not as widely known as his disposition. If McCain makes the debate more about what Obama thinks and less about how Obama sounds and looks, the magic begins to evaporate. That's McCain's inroad.

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Or more importantly how he's (not) voted in the Senate.

Your right, there is a growing split in the Republican / conservative base. Many who are economically conservative but socially liberal are put off by McCain's pandering to the extreme right such as courting Bobby Jindal and trying to hard to appease the bible-belters who care more about Shaivo and gay marriage than the economy and unemployment..These people were able to come together under Bush, but after seeing what a mess he made of things these reasonable conservatives are being disenfranchised by this style of politics and I think we will see many of them flock to Obama. McCain's position on Abortion - and his ability to put folks on the Supreme Court to perhaps overturn Roe vs. Wade is also terrifying to many of these middle-class economic conservatives.

On the other hand you have neo-con extremists and warhawks like Coulter, Limbaugh, and Billy O and the people who subscribe to those types of beliefs. These types of people scare the more centrist conservatives just as much as they scare liberals.

Check out the Elect John McCain group on facebook - every once in awhile you get a reasonable post discussing his policies and why they agree with them but mostly it's so called conservatives clamoring for McCain to close off the borders and start arresting immigrants...

Well, I figure he has a good chance of winning if he comes out ahead of Obama...

True, but he has to offer up his own substance to draw out Obama.

Unfortunately his substance consists of his national security experience and war "hero" status.

All McCain's campaign has consisted of so far is doing exactly what you suggest but only on the issue of Iraq and security

That will just mobilise more opposition voters who see him as tarring himself with the same brush as the current executive.

If McCain and the RNC play their cards right, they could win in a landslide, and do well in Congressional elections. People are just starting to pay attention, and Americans will see what a lightweight Obama is, and they will be turned off by his ultra-liberal positions that a vast majority of Americans, including Democrats, do not agree with.

I also think it's quite ridiculous to think that evangelicals are going to drop a pro-life McCain just because he has been lukewarm at times, and instead, vote for ultra-pro-choice Obama.

You had better get on the blower and let them now exactly what cards to play then.

How does it go again?

"All Americans want is cold beer, warm pussy, and a place to shit with a door on it."

That should keep dixie land happy.

Obama gets a bad rap for voting "present". The media really hasn't touched much on McCain's nearly complete abandon of his congressional seat.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capit...08_senato.html

I'd much rather have a president that would be available at 3 in the morning to take that phone call. Arizona citizens elected McCain to do a job and he should be doing it.

I'd really like to see more of this.

I really hope the rumors about the debate in Oxford are not true. That is, there is going to be extremely little public seating available because of all the media personelle. For fucks sake, the public is supposed to be voting for some of the these dumb motherfuckers and we can't even see them in person? Fuck that shit, next go-around we might as well bury all the candidates in a box until 2016.

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