2008 USA Republican Party Presidential Campaign: Part 2

…continued from [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/2008-usa-republican-party-presidential-campaign/43727/585 USA Republican Party Presidential Campaign[/url].

An good bit of analysis on the failure of one aspect of the GOP’s campaign. The George Allen analogy is right on the mark… wish I’d remembered that.

[quote=“Frank Rich: NYT”]IT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House.

That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later.

It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others.

The Real are the small-town white folks Allen was addressing in southwestern Virginia. The Others — and their subversive fellow travelers, the Elites — are Americans like the young man who Allen maligned: a high-achieving son of immigrant parents who was born and raised in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs during its technology boom. (Allen, the self-appointed keeper of real Virginia, grew up in California.)

Cut to 2008. You’d think that this incident would be a cautionary tale, but the McCain campaign instead embraced Allen as a role model, with Palin’s odes to “real” and “pro-America” America leading the charge. The farcical apotheosis of this strategy arrived last weekend, again on camera and again in Virginia, when a McCain adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, revived Allen’s original script, literally, during an interview on MSNBC.[/quote]

Allen was a bit of a freak as well – his ties to the white-power group Council for Conservative Citizens, his embracing of Confederacy crap, and his efforts to replace his Yankee upbringing with faux-country-boy swagger would have all wiped him out as a presidential candidate had he never even uttered that “macaca” thing.

I get the feeling from the “town hall” debate between McCain and Obama that McCain didn’t understand that his crowd was not the couple-hundred people there in the room but, rather, the millions of people watching the debate and the millions of people who watched him in hilariously commented-upon Youtube clips wandering around the stage. I don’t doubt that his wandering and apparent efforts to speak were efforts to connect with the audience. However, to a television or computer viewer, it appeared he was wandering the stage muttering to himself.

I’ve commented for some time that the current state of the Republican party is not in line with any form of classic conservativism, but apparently there are many forumosans who vociferously feel that the past several years of hyper-partisanship and navel-gazing is precisely what our nation needs. With all the defecting Republicans and conservatives endorsing and voting for Obama, perhaps we’re at a “tipping point” where perhaps the GOP can return back to some semblance of the days when they weren’t a perverse collection of extremist philosophies. Then, perhaps, those of us who have strong preferences for constitutional protections, a secure nation, economic prosperity and a good national reputation will get what we want.

Allen lost by a very narrow margin, if I recall correctly, but I was ecstatic when I saw that he lost.

I agree: perhaps an Obama win will shake up the Republican Party so much that all the old guard (the Pat Robertsons, the George Allens, the Karl Roves and the supply-siders) who retain undue control of the party agenda but who are irrelevant to today’s society will be shaken out, and a newer, sleeker GOP, filled with sane thinkers who are truly concerned with protecting constitutional freedoms and staying out of people’s bedrooms, will prevail.

I also believe that Obama represents a new face of the Democratic Party, which has already undergone a shakeup (but could stand a little more) over the last 8 years.

It’s time for new blood: time for the next generation to come to the fore.

oh obama please come and save us…:laughing:

I just hope you Democrats don’t blow it. You weren’t born yesterday, you know.

The Republican VP candidate is still talking about her clothing scandal. :roflmao:

When the election is a week away and you’re still trying to explain you’re clothing, I’d say you’re pretty screwed.

what about the people that questioned palin’s clothes while not questioning shady past of Obama? how was that fair and balanced reporting…:unamused:

and i’d be worried if i was an obama worshipper like many here, there’s a good chance your hero is going to lose despite all your advantages.

People have questioned Obama’s past, and they’ve seen that the tenuous fabrications of complicity by proximity are empty, and dismissed them…

How is it stooping to point out the hypocrisy of a self proclaimed ‘frugal’, ‘hockey mom’ who represnts the common people spending more money on designer fashion for her flash in the pan campaign than most middle class US households make in 3 years?

It’s amusing how this avatar of yours represents the GOP’s last ditch Palin policy so succinctly…

Scrutinized and scrutinized, and found to have nothing in his past that can be considered “shady” by any sane, thinking person.

hail obama…anyone who questions his statements on his shady past shall be silenced…:bravo:

To be fair to Palin, she didn’t do any of that shopping herself and never set foot in any of those stores. Palin was dropped into the campaign without a lot prior warning and was simply told, “Here, wear this.” You really have to blame this little episode on those in the campaign cultivating her public image not to have realized the disconnect between Jane-six-pack and Neiman Marcus et al.

Who’s silencing you? Have you been unable to express your opinion?

So what you’re saying is, there was a big wind up, a promising toss . . . and then . . . nothing!!??!! Again?!!

Is there a Republican baseball team? We have politicised teams in Oz footie, but I’m completely unaware of your baseball stuff. Well, except for the Republican obvious. Is there such a thing as “tossed and lost” in baseball?

Spot on, and you are right, there is no need to go down that Rove in your reply. I applaud you.

HG

Who’s silencing you? Have you been unable to express your opinion?[/quote]

article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yj … NkYjk4ZGM=

dispatch.com/live/content/lo … ml?sid=101

scary what Obama will do if somehow he gets elected.

Who’s silencing you? Have you been unable to express your opinion?[/quote]

article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yj … NkYjk4ZGM=

dispatch.com/live/content/lo … ml?sid=101

[quote]Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher’s driver’s license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.[/quote][/quote]

scary what Obama will do if somehow he gets elected. it is already scary to me what Obama DOES to get elected.

Talking rationally and intelligently, and running a clean campaign? That’s scary to you?

I got stung by a BEE! A bee for Obama!

Nothing Obama could do would be nearly as horrifying as what Bush has already done over the last 8 years and he wasn’t even elected…

BTW “somehow” gets himself elected?.. What are you GOP types so nervous about, some wily trick from Obama like getting the most votes?..

[quote=“hi12345”]
article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yj … NkYjk4ZGM=

Did you even watch the video clip of McCulloch and Joyce? No where do they mention they would bring “criminal libel” charges against anyone, especially since there’s no such thing as “criminal libel”.

[quote=“hi12345”]
dispatch.com/live/content/lo … ml?sid=101

[quote]Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher’s driver’s license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.[/quote][/quote]
So?

Are you suggesting any action taken by an alleged supporter of a candidate that may appear inappropriate is equivalent to that candidate ordering such action? Or do you apply this logic only to Obama?

[quote=“hi12345”]and I’d be worried if I was an Obama worshipper like many here, there’s a good chance your hero is going to lose despite all your advantages.[/quote]Yeah, 3.3% chance according to fivethirtyeight.com/