Batfink's Beep -- 03-13-06

McCain slapdown

March 13, 2006

John McCain isn't going anywhere. He has not a chance in hell of being the next president. But, God bless them, his cheerleaders in the leftist press haven't given up on him, and by golly, neither has the Senator from Manchuria himself.

John McCain, probably the most egotistical man in a body almost defined by the egotism and self importance of its members, really ought to change parties. That he will never be nominated by the GOP was once again made clear by the result of the GOP straw poll held in Memphis the other day. And McCain saw it coming, too -- that's why he tried to spare himself the embarrassment of a poor showing with his laughable ploy of telling his supporters to write in Bush instead. It was a strategy made all the more laughable by the fact that his supporters are the last people who would ever want to be doing GWB any favors or seeming to give him any support.

That's the major part of McCain's problem in a nutshell. He has to at least seem to support the Republican President who still enjoys the unalloyed support of his party base if he is ever going to convince (read: hoodwink) GOP partisans that he is on their side. But even the most deeply infiltrated leftists among the GOP primary-voting population who constitute his small base will balk at doing anything to pump up GWB, and besides, the fact will always be that there just aren't enough of them.

The McCain-juggernaut-peddling MSM press, of course, is trying to put the best face on McCain's poor showing, saying among other things, that the straw poll doesn't really mean much (and it doesn't), as well as that McCain has other strategic avenues to pursue, such as wooing powerful and credible campaign staff. But, in the end, all that won't help. McCain's failing will always be the very support from the left that keeps his name in the game. He just hasn't been a credible Republican, and he has been not being credible under the spotlight of a press that adores him for it. He might have fooled more GOP primary voters had his biggest base of support not been the hard left mainstream press, but then, had those forces not been supporting him so strenuously, we probably wouldn't be all that aware of him in the first place. For better or worse, everyone knows who McCain is by now -- the left's favorite Republican.

As I have said loudly and often, McCain's best shot is to run as a Democrat. That's where all his apparent support is anyway. Then he can see how much his cheerleaders on the left whom he has ridden to high name recognition as a 'maverick' REALLY like him. That the press thought that a good way to sell McCain to the GOP was as a maverick shows how little they understand us. Iconoclasm for its own sake is not the implicit selling point among conservatives that it is among liberals, who always seem to believe that getting rid of the old is always and everywhere a good thing. Sometimes, the old way is right, and we conservatives like for people who buck for change to offer a way that is clearly better. If the left is going to sell us on McCain, they would do better to find a selling point that hides the fact that he spits on everything we value.

Or, as I said, they can step up and nominate him for their own party.

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