Posted on 10/11/2008 12:52:53 PM PDT by Chet 99
Can McCain Still Win?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted 10/10/2008 ET
Two weeks after the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., John McCain and Sarah Palin were striding forward toward victory.
They had erased the eight-point lead Barack Obama had opened up in Denver and watched as one blue state after another moved into the toss-up category.
That is ancient history now.
Since mid-September, the stock market has cratered, losing half of the $8 trillion that has vanished since October 2007. All five of America's great investment banks -- Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill-Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have either ceased to be independent or ceased to be.
The nation's largest savings and loan, Washington Mutual, and largest insurance company, AIG, have gone belly up, with the federal bailout of the latter costing $100 billion and counting. Perhaps $3 trillion of the $8 trillion in stock value that is gone disappeared after passage of the $700 billion federal bailout of Wall Street.
No bottom is in sight to the worst market crash since 1929. Recession is now certain. George W. Bush has fallen to 26 percent approval, a level unseen since Richard Nixon was driven from office in the Watergate summer of '74. Four in five think the nation is on the wrong course.
Yet, Obama has only a six-point lead in an averaging of national polls. While he has moved ahead in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, one senses America is not so much rallying to him as running away from a Republican brand that is now on the same shelf with Chinese baby formula.
Obama still has not closed the sale. He has overtaken McCain not because of any brilliant campaign he has conducted but because of the dreadful news pouring out of Wall Street. McCain and Palin are being dragged down by Dow Jones, not Barack Obama.
As of today, the country is not so much voting for Barack and the Democrats as it is preparing to vote against the Republicans.
Consider: The Congress, whose Democratic ranks the nation is getting ready to enlarge -- the Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- has an approval rating half that of Bush.
Indeed, looking back on the Year of Barack, 2008, it is clear he has never closed the sale, either with the people or his own party.
After he came off the blocks with a startling triumph in Iowa and ran up a dozen straight primary and caucus victories in February, arrived the spring when Hillary, though Obama's media auxiliary was ordering her to get out, defeated him in Texas, crushed him in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and humiliated him in West Virginia and Kentucky.
Each time the voters take a long second look at Barack, their positive first impressions seem to dissipate. Barack is a weak closer.
Herein lies McCain's hope. The country wants change, but it has not concluded it wants Obama. But if John McCain cannot raise grave doubts about his agenda, his associates, his record, his character, his fitness to be president, Obama is going to win by default.
Obama has succeeded in the debates by playing defense. By his cool demeanor and persona, he has diminished apprehensions about an Obama presidency. There is no evidence of surging enthusiasm.
The Obama media are well aware of Obama's Achilles' heel, his great vulnerability, the doubts about him that still exist in the public mind. That is why they are near hysterical about Palin's ripping of Obama for "palling around" with "domestic terrorists" like William Ayres, the 1960s and 1970s Weatherman radical who conspired to bomb the Capitol and Pentagon and was quoted the morning of 9-11 as saying he wished he had set off more bombs.
The mainstream media call this irrelevant, as it was so long ago.
Yet, can one imagine how the media would have reacted had they learned that a GOP presidential nominee was introduced to politics and worked in harness with a KKK bomber of black churches in the 1960s, who was quoted the morning of Oklahoma City as saying he wished he had planted more bombs?
As McCain is an establishment man on illegal aliens, NAFTA and Wall Street bailouts, uneasy with social issues like affirmative action and abortion, he lacks the full panoply of weapons that successful Republicans like Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bush II used to win two terms. He seems to confine himself to the limited arsenal Gerald Ford, Bush 1 and Bob Dole employed when they went down to defeat.
This election is not over. Yet, even if McCain gets a bit of luck, a dead cat bounce on Wall Street, he must persuade the nation Obama is an unacceptable occupant of the White House if he is to win.
Palin appears ready to take the heat to make that case. But McCain seems ambivalent to the point of being bipolar on whether he wants to take responsibility for peeling the hide off Barack Obama.
Perhaps it comes down to what McCain really thinks about an Obama presidency, and how he wants to be remembered by history.
Actually we are winning....... I predict a landslide for Palin and McWhats his name.
Obama is a fabrication of the Socialist MSM and their handlers. Real Americans are on to their game.
Don’t worry be happy !........:o)
McCain has post-tramautic shock syndrome from his defeat at Bush’s hand in 2000. He refuses to do what Bush did to him in 2000 and negatively campaign.
Unfortunately, while Bush’s slams against McCain were lies, they weren’t against Kerry in 2004 and especially against Obama now in 2008. McCain’s old brain can’t seem to wrap his mind around the facts and instead resorts to catchphrases like “bipartisanship” and “maverick.”
Excellent piece by Buchanan as usual. And the above quote presents most of this campaign in a nutshell.
“Yet, even if McCain gets a bit of luck, a dead cat bounce on Wall Street, he must persuade the nation Obama is an unacceptable occupant of the White House if he is to win.”
Well, that’s exactly what McCain doesn’t seem to be willing to do, “I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States”.
Yes.
No, Aig took some of it's loot and bought a couple of insurance companies, they are subsidiaries. AIG is not and never was an insurance company and has never been licensed in the united states as an insurance company.
BINGO.
Sorry Pat, McCain has to show more than throwing the kitchen sink or even the toilet against Obama. The polls indicate that that kind of campaigning has gotten nowhere with independents. No matter how bad Obama is, McCain is regarded as worse.
McCain can still win if he recognizes that Bush's Iraq and economic stewardship have put the country on the wrong track. Voters want a new direction, they are not interested in a change of drivers.
You know......I believe that also. ;-)
The msm is all about “propaganda’.
When we start singing the same words loud enough and often enough and long enough, maybe some things will change.
Until we condservatives get on the same page.....sadly......it’ll be status quo.
A cannibal was walking through the jungle and
came upon a restaurant operated by a fellow cannibal. Feeling somewhat hungry, he sat down and looked over the menu...
Tourist: $5
Broiled Missionary: $10.00
Fried Explorer: $15.00
Baked Democrat or Grilled Republican:
$100.00
The cannibal called the waiter over and asked,...’Why such a price difference for the Politicians?’
The cook replied, ‘Have you ever tried to
clean one?
They’re so full of sh*t, it takes all morning.’
Honor is not being the sacrificial lamb for a runaway liberal landslide.
Honor is fighting to stop the liberal landslide...to tell the people exactly who Obama is—it’s not racist to point out this son of a white woman is too liberal...has too many radical friends...and hates America as it is and defeat Barack Obama for the better good of America.
Honor Senator McCain is deciding what war is worth fighting for. This is the only war that matters right now...so fight it with overwhelming power and you will win.
Being timid in his face will mean the defeat of your candidacy and the defeat of America.
Obama's rising poll numbers are, IMHO, manufactured and represent push polls (for the most part when you look at sampling data) by the MSM to offest the growing concern about his associations and intent.
Obama and his cronies in ACORN, the DNC, and the MSM are wholly corrupt and desperate to steal the election if they cannot win it through intimidation and tomfoolery.
Obama has been directly tied and involved with ACORN, for a long time, and through his instrumentality we are seeing our free market and our voting process subverted and deconstructed before our very eyes.
But there is hope, despite what the push polls are saying, and Obama and his campaign and the MSM all know it, and fear it.
Buncha poltroons.
Not that I take stock in polls that are always oversampled in favor of..........
The 00 and 04 polls showed AlGore and Scary Kerry in the lead as well.
Middle America WILL vote and the sheeple will believe the polls and stay confident, lazy and away from the ballot box IMO.
Stay safe and VOTE !
And with less than half the enthusiasm as any of the three. And that's the part that bothers me the most. Did he not campaign hard to be the nominee? Did he not claim he was going to fight for us at the convention? I'll have to dig out my Art of War and see if this type of fighting is mentioned. As a stranger in a strange land watching him, it looks to me like his mission was to win the nomination and then lose to 0bama while taking down one of the few rising Republican stars with him.
Are you reporting from the future? In my timezone the election is more than three weeks away.
Contrary to popular opinion. This ain't over.
Point, I was thinking exactly the same thing.
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