Posted on 10/12/2008 1:41:32 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
his is becoming a very strange campaign. On CNN this evening both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the “old” noble McCain is gone, and a “new” nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops. Recently Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama, likewise lamenting the loss of the old noble McCain. NY Times columnist David Brooks dubbed Palin a “cancer,” and he suggested that Obama’s instant recall of Niehbuhr sent a tingle up his leg as Obama once did to Chris Matthews as well.
A couple of thoughts: the George Bush, Sr. / Willie Horton campaign was far tougher; so were the Bush 2000/2004 efforts. If anything, McCain’s campaign is subdued in comparison to what we’ve seen on both sides in past years. Indeed, McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but, again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run, via appendages, the far more vicious race. Obama and his surrogates have repeatedly engaged in racial politics (as Bill Clinton lamented when in fury he denounced the “race card”); when there was never evidence that McCain was using race as a wedge issue, it was clear Obama most surely was–preemptively, on at least two occasions, warning Americans he would soon be the victim of opposition racial stereotyping. His surrogates like Biden and those in the Senate continue to link legitimate worries about OBama’s past with racism.
Second, for about 3 months all we’ve heard are references to McCain’s age, with adjectives and phrases like confused, can’t remember any more, disturbed, lost his bearings, etc. Moreover, so far, McCain supporters have not broken into Biden’s email, or accused Biden of being a Nazi, or accused anyone of not bearing one of their own children, or photo-shopped grotesque pictures of Obama on the Internet (as in the Atlantic magazine case). I don’t think deranged McCain supporters in Hollywood or television almost daily are quoted as damning Obama in unusually crude terms. Nor are white racist ministers calling McCain a ‘messiah’ or McCain operatives fraudulently swarming voter registration centers. And on and on.
Instead I think what we are seeing again is an interesting phenomenon of the old nice/now mean McCain. A great many moderates and conservatives are worn out and tired of Bush and Bush hatred, the European furor, serial charges of racism and illiberalism, and finally, in their weariness, think that Obama will, in a variety of ways, just make all the ickiness go away–as if he will make all of us be liked abroad and end racial and red/blue fighting at home. They should ask themselves whether Jimmy Carter restored American popularity with his human rights campaigns, praise of left-wing dictators, dialogue during the hostage crisis (cf. “The Great Satan”), boasts of no more inordinate fear of communism, etc., or whether Obama, in his Trinity/Acorn/Pfleger years, brought racial healing and understanding to Chicago
Second, with Obama now with an 6-8 point lead, some in the DC/NY corridor these last three weeks figure it’s time now to jump on, or at least sort of jump, since the train they think is leaving the station and there might be still be some space at the dinner table on the caboose. They also believe as intellectuals that the similarly astute Obamians may on occasion inspire, or admire them as the like-minded who cultivate the life of the mind–in contrast to the “cancer” Sarah Palin, who, with her husband Todd, could hardly discuss Proust with them or could offer little if any sophisticated table-talk other than the chokes on shotguns or optimum RPMs on snow-machines.
And third, a lot of moderates who would not vote for McCain liked him when he was a sophisticated, ironic maverick loser scoring points against the simplistic Bush and other cardboard-cut-out conservatives. Now he has the onus of winning a campaign and can’t be a noble, tragic loser;so it is easy to say he is no good since he is less than perfect. The sure iconoclastic loser has an attraction that the mainstream conservative possible winner does not.
Obama, as I have said ad nauseam, has brilliantly prepped the battlefield to such a degree that a Farrakhan endorsement or surrogates calling Palin a quasi-Nazi or a bimbo, or smearing McCain as near senile is irrelevant; yet one screamer in a crowd of tens of thousands is proof of McCain’s and Palin’s racism and hatred.
Again, most conservatives know this paradox, but for some, being outraged as the conservative voice of reason, at McCain’s supposed low road ensures a CNN spot, or some future rehabilitation during the expected Obama regnum of the next eight years. I think should I write a column praising Obama’s wit, taste in books, and metrosexuality I would be dubbed principled rather than cynical, ‘even-handed’ rather than self-serving, and a maverick rather than toadish.
Yet for a self-acclaimed conservative to vote Obama would mean that higher taxes, larger government, more entitlements, more of a UN-centered foreign policy, dialogue with an Iran, less coal,oil, and nuclear energy production at home, more “oppression” studies and “reparations”, leftish Supreme Court judges, open borders (I could go on) were the truly conservative positions, or perhaps suddenly truly the ‘right’ positions.
And as far as ethics goes, in fact, a cursory review of the past Obama campaigns would reveal a ruthlessness never seen in any of McCain’s efforts. Obama’s record is far more left than McCain’s is far right. Obama the healer has proven to be the most partisan in the Senate, McCain one of the most bipartisan.
But to believe that truth would be–if we remember that scene in Tolkien’s Two Towers–to trust the grating harsh voice of Gandalf detailing the dangers of Saruman rather than the mellifluous charm of the latter who in soothing tones outlines his own victimhood.
Ed Rollins and David Gergen are both tired old men. Where were they during ‘88, 2000, and 2004? Those campaigns were much more negative and apparently trying to win is now a crime.
They can bite it. If McCain pulls a Bob Dole we will lose our filibuster as well as the presidency. Goldwater already taught us the dangers of a democratic sweep.
Lets not have it happen again.
I can’t stand to watch or lister to David Gergan His voice drives me crazy!—not to mention I have no respect for his thoughts...on anything!
It’s funny how the left and the media have jumped on McCain for being “negative” for using Ayers against Hussein, Sitting here watching football I have seen many ads from Hussein that are filled with outright lies and distortions of McCain’s record, and they say nothing of Hussein being “negative”.
Liberalism is being given mainstream treatment in 2008.
The change you want? BS!
VDH will provide the intellectual leadership for the underground movement that will evolve to topple the socialist dynasty that now threatens us.
bump & a ping!
Better get a samizdat system and networks of trust in place now. It’ll be too late when they start rounding people up for the re-education camps.
I lose track of what he's saying because I get mesmerized by that stupid Foster Freeze Soft Cup Swirl hairdo of his....
Better get a samizdat system
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I might if I knew what a samizdat system is!
Samizdat - underground press/alternative media, terminology from the late Soviet era. Since Obama’s reign may turn into something similar, this could become important. Also google up “White Rose” and “Sophie Scholl” to see what one would have to be willing to sacrifice if caught at it.
Well, I have to expand on VDH’s reasoning, and for the record he is reason (and wisdom) beyond a lot of people I know and respect...
John McCain cannot, and will not be an authority yet to dictate my revultion and indignation towards anyone with liberal or socialist leanings...
I promise to be as disrespectful, antagonistic and downright mean as I can towards them...period...
We have played the “bigger than that” card way too long...
I do not consider my opinion or position as lowering myself to their level either...
It is way past taking the gloves off in this election cycle...
But hey, don’t blame me...My primary vote (that didn’t matter anyway) went to someone else...
Now we got to do what we have to do once again...Same ole story...
I guess I woke up on the cynical side of the bed this morning...;-)
David Gergen, Ed Rollins, Christopher Buckley, and David Brooks can go jump in the lake.
What a bunch of losers. What, do they want to elect an unAmerican Fascist-Communist-Islamist baby killer to the White House.
Oh, that’s right, I don’t think any of these conservatives care how many babies are killed.
“...both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the “old” noble McCain is gone, and a “new” nastier one has emerged..” ~ V D Hanson
Gergen, Rollins, and the rest of the losers can get a glimpse of themselves in this mirror, and it ain’t pretty:
At the forest’s edge
http://newcriterion.com/archives/26/03/at-the-forests-edge
by Anthony Daniels
In his essay, The Empire of the Ugly, the great Belgian Sinologist and literary essayist Simon Leys recounts the story of how, writing one day in a café, a small incident gave him an insight into the real nature of philistinism.
A radio was playing in the background, a mixture of banal and miscellaneous chatter and equally banal popular music. No one in the café paid any attention to this stream of tepid drivel until suddenly, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the first bars of Mozart’s clarinet quintet were played. “Mozart,” Leys says, “took possession of our little space with a serene authority, transforming the café into an antechamber of Paradise.”
The other people in the café, who until then were chatting, playing cards, or reading the newspaper, were not deaf to the radio after all. The music silenced them, they looked at each other, disconcerted. “Their disarray lasted only a few seconds: to the relief of all, one of them stood up, changed the radio station and re-established the flow of noise that was more familiar and comforting, which everyone could then properly ignore.”
Here is the conclusion that Leys draws:
At that moment, I was struck by an obvious fact that has never left me since: that the real philistines are not those people incapable of recognizing beautythey recognize it only too well, with a flair as infallible as that of the subtlest aesthete, but only to pounce on it and smother it before it can take root in their universal empire of ugliness. [snip]
*
Strategic Intention and Mass Man
by J. R. Nyquist
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2008/0314.html
“..There recently appeared an essay by Anthony Daniels, http://newcriterion.com/archives/26/03/at-the-forests-edge published in The New Criterion, http://newcriterion.com/ in which he summarized Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset’s notion of “mass man” as the man “who goes from distraction to distraction, who is prey to absurd fashions, who never thinks deeply….” In the first decade of the twenty-first century this is all too familiar. In 2008 we live in a society dominated by “mass men,” overtaken by mass psychology, mass media, mass schooling and the mass ignorance presently crowding in around us.
Today’s mass audience cannot distinguish the important from the trivial. What needs to be acknowledged, and one day will be acknowledged, is the very real distinction between “low-minded” and “high-minded,” between moral courage and venial conformism, between thinkers and fakers. This is what it comes down to. [snip]
I don’t know where you come from, but I am from Pennsylvania. If you think that the good old boys from PA would ever allow anything like reeducation camps, then you don’t understand the types of ARSENALS these individuals have. It would be a civil war and trust me - the lefties would lose- HARD.
Funny how Hollywood movies always have the Right Wing as the oppressors and the Leftist “freedom fighters” as the underground movement.
I’m in Canada, myself. We have far fewer options for meaningful resistance, and a telling percentage here quite like being defenseless wards of the state. Arsenals or no, organization and logistics would still be a big deal, and it’s easier to get it in place now than later.
That article is outstanding, and the perfect antidote to the drivel of David Brooks.
Thank you for posting the link.
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