Is McCain Electable?

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

Your right on one thing — I do see things in terms of black and white (no racial intent there). There is right and there is wrong, despite your wish that there not be. [/quote]

False - I never said there is no “right and wrong”, only that for the vast majority of politics, it isn’t about “right and wrong”, but about “trade-offs”. You fail to see the difference - your problem to fix.

Pure naivete. You can know you are “right”, but you are one man with one vote in the Senate or House. You’d like to get something done that comports with your principles, but you are outnumbered by other people who think they are equally “right” by going the opposite way with their principles. You get one vote. So what do you do?

Do you refuse to budge on every single principle you have - stand there and cross your arms? Newsflash: you’ll never move anyone towards your position if you don’t get them there by metes and bounds.

You want all-or-none - no problem, just don’t cry when you realize that you’ll wind up with “none” as a political eunuch.

Why does any of this matter? Because a President McCain or anyone else must govern in a world that is the way it is, not as he wants it to be. You want a principled monarch - real American politics intentionally pits competing interests against one another. The competing interests are people who believe in their principles as much as you. It’s intentional - the Framers wanted it that way.

As such, I want to vote for someone who can govern in the real world - not the idealistic fantasy land where armies line up to march for their principles. Dramatic, and silly. Principles matter - I never said they didn’t - but what I want are principles in practice, so I’ll vote accordingly.

You needn’t worry about lecturing me on a “moral existence” - your problem is, and continues to be, that your “moral existence” as you refer to it in politics doesn’t exist. It may warm your cockles, but ever since the birth of the country - when Hamilton and Jefferson sparred on what government meant - no one had a monopoly on “principles”. Plenty of questions were left to the political realm to be hashed out through the marketplace of ideas and not cemented as unassailable “principles”.

Stand up for your “principles” and refuse to budge even when there is more of a trade-off than a moral in play - and enjoy that stance as the parade of the real world passes you by. At least you will have a nice view.

The rest of us love principles enough to actually negotiate them through the marketplace of ideas. That takes work - but is worth it.

I never thought I’d see the day when a conservative would show colors of aristocracy.

To me, it was always the liberals that’d say “I know better than you how you should live, so do it my way.”

Is HH a neocon?!? I purge you and make my party clean again!

As for the topic of this thread: McCain is very electable. I like him to win vs. any current democrat running for President.

[quote]kroby wrote:
I never thought I’d see the day when a conservative would show colors of aristocracy.

To me, it was always the liberals that’d say “I know better than you how you should live, so do it my way.”
[/quote]

Thats how most liberals in the North East feel about Southern conservatives.

Both sides would like the government to get out of their lives in some areas, and into other peoples lives in others. To pretend that either party is “anti-interventionist”, in my opinion, is ridiculous.

Back on topic:
McCain is electable. More electable than a very uncharismatic Mormon or a wack job with a silly name anyway.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Because a President McCain or anyone else must govern in a world…[/quote]

Let him govern in his own country.

Signed: The World.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
It was just this sort of amoral approach that has gotten us into the hole we are in. By compromising, by reading the Constitution to fit the circumstances, we now have a bloated bureaucracy and humongous debt — all in the spirit of compromise. We have ‘compromised’ ourselves into a pit.
[/quote]

Thunderbolt needs no help from me, but I wanted to chime in on this point. There is a very large difference between violating the Constitution and negotiating within the system as framed. The Constitution is central to our government in a way no law can be; it defines the rules by which we play the game. The principles that we cannot compromise on.

To that end, we have three separate but equal branches of government that check and balance one another, and ensure that no branch grabs too much power or oversteps those Constitutional bounds. Part of that system includes a judiciary that interprets the Constitution. And if the interpretation gets too far out of whack, we have a legislature that can amend the Constitution to return it to the appropriate meaning. Failing that, we have other means.

But within the realm of ordinary law, the entire point is that opponents must work together and be reasonable (as much as I hate to adopt Rawls’ language here, it is appropriate). That is, parties are expected to have a basic overlapping consensus of agreed-upon values (the Constitution), and to negotiate on the rest. That’s how we maintain a stable republic, and how we keep factions from destroying the country because they refuse to yield on issues.

[quote]lixy wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
Because a President McCain or anyone else must govern in a world…

Let him govern in his own country.

Signed: The World.[/quote]

A half-educated trustafarian Islamist-Progressist could never speak on behalf of the world, but that said, your attempt to be clever doesn’t make much sense since I said McCain must govern in a world - impliedly in a world of constraints - not the world

…just as you must clumsily spread your laughable propaganda in a world of constraints as well, those constraints being that no one respects or cares about anything you have to say, so your propaganda never gets off the launching pad.

Such impotence - do you cry yourself to sleep at night? Because you probably should.

[quote]nephorm wrote:

Thunderbolt needs no help from me, but I wanted to chime in on this point. There is a very large difference between violating the Constitution and negotiating within the system as framed. The Constitution is central to our government in a way no law can be; it defines the rules by which we play the game. The principles that we cannot compromise on.

To that end, we have three separate but equal branches of government that check and balance one another, and ensure that no branch grabs too much power or oversteps those Constitutional bounds. Part of that system includes a judiciary that interprets the Constitution. And if the interpretation gets too far out of whack, we have a legislature that can amend the Constitution to return it to the appropriate meaning. Failing that, we have other means.

But within the realm of ordinary law, the entire point is that opponents must work together and be reasonable (as much as I hate to adopt Rawls’ language here, it is appropriate). That is, parties are expected to have a basic overlapping consensus of agreed-upon values (the Constitution), and to negotiate on the rest. That’s how we maintain a stable republic, and how we keep factions from destroying the country because they refuse to yield on issues.[/quote]

Very well stated, Neph.

And that is the key exactly. Much of policy - in fact, most of policy - is there to be not as maxims handed down from on high, but negotiated between parties with their own interests.

In that “policy space” is where we try and convince others to go our way on valued principles. But we are charged to convince them, and they us. Compromise shouldn’t be overdone, but is natural to the system.

This thread should read: Is McCain electable?

Yes, and that is just how sad the state of affairs is for the Republican Party and the outlook of the presidential race in general.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Headhunter wrote:

Your right on one thing — I do see things in terms of black and white (no racial intent there). There is right and there is wrong, despite your wish that there not be.

False - I never said there is no “right and wrong”, only that for the vast majority of politics, it isn’t about “right and wrong”, but about “trade-offs”. You fail to see the difference - your problem to fix.

To break the immigration laws is wrong. To cabal and thwart the Senate is wrong. To give in on principles to ‘make a deal’ is wrong. To stand up for what is moral is right. To NOT cut deals when you KNOW you are correct is right.

Pure naivete. You can know you are “right”, but you are one man with one vote in the Senate or House. You’d like to get something done that comports with your principles, but you are outnumbered by other people who think they are equally “right” by going the opposite way with their principles. You get one vote. So what do you do?

Do you refuse to budge on every single principle you have - stand there and cross your arms? Newsflash: you’ll never move anyone towards your position if you don’t get them there by metes and bounds.

You want all-or-none - no problem, just don’t cry when you realize that you’ll wind up with “none” as a political eunuch.

Why does any of this matter? Because a President McCain or anyone else must govern in a world that is the way it is, not as he wants it to be. You want a principled monarch - real American politics intentionally pits competing interests against one another. The competing interests are people who believe in their principles as much as you. It’s intentional - the Framers wanted it that way.

As such, I want to vote for someone who can govern in the real world - not the idealistic fantasy land where armies line up to march for their principles. Dramatic, and silly. Principles matter - I never said they didn’t - but what I want are principles in practice, so I’ll vote accordingly.

Sorry Thunder, morality is more important than compromise. I hope you discover that a moral existence is much better than a half-assed ‘compromised’ one.

You needn’t worry about lecturing me on a “moral existence” - your problem is, and continues to be, that your “moral existence” as you refer to it in politics doesn’t exist. It may warm your cockles, but ever since the birth of the country - when Hamilton and Jefferson sparred on what government meant - no one had a monopoly on “principles”. Plenty of questions were left to the political realm to be hashed out through the marketplace of ideas and not cemented as unassailable “principles”.

Stand up for your “principles” and refuse to budge even when there is more of a trade-off than a moral in play - and enjoy that stance as the parade of the real world passes you by. At least you will have a nice view.

The rest of us love principles enough to actually negotiate them through the marketplace of ideas. That takes work - but is worth it.[/quote]

Sean Hannity described your position very well today — the Country Club Conservative. Guys like you despise Reagan because he was NOT a compromiser. He stood up to the libs and, because he was right, he won. John McCain seeks to deal with the libs, shitbags like Kennedy and Feingold. Yeah, good luck with that.

Ronald Reagan was a political eunuch, according to your definition. McCain isn’t fit to shine RR’s shoes.

Try getting out more, TB. Life in the Country Club, compromising with the Limosine Lib must be pretty shitty. Less trades, more morality — give it a shot.

[quote]nephorm wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
It was just this sort of amoral approach that has gotten us into the hole we are in. By compromising, by reading the Constitution to fit the circumstances, we now have a bloated bureaucracy and humongous debt — all in the spirit of compromise. We have ‘compromised’ ourselves into a pit.

Thunderbolt needs no help from me, but I wanted to chime in on this point. There is a very large difference between violating the Constitution and negotiating within the system as framed. The Constitution is central to our government in a way no law can be; it defines the rules by which we play the game. The principles that we cannot compromise on.

To that end, we have three separate but equal branches of government that check and balance one another, and ensure that no branch grabs too much power or oversteps those Constitutional bounds. Part of that system includes a judiciary that interprets the Constitution. And if the interpretation gets too far out of whack, we have a legislature that can amend the Constitution to return it to the appropriate meaning. Failing that, we have other means.

But within the realm of ordinary law, the entire point is that opponents must work together and be reasonable (as much as I hate to adopt Rawls’ language here, it is appropriate). That is, parties are expected to have a basic overlapping consensus of agreed-upon values (the Constitution), and to negotiate on the rest. That’s how we maintain a stable republic, and how we keep factions from destroying the country because they refuse to yield on issues.[/quote]

When does Hillary reach out to conservatives? When does Obama reach out to conservatives?

You’re either for a small government or not. You’re for lower taxes or not. You’re for freedom or you are not. Its all the damnned compromising on these issues that is destroying the very things we love!!

I remember reading John Rawls in college. The very liberal prof described him as an idiot, that much I remember. Being a philosopher of compromise, he probably is. Got one of his books around here somewhere…

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

Sean Hannity described your position very well today — the Country Club Conservative. Guys like you despise Reagan because he was NOT a compromiser. He stood up to the libs and, because he was right, he won. John McCain seeks to deal with the libs, shitbags like Kennedy and Feingold. Yeah, good luck with that.

Ronald Reagan was a political eunuch, according to your definition. McCain isn’t fit to shine RR’s shoes.

Try getting out more, TB. Life in the Country Club, compromising with the Limosine Lib must be pretty shitty. Less trades, more morality — give it a shot.

[/quote]

Reagan had to govern with strong Democratic majorities in Congress throughout his terms. So we can say that either he compromised at some times to get things done, he made his impact entirely through regulations, or he did nothing for his entire presidency.

Ok, the forth possibility is that he hypnotized everybody with his raw sex appeal. I’m assuming from the tenor of your post that you’ll like this one best.

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

Sean Hannity described your position very well today — the Country Club Conservative.[/quote]

Heh. Of course. Sean Hannity wouldn’t like me? I can barely contain my grief.

Absolutely ridiculous, of course, you “assigning” to me whether I like Reagan or not. I do like Reagan quite a bit, and as usual, your grasp of history leaves the rest of us wanting. Let’s have a look at Reagan’s corpus:

-Signed legislation raising payroll, income, and gasoline taxes

-Introduced perhaps the most lax amnesty immigration bill for illegal aliens we have ever seen

-Appointed O’Connor and Kennedy

-Added a secretary of veteran affairs (after campaigning to end the Departments of Energy and Education)

-Withdrew Marines from Lebanon after over 200 were slaughtered

“Not a compromiser”…? Never? Never “compromised his principles!”…? Ever?

HH, your understanding of the history of Reagan is almost as bad as your understanding of the history of the Civil War.

Yeah, try reading the above - Reagan never “dealt with libs”? So the tax raise was his idea?

Not a compromiser! Remember?

No, Reagan was just right - principled, strong, savvy, and smart enough to know how to negotiate the constraints of real world politics, and not flawless.

It’s clear you have no idea what Reagan was up to - you project a fantasy on him, as you do other things.

Also, tell me - you think Reagan would be a fellow traveler with all this conspiracy quackery you flirt with? Rothchilds, etc.?

Try something other than biting my ankles. You have proven you know exactly dick about Reagan, so trying to smite with a “you’re not a Reaganite!” isn’t gonna work. I know nothing of the “Country Club”, but apparently you don’t either, given your weak grasp of the history.

I am more of a “Deer Stand” conservative.

Swing and a miss. I will say this - you should learn a little about Reagan - a truly important figure in modern American history. It’s clear you are winging it - and badly.

Okay, so I guess everyone now votes for the guy who sucks less?

[quote]Jason32 wrote:
Okay, so I guess everyone now votes for the guy who sucks less?[/quote]

Now? Now?

HH,

Aside from that, there is an impressive list of people whose conservative credentials I’m sure you’d accept who are happy with McCain - particularly vis a vis Hillary or Obama - for instance, Ted Olson, Phil Gramm, Steve Forbes and Senators Coburn, Kyl and Brownback. Or do you think they just sold out?

[quote]
Jason32 wrote:
Okay, so I guess everyone now votes for the guy who sucks less?

nephorm wrote:
Now? Now?[/quote]

Now it’s switched from “least” to “less,” at least within the respective parties… (because RP doesn’t count).

If I had to vote for president tomorrow, I would vote for McCain(if he was the only option vs Obama/Clinton), but I would not be happy about it. Out of Giuliani, Thompson, Paul, Romney, and Huckabee, this is the guy everyone likes best? Really? No, really?

[quote]Sloth wrote:
And yes, I agree with a major point raised raised in this video, McCain will have us involved in yet another war. Maybe even two. [/quote]

So will the democrats. War may be a forgone conclusion. IT won’t take much to trigger another war. The ME is a powder keg and the fuse has been lit.

[quote]Jason32 wrote:
Okay, so I guess everyone now votes for the guy who sucks less?[/quote]

We’ve been settling since 1988. Regan had his faults but he was exactly what we needed at that time in history.
Truth be told, I am exactly what this country needs for a president. However, I am to poor and I wasn’t actually born on American soil, so sadly, I won’t be able to rescue us. :slight_smile:

More on McCain versus the Talk Radio mandarins:

[i]What a kerfuffle! Half a dozen talk-radio hosts whose major talent is that, like hairdressers, they can talk all day long to one client after another as they snip, have decided that the presumptive Republican nominee does not hew sufficiently close to their gospel.

As anyone who has listened to them knows, the depth of their thought is truly Oprah-like. And if a great institution of the left can weigh-in as it does in the choice of a nominee, why not its fraternal twins on the right? It doesn’t matter that Mitt Romney, suddenly their Reagan, became a conservative in a flash of light sometime last year, or that their other champion, a populist theocrat, is in many ways as conservative as Vladimir Lenin. The task is to stop the devil McCain.

As a mere print person whose words are not electrified and shot through walls, automobiles, pine trees, and brains, I realize that what I write in the bloody ink of a dying industry may be irrelevant. But from my antiquated perspective, something is very wrong.

Ostracism following tests of “right thinking” is a specialty of the left. Not that it doesn’t exist on the right, blooming with great malice especially on the radio. But in light of their prospects, conservatives have no room for it. For by their neglectful forfeit they have lost the battles of culture and education, and to remain other than an occult force they must express their beliefs through politics, from which, after November, they may be for a time excluded.

Why? To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad after three days and exited three weeks later, leaving Saddam dead and a pliant Iraqi strongman to keep the country harmless or suffer the same quick take-down. Rather than being broken on the wheel of irreconcilable Muslim factions, a supple and intact American power would have shattered Arab elation following Sept. 11, and then by threatening their rule been able to discipline the various police states of the region into eliminating their terrorists. Far more efficient that way, without six and more murderous and unavailing years in which neither a single democracy has appeared nor will one. The surge is merely coincident with a change in Sunni strategy. Instead of watching the U.S. and Iran arm the Shiites for a major sectarian war, the Sunni choose to avail themselves of American arms while simultaneously removing the lunatic jihadists nipping at their heels.

The Democrats’ advantage in 2008 is that the costs of the war in Iraq have been highly disproportionate to its effects, not least in the decline of the American military, when it could have been otherwise. Conservatism has been dehorsed, because though conservatives rightly seek victory, it has not appeared except in the minds of those suffering from cognitive dissonance.

This and the economy threaten to throw the conservative enterprise back to where it was before Ronald Reagan or even William F. Buckley. Along comes John McCain, who has an 80% positive rating from the American Conservative Union but who as a truly independent soul does not fit, at the margins, some of the transient notions of what makes a conservative. Because of his independence and flexibility, he is the only Republican candidate who has a chance of winning, and thus preserving the core principles of conservatism, in relation to which he is unimpeachable. They are national security (in particular the strength of the military after Iraq and vis-à-vis China and a resurgent Russia), Constitutionalism (as in individual vs. collective rights), and the economy (free markets vs. government industrial policy).

One can agree or disagree with his peripheral positions, but political orthodoxy is political death. If those who are in a hissy fit about Sen. McCain would rather have Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, they will get Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton – how delightful to go to jail for building your house on land once visited by an exotic moth – and they will wake up to a great regret, as if in their drunkenness they had taken Shrek to bed.

But, guess what? Even if, as the country veers left, living conservatives gnash their teeth and dead ones spin in their graves, a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn’t worth it, however, for the rest of us.

So, rather than playing recklessly with electoral politics by sabotaging their own party ostensibly for its impurity but equally for the sake of their self-indulgent pique, each of these compulsive talkers might be a tad less self-righteous, look to the long run, discipline himself, suck it up, and be a man. And that would apply equally as well to the gorgeous Laura Ingraham and the relentlessly crocodilian Ann Coulter.

Mr. Helprin, a novelist, is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.[/i]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120277844588960675.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries