Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Humiliated Giuliani readies to endorse McCain

It's a funny old game politics. This time last year we were all talking about how McCain had blown it and how Giuliani was lining up to take the prize. Today it's a question of when, not if, Giuliani stands down and whether or not he will endorse McCain. (It's 90% certain that he will.)

McCain surely now steps into Super Tuesday as the Republican front runner and, for the first time since this battle for the Republican nomination started, as the favourite to take the prize.

With most of the the state's precincts reporting, Mr McCain pushed aside Mr Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, by 35 per cent to 31 per cent. He thus also bagged all 57 delegates that were up for grabs in the Sunshine State and can now expect a surge money into his campaign coffers.

His victory will thus provide a huge lift ahead of next week’s Super-Tuesday primaries in more than 20 states. It will surely also spur speculation of one more impossible endorsement in the days ahead – from California Governor, Arnold Schwarzengger.

Gathered in a Miami airport hotel, Mr McCain's supporters roared in delight as news of their candidate's narrow but vitally important victory was broadcast on giant television screens. Even until the last moments, most polling organisations had seen the state as too close to call.

"Our victory may not have reached landslide proportions but it was sweet nonetheless," Mr McCain told the cheering crowd, before paying tribute to all of his rivals – Mr Giuliani especially generously as the "exceptional American hero that he truly is".

I'm pleased to see Giuliani go, some of the things he has been saying on this campaign have been truly worrying; echoing, and sometimes even surpassing, the Bush regimes desire for violent intervention wherever they choose. Like Bush, he promised to "take whatever action is necessary" regarding Iran and, also like Bush - after the NIE reported that Iran had stopped attempting to build a nuclear weapon in 2003 - Giuliani was quick to tell us all that this made no difference to his opinion that Iran remained a threat. Facts were never going to get in the way of Giuliani's hate fest.

And the team he had built around him
- which included Norman Podhoretz, the man who called for the bombing of Iran and who gleefully admitted that this would “unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest" - was certainly one of the most hawkish of any of the Republican candidates. So we can breath a slight sigh of relief as this particular Republican bampot leaves the stage.

However, as Johann Hari pointed out recently in the Independent, the myth of McCain as the Republican liberals can live with is just that: a myth.
He brags he would be happy for US troops to remain in Iraq for 100 years, and declares: "I'm not at all embarrassed of my friendship with Henry Kissinger; I'm proud of it." His most thorough biographer – and recent supporter – Matt Welch concludes: "McCain's programme for fighting foreign wars would be the most openly militaristic and interventionist platform in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt... [it] is considerably more hawkish than anything George Bush has ever practised." With him as president, we could expect much more aggressive destabilisation of Venezuela and Bolivia – and more.
Up until now the Republican battle has been a messy affair and one can only hope that, as the field narrows, more attention will be paid to just who John McCain actually is.

The fact that he doesn't hate immigrants and is genuinely opposed to torture is to be welcomed, but to be honest I would expect to find those sentiments in any rational human being. However, it is a huge mistake to look at those aspects of McCain and to imagine that, by doing so, one is seeing an accurate reflection of the whole man.

The fact that McCain is seen as the liberal Republican candidate is merely a sign of how far to the right the Republican party have slid. So goodbye Giuliani, but lets not celebrate a McCain victory. He's not so different from what we have now in terms of supporting military interventionism.

UPDATE:

It's interesting to see Michelle Malkin's reaction to a possible McCain nomination, based mainly on his stance on immigration.
But questions like this remain: How can McCain honestly reach out to conservatives when he defends his extremist campaign Hispanic outreach director who doesn’t believe in borders and when he boasts a national campaign finance chair and soft-money mogul who poured millions of dollars into the fight against English-language instruction in California, Planned Parenthood, and radical environmental fear-mongering groups?
And her readership are promising not to vote for McCain:

Carol…

I cannot in good conscience vote for John McCain.. If the country is going to hell, I’d rather Hillary, Barack, or the Dems can take credit for the destruction of the country than the Republicans.

Eric…

As a lifelong, politically active Conservative I’ve decided to vote Dem if McCain is the nominee. Why? Because I think that McCain will perform almost exactly like a Democrat and it is better to have the real thing in office rather than a Dem in GOP clothing. If McCain is elected and then performs poorly, because he acts like a Dem, he virtually guarantees a Dem win in 2012. However, if a Dem wins and runs things as they are dying to do then the GOP has a strong shot at 2012 and beyond.

What I find most interesting here is that even though Malkin complains that 20% of the people who took part in the Florida election were Independents or Democrats, that still mean that 80% of those who voted were actually Republicans.

So, does this mean that Malkin and the views of her readership are actually out of touch with the Republican base? I do find that intriguing.

I note a similar state of despondency over at Little Green Footballs. Perhaps these rather extreme hate sites are simply talking to themselves at times...

For example, I notice that over at the very right wing National Review Online they are taking a much more balanced view of the whole thing:
Someone who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is not your enemy, Ronald Reagan reminded us. McCain’s voting record is considerably better than that. Before Barry Goldwater said “go to work,” he first advised conservatives to “grow up.” The moment is at hand for Senator McCain and conservatives to acknowledge what conservative voters had repeatedly made clear: That they need each other.
Such common sense reveals the hate filled bile of the Malkins for just what it is.

Click title for full article.

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