McCain cirlces the drain

The information in this post should not be new to any long time reader of the H-Blog (Hi Ma). But for the rookies, it looks like John McCain is real trouble after raising just $11.2 million in the second quarter (H-Blog called him "Dead Man Walking" in February). Yes $11.2 million is a lot of jack, but not when it puts you third in fund raising. See, its all about perspective and the perspective is all bad for McCain right now. Ron Paul would be thrilled with $11.2 million as it would signal upward momentum, but for Mr McCain, $11.2 is a big signal of downward mo'. Also, everyone likes to back a winner, and the perception that you're stallin' and fallin' only makes it harder to raise money. Mr McCain is on the edge of the dreaded downward spiral, where things are going bad, and things going bad only makes more bad things happen. Disappointing fund raising ($24.8 million so far on a $100 mil year end goal) and layoffs are a huge signal that bad things are happening (the bad event). Now, who's going to rush in and support that camp (the more bad things event)?

So the question is why? And that dear readers is why you come to the Hblog. Yahoo and CNN blame the two I's Iraq and Immigration, where McCain finds himself on the wrong side of public opinion on both issues. "Wrong" on Iraq with the general population, where Mr McCain used to be the belle of the ball, and "wrong" on Immigration within the GOP where Mr McCain plays Carrie.

But that's not really the issue. CNN Political Editor Mark Preston gets closest,

"He's going back to what he did in 2000. He realizes that the way he is going to win this nomination is not by getting the establishment votes but rather a grassroots campaign."

And there you have it. Mr McCain sold out. Sold out big, and sold out early. The cult of his particularly personality was built on "Maverick Senator John McCain." But immediately after he withdrew from the 2000 election he went from the voice of the people and supposed King Maker, to chief lap dog for the guy who blew him up. It killed him with his public. The man that fell victim to push polling suggesting he had a black baby, kissed the feet of the man who ordered the poll. Nothing maverick or heroic about it. A man who had the reputation of being a "man of principle" sold that principle to win. And that's just not his gig.

Two types of people win elections. People who will live and die by their conviction (W) and people with no conviction (Clinton). People will respect the first for their principles, and respect the second for their effectiveness (if they ever even notice it). But if your gig is that of conviction and you publicly sell out, well, it makes people gag. Its the worst of both. And that's John McCain. And Mr McCain's biggest "gag" moment was selling out on the Torture bill. It was a sad, sad moment. It was also when he lost this election. Everyone kept waiting for him to rise and champion something that should be so close to his heart. But everyone forgot that he sold his heart in 2000. Once his supporters, and his opponents realized this, he was done. Mr McCain was publicly played, and no one, not one single American, can vote for someone who was so badly manipulated in public.

So when Mr McCain says that he tried the maverick route last time and he lost, so this time he's going to court the right and suck up to his old opponents, it tells you a lot about the man and why he's destined to lose again.

For the record, I do believe that if he stayed with his Straight Talk Express persona (and that's clearly what it was), and repeatedly challenged the White House, then he would be the front runner. Now, not only will he badly lose the primary, but he cannot fall back to the "I'll run as an Independent" line. In 2000 he alienated the GOP core chiefmakers but won the hearts of the independents, some Republicans and a lot of Democrats. Feeling stung (aka panic), he spent the next eight years alienating all those R's, I's and D's. And what's that spell? RID, and that's exactly what the public is doing. They're getting RID of McCain (No? Too cute?).

So now its about layoffs and falling well short of his fund raising goals. Next it will be about falling well short of the White House (Was that better?).

Polls and market speak, W's value is dowwwwn.

The latest AP poll shows W again at his all time low with a 32% approval, which is also in line with his Hydrablog number. This alone isn't big or breaking news. Breaking it down, he has a 70% number with Republicans, a 25% number with Independents, and an 8 (yes 8) with Democrats.

Polls may lie, but markets rarely do. Take a look at this article. It implies that W's value in the market has declined from $25,000 for a photo to $5,000 in New Jersey. As a side note, I would love to see some real tracking on the value of photo ops with politicians and how much of an indicator that price is as for popularity and/or predictive of winning.

Combined, my bet is that you will see the current crop of GOP hopefuls start to really distance themselves, and eventually turn outright on W. While a 70 number is high in the GOP, you can't win with 25 and 8 for the other groups. A candidate needs Independents and Democrats to win, even if that means sacrificing some of the 70. You got a hint of this during the last GOP debate. My bet is that the candidates are crunching the data to see how their various methods of distancing themselves, and taking tentative jabs at W went. If it's not killing them, they will keep ramping up efforts on distance and jabs until its full out. The goal will be to trade one person from the 70 for three or more from the Independents and Democrats.

Bottom line...W's hurting. He's like wounded piranha, and the rest of the GOP piranha school is poised to devour him.

Rove and GOP

Reading a recent post from Andrew Sullivan, got me athinkin' and I'm athinkin' that Mr Sullivan has it wrong. The general idea behind the post is that Rove may have set the GOP back with the tactics he used to get W the...well, W. Maybe so, at least judging by a recent Pew Research Poll, as the GOP is hemorrhaging voters (I don't see the poll as the be all end all, things could shift dramatically if Iraq swings around. I actually hope the poll signals the end of the "I'm a Dem/GOP until I die" mentality). Anyway, why is Mr Sullivan wrong?

Well, who said Rove was ever trying to create anything for the GOP? His job, his goal, his life was based on getting W into the White House and keeping him there. Yes, Bush is a Republican, but the job wasn't to get the GOP to upmost power and then slide W in, the goal was to get W elected now. Much like when the Colts win the Super Bowl. Colts GM Bill Polian's goal wasn't also to establish the AFC as the dominant power, he was only looking for Colts victory. Given that Rove would do just about anything, screw anyone over, lie, manipulate, whatever, I think it makes sense that he would do the same to get other Republican's to look the other way at W's transgressions, subvert their own political philosophies (small government anyone?), and generally accept the rod in order to create this notion of "Its good for the GOP" which really meant, "It's good for Bush." By using the concept of a permanent GOP majority to keep everyone in line, he kept W in the White House, which was his job.

Like a GM that does whatever it takes to win now, Rove did whatever it took, future be damned. That's his job and he did it well. Losing the second term for the greater good of the GOP was expressly not his job. Congressional Republicans took the bait and they were the ones who paid the price. Furthermore, if the trend continues they will be the ones who continue to pay the price. W is out, Rove is out, and they don't really care. If a Republican feels that Rove oversold, misold, or sold out, well, they shouldn't be shocked. Look at what the guy did to his "rivals," why should anyone think he'd be any different to his "allies." Bottom line, a wins a win, and he won.

Is Congress a "Potted Plant?"

Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) made the following statement about Congress,

"We are not a potted plant watching the administration function, we are part of the decision-making process"

Proving once again, that when you have to tell people you're important, you're not. A little history.

In 2002 Congress passed HJ 114 and SJ 45, or as their collectively known, the "Congress is a potted plant" bills. See these were the bills that gave W unobstructed ability to do whatever he feels necessary as long as its a "national security" issue. And what are the parameters of national security? Let's take a look at the docs. "National security" is hereby defined to include the pursuit (by military force and invasion) of "international peace and security", and such interests will now include the entire "Persian Gulf region."

So Rep Lantos, Congress is, in fact, a potted plant. Like the old saying, if it sits and does nothing like a plant and if its as smart as a plant, its a plant. Your a plant. You gave up all your rights to advise, consent, shape, command, etc when you passed those bills. My bet is that, like the Patriot Act, few in congress actually read the bills (absolutely kills me), but someone wrote them, and whoever did (I'm looking at you White House) knew what was in them.

I'm pretty sure SOH Nancy Pelosi didn't read them. She keeps running around saying,

"I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president, any president, to go into Iran."

The way I read the above bills, he does. See Iran lies within the area called "The Persian Gulf" and W has unfettered authority to do whatever in that region. I get that US high schoolers are famous for not knowing geography and low reading scores, but I expect better from the SOH. Maybe no president before could go into Iran without explicit congressional consent, but no president before was lucky enough to have a congress filled with one group of people who put party above all and would never dream of countering W, and another who were so incompetent and afraid that they would never dream of countering W. And as I pointed out in earlier post, it will take 2/3 votes to over-ride W's veto of any bill taking this authority away.

To make matters worse for the dems, if possible, is that every week or so they get all vocal about taking control, setting time-lines, linking progress, holding back money, limiting W's ability to go into Iran, and every week they back off all that and just pass the bill the White House wants. It seems like the only courage they have is the courage to continually go through this humiliating song and dance.

The latest retreat, where the dems stripped a bill of language requiring W to come to congress before attacking Iran sums up how confused they are about what W can and can't do given previous bills.

One, if, as Pelosi asserts, W doesn't have the authority to act without congress' consent, why was this language even necessary? Second, its yet another example of the Dems talking tough, then retreating when it looks like it won't be a cake walk. So either Pelosi is running around trying to sound like her congress is relevant when it isn't, or she enjoys pulling tough sounding provisions out of bills, maybe even both. I dunno, maybe she likes looking weak and uniformed to the American public and to the White House. Bottom line, the Democratically controlled congress has yet to put any pressure on either its Republican members or the White House. When the GOP had control they did a masterful job of putting pressure on the dems, and the dems always caved. Maybe my conservative friends are right. Maybe the dems have no guts. They didn't have the guts to stand up to GOP pressure when they were the minority, and they haven't shown the guts to withstand any pressure from the GOP now that the dems are the majority. It just looks like anything that resembles a "stumbling block" causes the dems to retreat.

Maybe Lantos is right. Maybe the dems aren't a potted plant, a potted plant can at least get in the way occasionally. The dems are more like mice. Just scrambling to stay alive, nibbling the left-overs in the pantry, and running whenever something enters the room.

The GOP's big Slur

Been reading of late about W's big "slur" against the Democratic members of congress in his State of the Union Address.

During his speech, Bush congratulated what he called the "Democrat majority" while welcoming the "new," "changed" Congress, even though the prepared text of the speech reportedly called for Bush to recognize the "Democratic majority."

Apparently referring to members of the Democratic party as the "Democrat" party is some kind of big insult.

There’s no great mystery about the motives behind this deliberate misnaming. “Democrat Party” is a slur, or intended to be—a handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but “Democrat Party” is jarring verging on ugly. It fairly screams “rat.” At a slightly higher level of sophistication, it’s an attempt to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation.

Furthermore, while the word dates back to at least the Hading Administration, use today is all the fault of Newt Gingrich and pollster Frank Luntz

In the early 1990s, apparently due largely to the urging of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the use of the word "Democrat" as an adjective became near-universal among Republicans.

But here's the thing, both my parents (Hi Ma, Hi Pop) are members of the Democratic Party and I grew up a Democrat...(ic?) (before making the big switch to Libertarian), and I just don't see the insult. Sorry. I dunno, maybe I'm tougher than I thought, or, more likely, I've been called much worse. When I try to place, "Called Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party" on the big list of slurs, well, it doesn't even make the list of things to be listed. Seriously, it just feels silly. But after reading the first article, I did a search and this really bugs people. Well at least some people. From The Huffington Post,

"Those two letters actually do matter," Luntz said the other day. He added that he recently finished writing a book--it's entitled Words That Work--and has been diligently going through the galley proofs taking out the hundreds of "ic"s that his copy editor, one of those partisan Dems, had stuck in.

What Michelle Pilecki leaves out is just who the those two letters actually matter to. Preceding that paragraph was another in the original.

Luntz, who road-tested the adjectival use of “Democrat” with a focus group in 2001, has concluded that the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the—how you say?—Democratic Party.

And now you get it. No one really cares, except those are so wrapped up in party politics, on both sides, that they share little with the rest of America. I never knew it was a slur and I'm not new at this game. So when members of the Republic Party (hah-suck on that Gingrich, how's it feel now?) say "Democrat Party," I never knew they were trying to hurt my feelings. Not really the best insult when the insultee doesn't know they've been insulted. Ironically, since the Dems have brought so much attention to it, now I know, and honestly, I think the Dems are the ones looking silly.

Finally, from what I've been able to ascertain, "Democrat" is OK when referring to one member of the Democratic Party. "Democrats" is OK when referring to several members of the Democratic Party (or at least I assume so, the Democratic Party web site is www.democrats.org), Dems are OK as short-hand (Whew, I use that a lot). In fact, the only time this slur is a slur is when referring to the whole of the Democratic Party.

Not to be nitpicky, but this is another example of how the Dems don't get it. Rather than just mocking this as the all-time worst insult, they actually get all hot and bothered by it. Just completely the wrong way to handle it.