The Straw Man Campaign

As many of you no doubt know, I have been following the campaign very closely this year. Watching the train wreck of the Straight Talk Express is just too tempting, almost like the rubbernecking that occurs as you pass by the gruesome scene of a highway fatality. It’s quite repulsive and haunts you in your dreams, but for some reason you always want see more gore and know more fine details about how the steering column punctured the drivers lungs, causing him to choke to death on his own blood. Well… such is the nature of Election 2008. Anyways, as I was watching some coverage last night, I finally realized something. John McCain is throwing the election!

“Why,” you may ask?

The answer is kind of drawn out an complicated, but I believe I’ve presented a solid case:

Exhibit A: Election 2000

If any of you followed politics before the 2000 Election, you may know that John McCain DID, indeed, build his reputation as a Maverick. He was a ‘take no bullshit, give no bullshit’ type of politician, which is a stance I can respect. It wasn’t until a few years after his defeat that he began to fall into step with his party and his president. He was one of the few republicans that I ever would have considered voting for, at least at the time (though if it would have been a Gore vs. McCain election, I would probably have still voted for Nader…)

As fate would have it though, the republican base was really fired up about the “crazy liberals” and their “blow job antics,” so they wanted a candidate endorsed by God himself. As the fairytale goes, George W. Bush was handpicked by God, and there’s no bigger endorsement than that! John McCain never stood a chance against that, particularly when W’s underhanded campaign strategies now famously known as the “Swiftboat Attacks” caused the longtime senator to second-guess the integrity of his party. Considering his long reputation of bucking his own party when it is at odds with his staunch personal beliefs (for instance, when he advocated strongly against Bush’s tax cuts for those making > $250k annually. I’m paraphrasing here, but he harped on how the tax cuts were unethical and unfair to the middle class, because trickle down economics only work in a vacuum where there doesn’t exist greed), McCain even flirted with the notion of jumping ship altogether and maybe declaring himself Independent or even switching to the Democratic party.

Enter Primary Season 2007-2008:

As we all know by now, this was an election cycle in which it would have been nearly impossible for any Republican candidate to win. Ok… maybe impossible is kind of a strong word considering that somehow W won a second term… but if any Republican stood a remote chance at holding the office it was John McCain with his long history of “maverickyness.” Just take a look at how he absolutely decimated his competition even within his own party, which is quite impressive considering how the GOP has historically been a little icy in regards to McCain because he often disagreed with them on some of their most non-issue issues.

As any political pundit could tell you, in the current electoral environment it is literally impossible for any candidate to take the office, given only the support of his/her base. It is necessary to win over the majority of independents and undecided (read: retarded) voters as well. This is something that the McCain of 2000 could have done very easily, and probably something he could have done very easily this cycle as well had he not chosen to become yet another drone in the Republican hamster wheel over the past several years (voting with Bush over 90% of the time). Hell… even with his recent departure from “maverickyness,” most of the voting public is too dumb to realize that a historical record of reform means nothing if the current attitude is lock-in-step to the party that even the most retarded of undecided voters know we need to remove from office. Furthermore, John McCain is not George W. Bush, as anyone can tell, thus it is not necessarily a given that the current policies would continue to lead us further into a downward spiral during his presidency, incumbent party or not.

John McCain was poised to win the election before it even started. The base of the republican party, a ravenous group of rednecks, would never in a million years vote for a black man (or even a half-black man for that matter). There would maybe be a few stragglers that dislike McCain enough to jump party or abstain from voting, but very likely not nearly enough to have any significant effect. So… John McCain had a secure base, a wealth of experience against one of the most inexperienced candidates in history, so all he needed to do was win over some independents: an easy task for a “maverick” like McCain, particularly if he chose an ex-Democrat liberal-leaning Independent such as Joe Lieberman (AKA douche, but once again I digress…) as had been speculated by many pundits to be the most likely choice, and probably his best shot at winning.

Exhibit B: Sarah Palin

So what does John McCain do? He panders to his base! If this was the John McCain of 2000, it may have been a wise idea, but given McCain’s most recent history of following his base, it really wasn’t necessary. Instead, McCain chose the most inexperienced, backwater, rifle-totin’est, moose-huntin’est, rootin’ tootin’ redneck woman in the national political arena as his running mate. At first glance it seemed as if it was all over for us liberals because of the sexist Hilary voters who would rather vote for another woman… ANY woman over a male candidate who shares their ideals but just so happened to defeat their messiah… even if that woman would seek to turn the women’s rights movement retrograde.

John McCain may not have the most impressive academic credentials, but he’s a frickin’ political dinosaur! He knows better than we do what he needed to do to win, regardless of how “out-of-touch” he is accused of being. If the Republican electorate machine were really so naïve, there is absolutely no way we would have seen a second term of W. He had to have known that there would be enough time for the women voters to cool down and take a step back from the situation before election day, and that there is no freaking way any of them would vote for Sarah Palin after she had been vetted by the press. He had to have known that such a polarizing figure would actually turn independents away. He had to have known that his selection would undermine the inexperience argument that his party had used so effectively against Senator Obama. He had to have known that even members of his own party would be turned away by her inability to speak to the press and her general lack of worldly knowledge and experience. Perhaps what he didn’t know was what a hypocrite this so-called maverick reformer would turn out to be, but it’s likely that he would’ve been able to foresee it even with what little time he had spent vetting her.

So why did he pick Sarah Palin unless he was setting his campaign up as a straw man? Kind of a reality check on the Republican base is my theory. A mirror never lies… and this particular mirror into the redneck base shows tells them “My God… do I sound like that? Is this what the rest of the world thinks of me?”

One could argue that the reason is that she has single handedly brought his campaign crashing, but if you pay attention to his body language, McCain himself appears disgusted by listening to Sarah Palin speak. He defends the media’s attacks on her very disingenuously.

Exhibit C: Straight Talk Express

As I mentioned earlier, John McCain has long been known for his no-holds-barred truthiness, media transparency, and his honor and integrity that includes not making personal attacks on his political opponents or using the same old Karl Rove fear tactics. So where did this series of personal attacks and media reclusiveness suddenly come from? Why would he hire the protege of Karl Rove, the man who destroyed his ambitions in 2000, as his political advisor? Evidently he knew that his honor and integrity is something that the independents and undecided voters hold in such great esteem as any other issue. So in an attempt to shake off any stragglers that would vote for him on that issue alone he would have to become a maverick unto himself and launch one of the most disgusting smear campaigns in history. If you pay attention to some of the rhetoric, however, something intriguing happens... his campaign informs the public that Barack Obama is "not who we think he is." Now... think about the people that are most susceptible to this type of smear attack. Who do you think they believe Barack Obama is? Some kind of terrorist! So when the McCain camp tells these people that Barack Obama is not who they think he is, they are really saying that he is not in fact a terrorist. Or this one: "We've got 'em right where we want 'em!" And where is that? Comfortably in the lead and halfway in the door of the White House?

Not satisfied that enough Independents and undecided voters would stray from him with these underhanded smear tactics, he realized he would have to flip-flop on several issues just to set himself up as even more of a hypocrite. On top of that even, he would need some real zingers for gaffes. For instance, the other day while campaigning in Western PA, in response to charges of voters in that area having racist attitudes, McCain said something along the lines of “As you may have heard, a lot of Obama’s supporters had some pretty nasty things to say about Western Pennsylvania…….. and I couldn’t agree more!” ZING! After a few bumbling attempts to correct his error, the crowd behind him looked absolutely pissed. In the immortal words of George W. Bush: “Mission Accomplished!”

Conclusion:

John McCain truly is an American hero. He was willing to set aside his ambitions of becoming a greater and more powerful man than either his father or his grandfather, both very highly touted Navy Admirals, so that he could do the right thing: give a swift[boat] kick in the ass to the party that has always disrespected his attempts to reach out across the aisle and unite this broken country. I salute you John McCain, and if I had said anything nasty about you this campaign season I beg of your forgiveness, for I was not lucid enough to see your true intentions. When John McCain says he always puts country first, now you know what he means.