GOP insider: ‘I think we’ve got a world of problems’

June 9, 2008

Just two weeks ago, the Politico ran an item about the enormous confidence the Republican establishment has about John McCain’s chances in November. As the piece put it, “[M]any top GOP strategists believe he can defeat Barack Obama — and by a margin exceeding President Bush’s Electoral College victory in 2004.” In some Republican circles, the Politico’s article explained, there’s talk of a McCain “blowout.”

Two weeks later, that sense of bravado seems to be in short supply.

Bill Kristol noted in his NYT column this morning, “[A]lmost every Republican I’ve talked to is alarmed that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem up to the task of electing John McCain.”

Similarly, Tom Edsall reported in the Huffington Post on the growing sense of dread among Republican insiders.

“I think we’ve got a world of problems,” said one Republican strategist with extensive experience in presidential campaigns. He said this came home to him with a thud when he watched Obama and McCain give speeches last Tuesday, with the Democrat speaking before “20,000 screaming fans, while John McCain looked every bit of his 72 years” in a speech televised from New Orleans. This Republican cited the liberal blogger Atrios’ Attaturk’s description of McCain’s speech with a green backdrop that made McCain “look like the cottage cheese in a lime Jell-O salad.”

For McCain to stand a chance of winning, the operative contended, the campaign, the Republican National Committee, or an independent group will have to finance sustained negative ads developing a broad assault on Obama’s credibility as a national leader at a time of terrorist threat. McCain, however, has gone out of his way to aggressively discourage such activity, the operative pointed out, which, he argued, may kill McCain’s chances.

Another strategist with similar presidential experience said “McCain has not claimed the maverick ground that should be his. He has not seized the mantle of ‘change’ and reform that he could own by going to Washington and saying, ‘you know me. You know I’ve been a reformer all my life. Now, here’s how I am going to change Washington if you elect me president.’ And he has not taken economic turf. He has not explained how he is going to grow, not Washington, as the Democrats plan, but this economy to meet the challenges of global competition.”

The glass-half-full take, at least for the GOP, is that this appears to be a Democratic year, and McCain is very close to Obama in national polls. The glass-half-empty approach is that McCain seems to have hit his ceiling of support, and that’s after months of scrutiny-free campaigning.

This obviously isn’t rocket science. McCain has the Republican Party in a bit of a panic, not because his poll numbers are iffy, but because he’s really not offering much as a national candidate, at least not yet. McCain offers more of the same…

Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution argues that “McCain continues to embrace Bush policies on the most important issues, relying on a reputation for independence and moderation that could be lost in the heat of battle with Obama and the Democrats…. ‘Elect me because the other guy is worse.’ Not much of an argument in the face of gale-force winds blowing against the Republican Party.”

…doesn’t offer much in the way of a vision for the future…

Arch-conservative Bay Buchanan suggested that it may not matter what McCain does. Writing in Human Events on June 4, she declared: “In reality there is only one candidate. Barack Obama. In November he will win or he will lose. John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama. The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps.”

…and when push comes to shove, McCain just isn’t a great campaigner.

For one, he’s extremely undisciplined. With virtually no pressure on him at all, he’s already offered a series of troubling gaffes. He’s also prone to — as Kaus says — “reflexive righteous blunderbuss denials” that often get him in more trouble than the original accusation. Third, he’s a horrible speaker. Finally, his fundraising operation has not only been anemic, it’s based on the models of the past.

To be sure, this doesn’t mean Obama is a lock. Far from it — he has a Democratic Party to bring back together, he has plenty of working-class whites to win over, the right-wing attack machine is just now starting to sharpen its fangs, latent racism remains an unknown factor, and there are some completely-bogus-but-widely-believed myths about him and his family that he’ll have to work to overcome.

But under the circumstances, who do you think would want to switch places with the other? McCain or Obama?

My sense is that McCain is running for president in order to experience the challenge of running for president. I think if he wins, he’ll be disappointed.

I expect that all he’ll have at his disposal is attacks and negative ads. He truly has nothing of interest to offer anyone on either side of center – he’s The Rice Cake Candidate. Just about anything is better than a rice cake.

  • Quick! More gold paint for this pasty turd! I love the way ReThugs are talking about the things McCain hasn’t claimed (Maverick Status) when it wouldn’t stand up to five seconds of scruitiny.

    Anyone want to bet that the Gosh that’s Obvious Party is looking for a way to claim all of the primary contests McCain won should have gone to Romney?

    Anyone?

  • As I have posted elsewhere; Elmer Fudd, as the democratic candidate, should win in a landslide. But this is America and all bets are off. If a democrat can’t win against a republican after the last 8 years; we can kiss what’s left of America goodbye.

  • My gut feeling – McCain doesn’t care if he gets elected or not. He is simply going though the motions of campaigning because that is what is expected of him. Don’t forget that he is the default candidate. The only reason for his running is because he was the last one standing. All the other Republican candidates were voted off the island.

    His lack of preparedness for his appearances and speeches makes me believe that he knows his campaign is futile. He doesn’t have the proverbial fire in the belly that made Hillary such a compelling candidate and which will carry Obama over the finish line.

  • The man in the Edgar Suit should not be taken lightly. Clinton took Obama lightly and a house dropped on her. Hubris is rampant on the GOP side and the last thing we need is for Obama to get sucked-into the establishment way of doing things. It would bring on a catastrophic result. I also don’t think the Clintons will be very helpful. That article this weekend about McBush embracing Hillary should have brought a swift and cogent response from that camp. Nary a word…

  • “it’s not over ’til its over” to quote a famous american philosopher.

    Regardless of Mcsame, they will slime and go as negative as possible short of saying “n***, n***, n****. I hope and expect people will vote their interest this time. But the key is Congress. Progressives need a working majority to enact real change, else the Republicans will obstruct, obstruct and obstruct and then obstruct some more. Fifty states, Barack and constant pressure on the Democrats to ensure they follow through and remake America

  • With growing Republican ineptitude comes a more dangerous political landscape for us all. Don’t be surprised in October when this current Republican White House occupant decides to bomb Iran for what he thinks will be political gain. -Kevo

  • The sad thing for the Publicans is that McCain is the BEST candidate they have – but he’s turned around on what he believes in so often that he’s like a dog chasing his own tail at this point. Campaign as a reformer, John – remind people of the campaign reform legislation with your name on it – that you repudiated this spring by your actions.

    Our work over the next several months will be to make sure that an honest picture of Barack Obama gets across to voters – we will have to be fighting the corporatocracy media on this as much or more as we will be fighting the Publican slime machine. And then, after we elect Obama and many more Democrats in Congress, our work really begins. Among many other things, we are going to have to cut the corporatocracy into many less powerful pieces without further damaging the economy that its tentacles now grasp.

  • Our work over the next several months will be to make sure that an honest picture of Barack Obama gets across to voters

    True, but what I expect will be even more difficult (and equally important) is getting an honest picture of McCain across to the voters. McCain’s base has gone to great lengths to paint him as a maverick; they will be loathe to let us harm that woefully inapt (and inept) narrative.

  • I think the idea that Hon. Sen. McCain’s desire to be President is anything less than an all-consuming obsession grossly misreads the man. Using this against him will be very important to a Dem victory, in my view.

    As for Senator McCain being the “best” candidate, I wonder which would have emerged from a system of proportional delegate apportionment? My guess is Gov. Romney. It is he I most worried about then, and most worry about as a Veep pick.

  • I believe the cottage cheese in the lime jello comment is due to Attaturk, who occasionally posts at Atrios’ site. I may be wrong: I don’t have the post in front of me.

  • Kevo @ 7:

    The most likely timeframe for Bush to launch an attack on Iran is mid-to-late September, shortly after the nominees are locked in. The Corporate News Media will cooperate in pushing a view of ‘success’ for 6-8 weeks.

    It is critical to the Bush Criminal Enterprise that Obama not take office. If they cannot roll the election over to McSame (as the experienced candidate), do not bet against them creating a ‘national emergency’ to prevent an elected Obama from taking office.

    At the very least, you can expect Bush to ‘pardon’ several hundred of his fellow war criminals to prevent an Obama administration from pursuing the truth about their crimes against humanity.

  • Bill Kristol noted in his NYT column this morning, “[A]lmost every Republican I’ve talked to is alarmed that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem up to the task of electing John McCain.”

    He just means the McCan’t campaign isn’t ready to appeal to fear and racism to win against Barack Obama.

    I think McCan’t is in this to win it, but I would not be surprised if the Bushite wing of the Republican’t party, along with the Theocratic wing, are willing to accept four years of an Obama Presidency to set themselves up for taking the House and Senate back in 2010 and the Presidency back in 2012. Remember, they are going to lose more seats in both Houses despite what McCan’t does. He has no coattails (and little money to share). Obama should have coattails and lots of money to share.

    Not that the Bushites might not attack Iran anyway. They just wouldn’t be doing it to ‘help’ McCan’t.

  • “…will have to finance sustained negative ads developing a broad assault on Obama’s credibility as a national leader at a time of terrorist threat. McCain, however, has gone out of his way to aggressively discourage such activity…”

    Is anyone betting that McCain will stick to his “principles” about negative campaigning?

    Not to worry. Even if McCain avoids negativity in his own campaign, the rabid partisans who hate everything Democrat will do the dirty work for him.

    It’s going to be very ugly. I’m seeing it in my area already.

  • I wonder how much of McCain’s problems stem from his reliance on lobbyists who may wield great power in certain spheres of influence but have little expertise in actually running a campaign. Let’s face it, they’re in it to exploit their connections and make more money for themselves, not necessarily get their hands dirty with the day to day requirements of an election.

  • Eight years ago I said that the nomination of George Bush was a scientific experiment on a grand scale to answer, finally, the question of just how stupid the American electorate is. It took until the 2004 re-election of Bush to answer that definitively.

    The experiment this election seeks to answer is just how insane the American electorate is. With the policies of the GOP and the movement conservatives literally falling apart in front of us, with disastrous governance in economic, scientific, foreign policy, and domestic policy areas, it would take a voter who is clinically insane to vote to continue down this path with John McCain.

    I expect that he’ll get support in the polls in the mid forty percent region, and majorities in some areas. What that says about our collective sanity isn’t reassuring.

    I truly enjoyed the McCain ad on the side-bar. Does the McCain campaign really think it’s wise to show ads where their candidate appears as he did thirty-odd years ago? This can only serve, once people see the actuality, of driving home just how old he is.

  • If you believe this Administration is going to attack= Iran to help “throw” the election to McCain, you’re committing the sin of being only partially paranoid enough. If they want to keep the throne, they’re going to have throw a much longer pass. Look for a devastating attack on American soil ’round about Oct 1, followed by a national state of emergency and the suspension, er, “delay” of the election for “the duration”.

    Do I really think that’s going to happen? No. Can I dismiss it out of hand like I would have eight years ago? Also no. Dick Cheney has not spent nearly a decade gathering all the strands of power into his hands, just to go back to Wyoming quietly.

  • Never underestimate the power of the default mode. When things are going bad there is a strong current to maintain the flow in the wrong direction.

    McCain gained the GOP nomination by default. And it could happen again in the land built on great delusions and the false promise of growth.

  • … McCain seems to have hit his ceiling of support, and that’s after months of scrutiny-free campaigning…

    Hopefully soon, the erroneous image of McMaverick will be laid bare. We need the Congress to stand up to Bush and Bush jr and fight back on the New GI Bill, Fisa, et al…and answer every false, ambiguous statement that is made about these issues. Families and friends of military need to know and spread the word to all who they know about our governments real attitude towards our troops…expendable fodder in the pursuit of corporatocracy…thus insuring the futher crippling of our economy.

    If at least some of this message can get out via the traditional media then the repugs are toast…they should be afraid…what they are trying to selling is total shit.

  • Let us remember that McCain was all but counted out for the nomination.

    I’m also concerned that his campaign so far as been so listless and uninspiring that he might as well have gone on vacation. And Obama’s has been just the opposite, and he’s gotten all the attention from the press and media, mostly positive except for the Wright and “bitter” gate stories.

    And yet McCain is breathing down Obama’s neck in the polls.

    If McCain ever finds his rhythm, and I don’t see why he shouldn’t, he could win. They managed to package that complete fraud George Bush into a winning candidate in 2000, and they have better material, far better, to work with in John McCain, albeit all in his past.

  • …there’s talk of a McCain “blowout.”

    Well, of course there’s going to be a McOldGuy blowout. When you pile all the hopes of the GOPer pachyderm atop a rickety old unicycle—and the wheel says “manufactured by the John S. McCain Tire and Rubber Company, Flipflopville, USA”—it should be very easy to predict a “blowout.”

    Of epic proportions.

    By the way—are they selling tickets to President Obama’s inauguration yet? I’d like 5, if you please….

  • Not to mention that I think he is the default candidate right now and Obama has to win over those undecided voters. To people that don’t know any better, Obama’s name alone is probably strange enough to end up saying they’ll vote for McCain.

    John McCain: Here’s to you, poor people!
    McCainonomics 101.
    John McCain: Your retirement is too secure as it is, don’t you think?
    John McCain: Here’s to you, OH, PA, MI!
    John McCain: Can’t poor sick children just get a job already?
    John McCain: 100 more years of war!
    John McCain supporting our troops by keeping them uneducated.
    Who knows better how you should act with your own body, why of course, John McCain!
    4 more years of Bush/McCain policies! They’ve worked so well so far!

  • jhm@10 – “As for Senator McCain being the “best” candidate, I wonder which would have emerged from a system of proportional delegate apportionment? My guess is Gov. Romney. It is he I most worried about then, and most worry about as a Veep pick.”

    If you had lived in Massachusetts during the Romney years, you wouldn’t be too worried – remember, he had to drop out of the nomination race for McCain to take the title as leading flip-flop-flip-flopper… Romney is a balloon in a world full of pins.

  • I can’t imagine that Romney would be considered for the VP job. McCain’s vain enough that the last thing he’d want is someone who “looks” presidential (tall, tanned, good looking, still has his hair) standing next to someone like McCain (shorter, paler, balder, older).

  • I’m sure this is all part of a Rovian plan to let McCain win the Whitehouse in 2012 or 2016 or possibly 2020. You’ll see, it’ll all make sense and then we’ll be slapping our collective forehead. We’re all just pawns in Rove’s big brain.

  • To those of you who are anticipating that there might be a US attack on Iran or a terrorist attack on American soil before the election, and it’ll be all sorts of suspicious…I don’t begrudge you your well-placed, sadly-deserved paranoia. But here’s why I think it’s not going to happen.

    The GOP is in this epic set of tragic circumstances, a ginormous Catch-22. Because all of awful events of the past 8 years can be traced back to the criminal stupidity of the Bush Administration, and the Repulibcan-led Congress that let them get away with, literally, murder (I know, there were Dems in Congress, too, but for 6 years, the GOP ran the entire show, so shut up). The GOP has to take their lumps, and winning the White House in 2008 only delays the inevitable. Worse, the more the GOP runs the White House, the more they’ll be blamed for the State of the Union (because, let’s face it, things are going to get worse before they get better). The catch-22 is, the GOP knows that things won’t get better without tremendous change, change they can’t provide. But if the Dems provide that change, and succeed in making things ANY better, it’ll be a long time before the White House gets the GOP again. All they can hope is that Obama gets the White House and things don’t get significantly better right away. SO they have to lay the groundwork for a hopeful Obama failure.

    So they’ll lie and slander & spread vicious rumors about Barack Obama. They’ll foster racist and anti-Mulim and anti-liberal hatred. They’ll try to say Obama is more like Bush than McCain, and say it with a straight face. All in the hopes that McCain DOESN’T win the election, but that Obama doesn’t get enough done so they can say “see? We TOLD you you should’ve stayed with us.” And of course, they’ll do as much obstruction as possible so Obama is successful as rarely as possible.

    Obstructionism. That’s the last weapon in their arsenal. How sad is that?

  • hark said: “Let us remember that McCain was all but counted out for the nomination.”

    And how perfect was that for him. As the front runner he’d have had all the press on his flip-flops, not to mention his anti-Republican’t positions. As the underdog he got none of that and cruised through a crowd of midgets to be the last dwarf standing (my appologies to any ‘short people’ reading).

  • For McCain to stand a chance of winning, the operative contended, the campaign, the Republican National Committee, or an independent group will have to finance sustained negative ads developing a broad assault on Obama’s credibility as a national leader at a time of terrorist threat. McCain, however, has gone out of his way to aggressively discourage such activity, the operative pointed out, which, he argued, may kill McCain’s chances.

    All those who think this isn’t going to happen, raise your hands.

    So, those two who raised their hands believe the sun rises in the west, right???

    McCain can say all he wants, but Darth Black will do what is necessary, and there’s no crew of white supremacist thugs and southern traitors in the Republican Party who can resist doing this, for the same reason a great white can’t resist taking your arm off..

    The scumball who came up with the Willie Horton ad is already doing ads that say Obama’s not tough on crime (for not supporting a death penalty law nobody in law enforcement supported that was vetoed anyway back in Illinois 7 years ago), so how could he be tough on the war on terror? (the good news here is that the reporter who wrote about this went out and quoted the Illinois Attorney General who also opposed the “gang killers death penalty act” and all the other law enforcement people who said it was crap and lauded Obama for opposing it).

    The Republicans are so far in the hole, they’re going to become so frustrated that they’ll rip off their masks and reveal themselves for the Dr. Who space aliens in zipped-up “human suits” they are.

  • It feels very strange and not real good to agree with Bay Buchanan–a ranting harridan who makes her brother sound like a Chuck Mangione tune–but I do. This election is Obama’s to win or lose.

    I have a lot of confidence in the man and his team that he’ll win it, but then I didn’t think the Bushistas would succeed in their effort to turn the 2004 campaign into a referendum on a caricature of John Kerry, and of course they pulled that off.

    We must be vigilant. If Obama wins, he’s going to have a rough first two years figuring out how to work the levers and dealing with the problems that greet him (think Clinton in ’93-’94 or even Reagan in ’81-’82). How well he navigates that will depend in large part on how big he wins this November.

  • The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps.” — Bay Buchanan

    What kind of “wrap”? Should he be running as Taco McCain?

  • So the Republicans see only two options: 1) Lie repeatedly about Sen. McCain’s history as a “reformer” and a “maverick” or 2) go nuclear on the mud-slinging. Done and done.

    It comes as easy as breathing with this lot.

  • It WILL be about Obama — at least from the Republican side, but that’s fine. Unlike Kerry, who sometimes looked like Admiral Stockdale’s nephew, Obama can stand the scrutiny. America wants to believe in a Democrat, so they might go for him whatever comes out — not that anything will.

    Maeanwhile, Obama will continue to campaign as he has been. Has anyone but me noticed the similarity in tactics between Obama and Martin Luther King? They both kept their ‘eyes on the prize,’ did not ‘respond in kind’ to attacks, but let their attackers condemn themselves by the attacks.

    As for the people who fear Romney, not only won’t he get the VP — partially because of his Mormonism, but more because, by the end of the primary season, he’d gotten every one of his opponents actively disliking him. (The contrast question is also a good one. McCain already looks so bad next to Obama that he doesn’t want someone else in the spotlight who also emphasizes — in contrast — his age and fumbling. Romney fumbles too — and badly — but not with the same lack of style that McCain does.)

  • What kind of “wrap”? Should he be running as Taco McCain?
    Libra @ 30

    Hardcore pseudo-cons favor two wetsuits.

    They both kept their ‘eyes on the prize,’ did not ‘respond in kind’ to attacks, but let their attackers condemn themselves by the attacks.

    In the final days of the Clinton campaign there were a couple of instances (the RFK comment stands out) where Clinton said something, Obama’s camp called the comment “unfortunate” and that’s it, but Clinton supporters went nuts. Truly, it was bizarre to see that type of Pavlovian response in higher mammals (no offence to dogs intended).

  • What on earth changed the republican insiders from positive to negative in two weeks? Obama won the nomination, but that was not unexpected news to anyone following the numbers. Fundraising has been pitiful for McCain and great for Obama since Christmas. McCain’s rate of stumbling hasn’t changed since then either. Has it simply taken them this long to realize the obvious?

    On McCain wanting or not wanting to win:- He wants to win, at least as much as Hillary did – look at how he kept pushing through the fall when things looked bleak for him. Unfortunately, it is not obvious that he remembers what he was intending to do with it if he gets it.

    In some Republican circles, the Politico’s article explained, there’s talk of a McCain “blowout.”
    Did they really want to say that? All that did for me was raise unfortunate images of geriatric medical crises like hernias, brain aneurysms and ruptured aortas.

  • What none of you are talking about is that all that matters is the Electoral College, and the Electoral College is very unfavorable to Obama. He’s going to lose Ohio, and will struggle in Pennsylvania, and it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to win without those two states. What was really striking about the Dem primaries (the caucuses were a different matter) was how static the race was: neither candidate ever built any momentum (unlike Kerry in 2004, for example), because it was all about demographics. Clinton was still winning the Appalachian states in blowouts long after it was obvious she’d lost the nomination. That’s Obama’s big problem: too many voters in Appalachian swing states will never vote for a black man. (I don’t think they would have voted for a female in the general either, by the way.) Marc Ambinder had a post recently talking about the possibility that Obama wins the popular vote (which I think he almost certainly will), but loses the EC, and I think that’s a very real possibility.

  • I would vote for Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice but I will not vote for an angry black woman like Michelle Obama. I don’t want angry black people anywhere near the presidency. I want someone that loves America and has the OUR interests ahead of their own angry agenda.

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