{"id":14691,"date":"2008-02-25T15:30:46","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T20:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14691.html"},"modified":"2008-02-25T15:30:46","modified_gmt":"2008-02-25T20:30:46","slug":"mccain-predicts-iraq-may-cost-him-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-predicts-iraq-may-cost-him-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain predicts Iraq may cost him the election"},"content":{"rendered":"

He may be a 25-year veteran of Washington politics, and he may be a two-time leading GOP presidential candidate, but John McCain apparently still needs to work a bit on his “message discipline” problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding. If he can’t, “then I lose. I lose,” the Republican said.<\/p>\n

He quickly backed off that remark.<\/p>\n

“Let me not put it that stark,” the likely GOP nominee told reporters on his campaign bus. “Let me just put it this way: Americans will judge my candidacy first and foremost on how they believe I can lead the county both from our economy and for national security. Obviously, Iraq will play a role in their judgment of my ability to handle national security.”<\/p>\n

“If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose.’ But I don’t think there’s any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me, my support of the surge,” McCain added. “Clearly, I am tied to it to a large degree.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, he is<\/i> tied to Iraq, which is possibly why he was right the first time.
\n
\nOn the rhetorical point, I find it fascinating that McCain, even now, just blurts out the first thing that comes into his head. No wonder he’s gone through so many staffing changes; this is the kind of quality that drives political professionals batty. McCain has been on the campaign trail now for over a year — and that’s just this cycle — answering questions about, among other things, Iraq. But he can’t quite answer a question about what will happen if Americans reject his policy come November? As someone hoping McCain loses, it gives me hope that he has a habit of answering questions one way, and then wanting to give a different answer a few moments later.<\/p>\n

On the substantive point, McCain’s knee-jerk response might very well have been true. He’s running on a platform that, for all intents and purposes, is “stay the course.” He doesn’t want to change the Bush-Cheney policy in Iraq at all<\/i>; he believes eventually, it’ll work. He not only has no interest in withdrawing, he envisions a scenario in which U.S. troops stay in Iraq for another 100 years.<\/p>\n

If polls have any value at all, this isn’t a position Americans are prepared to embrace. McCain isn’t necessarily perceived as a Bush cheerleader on Iraq — in the primaries, the more a Republican was skeptical of the administration’s policy, the more likely he or she was likely to support McCain — but there’s a long road between now and November, and I guarantee there won’t be any ambiguities about McCain’s position as the campaign unfolds in the coming months.<\/p>\n

McCain acknowledged the war will be “a significant factor in how the American people judge my candidacy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Count on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He may be a 25-year veteran of Washington politics, and he may be a two-time leading GOP presidential candidate, but John McCain apparently still needs to work a bit on his “message discipline” problem. John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}