{"id":16465,"date":"2008-08-03T14:50:54","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T18:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16431.html"},"modified":"2008-08-03T14:50:54","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T18:50:54","slug":"the-arugula-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-arugula-card\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arugula Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the instantly mind-numbing “celebrity” attack, John McCain’s ostensible campaign manager Rick Davis said<\/a>, “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand \u2018MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea\u2019 and worry about the price of arugula.” <\/p>\n

This prompted Andrew Sullivan to respond<\/a>:<\/p>\n

They really played the arugula card? For all McCain’s personal qualities, we’re learning that the machine behind the GOP simply re-makes the campaign in its own Coulterite image. Instead of actually fighting on the core questions — how do we get out of Iraq with the least damage? how do we get past carbon-based energy? how do we tackle al Qaeda’s new base in Pakistan and within the nuclear-armed Pakistani government? how will we reduce the massive debt bequeathed us by the Bush-Rove GOP? how do we restore the Geneva Conventions? — we are debating people’s cultural insecurities and food choices.<\/p>\n

The slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy is not unrelated to this. If you never want to fight campaigns on policy, why bother crafting any?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three thoughts here. First, McCain doesn’t want to fight a campaign on policy so he isn’t<\/i> bothering<\/a> to “craft” policy positions. Indeed, that’s precisely the point of the entire campaign strategy — it’s about winning, not governing. It’s been the hallmark of Atwater\/Rove\/Schmidt for a generation.<\/p>\n

Second, if we “fight” on the “core questions,” McCain loses. It wouldn’t even be close. This is Campaign Strategy 101 — don’t debate the issues if you’re on the wrong side of the issues. So, what’s the campaign message been over the last 10 days? Race, celebrity, arrogance, presumptuousness, patriotism. <\/p>\n

It is, in many ways, the nail in the coffin of “conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy.” It’s dead, and it won’t be back for quite a while. But the polls are tight<\/a>, and as far as McCain is concerned, this is, again, about winning, not governing.<\/p>\n

And third, like Kevin, Andrew’s concerns seem kind of familiar<\/a>: “Cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism. Surely we’re not just now noticing this?”<\/p>\n

Without these cultural insecurities, Republicans’ power would be laughable, and the conservative movement wouldn’t exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of the instantly mind-numbing “celebrity” attack, John McCain’s ostensible campaign manager Rick Davis said, “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand \u2018MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea\u2019 and worry about the price of arugula.” […]<\/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-16465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465","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=16465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}