Why is John McCain in trouble?
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
[image]
I don't know.
And there's clearly disagreement in other camps.
Take Truth vs. the Machine, for example. Its take on things is that McCain, in his challenge to religious conservative leaders, alienated conservatives. "Brain dead" is the claim there. What I find interesting there is the "on" again "off" again relationship conservatives have with Mr. Robertson. You remember him, he's the guy who said God caused Ariel Sharon's stroke because of dividing Israel, that God told him there'd be a mass attack on a U.S. city this year. Oh, and don't forget the time God told him President Bush would win an easy re-election in 2004. And he nodded his head when Jerry Falwell blamed the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on "ACLU, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the People For the American Way" as well as the terrorists.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
Not too many Republicans were claiming that Robertson was speaking for them at the time. There was a rush to distance themselves from the guy.
So why now is McCain "challenging" these religious leaders blamed for an obvious lost cause?
They might have gotten it partly right, of course. McCain's position on immigration is certainly anti-conservative. But isn't it more likely, given the political climate right now, that a guy who says "let's send more troops!" to a war that clearly has lost the support of the American people, was probably going to get his clock cleaned? McCain made himself the poster child for the Iraq war. A neat trick, you have to admit.
Perhaps that is, in fact, an example of a brain dead candidate, although it leads to an interesting question of the difference between stupidity and political courage.
There are, of course, other views. Writing today on his blog on NPR, Ken Rudin draws a parallel between McCain's campaign, and that of Edward Muskie in 1972.
McCain's political problems with the war stem not so much from within his party. If anything, it's that he fixed his star to the same guy who ended his hopes in 2000. And with more and more Americans feeling that the war is a lost cause, the result is that McCain's valiant but questionable choice has led many of the independents who found him so appealing seven years ago to turn away from him.
Me? I think McCain was finished the day he sang "Bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune.
It was almost as if he was channeling Pat Robertson.
