On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:43:04 -0600, CJT wrote:

This is why McCain is not electable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf7HYoh9YMM&NR=1


It is quite hard to figure the campaign slogans any more. The article
below does give a good picture.


CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER
Super Sunday spills to Super Tuesday
By Muhammad Cohen
Febuary 6, 2008 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB06Aa01.html

HONG KONG - If Republicans are approaching Super Tuesday with
ambivalence, I can empathize, based on Super Sunday. But take heart,
GOPers: as the game unfolds, you're likely to discover where your true
feelings lie.

I tell people I have no interest in American professional football;
I'm a New York Jets fan. The Jets have long, ugly histories with both
the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. It's so bad that
every week, I root for the Jets, whoever's playing the Giants and
whoever's playing the Patriots. Imagine my dilemma on Super Sunday,
when the Giants played the Patriots for the championship.

Republicans don't have to imagine. Some candidates, particularly Iowa
caucus winner Mike Huckabee and Internet fundraising champ Ron Paul,
have passionate followings. Much of the Republican base, however, has
spent a long time rooting against frontrunners John McCain and Mitt
Romney.

Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, won elections in that
liberal state taking positions that make conservatives' blood boil. He
supported abortion rights and gun controls. He signed a landmark
mandatory health insurance bill that's the closest existing example of
Hillary Clinton's health plan. Romney has renounced those positions to
run as the true conservative in the 2008 race.

Bile booster
Some Republicans are willing to believe Romney, despite more faces
than a watch shop, since the alternative is the senior senator from
Arizona. McCain gets true believers' bile rising over his opposition
to President George W Bush's tax cuts and a constitutional amendment
to ban same-sex marriage, his support for immigration reform, campaign
finance reform, and stem cell research, and his refusal to kowtow to
party extremists.

They're particularly enraged that McCain reaches across the aisle to
work with Democrats. He's co-sponsored Senate legislation with objects
of right-wing wrath Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy. Some call McCain a
RINO - Republican in name only. Those qualities would make McCain a
more attractive general election candidate and give him a better
chance of winning the White House, which only adds to true believers'
anguish.

With Romney, the base likes where he stands but they don't know if he
means it. With McCain, they often don't like where he stands, but they
know he means it. When all of the votes are counted on Super Tuesday,
it's likely the Republicans will know where their race stands and can
get back to their more comfortable position of lining up behind a
consensus favorite. It will be fun to watch whether the Republicans'
can win the general election with a large percentage of the base
holding its noses.

Who is the enemy?
But Super Tuesday won't solve the Republicans' far more agonizing
quandary: which Democrat should they hope to face in November?

Clinton-bashing has been a favorite Republican sport since the 1990s,
and Hillary has always been a prime target. They've demonized her as
the ultimate big spending liberal who wants to reach government's hand
more deeply into people's wallets, classrooms and sickbeds. The hatred
has only deepened since the Republican attack machine couldn't defeat
Bill Clinton in two presidential elections or stop Hillary from
winning two terms as a senator from New York.

Red-meat Republicans would never admit it, but the reason they hate
the Clintons so much is probably because they're so close. Many
Democrats criticize the Clintons as being too Republican rather than
too radical. Bill Clinton reformed the federal welfare system that was
a longstanding object of Republican wrath. He balanced the federal
budget, even ran a surplus, something Republicans wistfully lament as
an impossible dream.

The Clinton administration struck out on health care reform and walked
away from it. Bill Clinton gave the Republicans a sex scandal they
could only dream of; it's not the Clintons' fault that more
Republicans than Democrats fell victim when the morality police moved
from the White House to Capitol Hill.

Moreover, fire-breathing Republicans and the Clintons are comfortable
with the same kind of politics. They're happy to wrestle in the mud,
thinking they won if the other side got dirtier. Then everyone has a
shower and a brandy, and they get paid by all of us to do it again
tomorrow.

Base two calculation
The Clintons, like the Republicans, believe in playing to the base,
and now more than ever, it's evident their base is Bill and Hillary.
Imagine if the former president had expended a quarter of the energy
he's shown during five weeks of the primary season for the Democratic
presidential candidates in 2000 or 2004. It took two to tango the US
into its box of negative, nasty politics in which candidates cynically
search for slight advantages to reach 50.01% in a country split down
the middle; to answer Senator Barack Obama's debate question, the
Clintons sure can dance.

Obama offers something completely different, an approach to politics
that's uplifting not depressing. Despite what his position papers may
say - on health care, for example, Obama's position is closer to the
Republicans than Clinton's - and in his pledge to reach across the
aisle, Obama represents something dangerous for Republicans. All the
candidates are talking about change: Obama is the one who really means
it. Just in his first Senate term, he's not (yet, at least) a member
of the same club as the mainstreamers. If Republicans think McCain is
too much of a free thinker, Obama's a real nightmare.

Except, perhaps, at the voting booth. The Republican attack machine
would love a shot at Obama. He's a mixed race African-American with an
Arabic middle name who attended an Islamic school in the world's
largest Muslim country, Indonesia. He's admitted to illegal drug use.
His name is already connected with a big city political scandal in
Chicago. There's no end to Swift Boating fuel from the Obama well.

That's the real dilemma for the Republicans. Do they root for Clinton
who they've hated for years and haven't beaten in four shots, knowing
that it's not the end of the world if she wins again? (Maybe
Republicans will get the House of Representatives back, like they did
in 1994, with a Clinton in the White House ...) Or do they hope for a
shot at Obama who may be easier to beat, but poses a far greater
danger to change the face of politics?

I won't presume to understand the Republican mind, but I can tell you
how I felt during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl between those
two teams I love to hate. When the Patriots scored a touchdown to put
them ahead and preserve their shot at an undefeated season, I found
myself rooting for the Giants.

I've hated the Giants for longer and find them more repugnant, but
I've learned to live with it and have survived their two previous
Super Bowl wins. I didn't want to see the Patriots change the face of
football history.

Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to
the world as a US Information Agency diplomat and is author of Hong
Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com), a novel set during the 1997
handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap
lingerie.