| LordTheNightKnight said: Obama made a few shifts. They were just ignored. So those don't prove a shift. That's just the same BS logic used to claim Kerry was a "flip-flopper". This seems more like you insisting McCain should have stayed in absolute servitude to your beliefs. |
I never made any claims about Obama or John Kerry, and yes Obama did make shifts, but he did EXACTLY WHAT I SUGGESTED MCCAIN DO EARLIER, he shifted to the center, which was a smart move politically. Whether or not those shifts were real ones is another question, although his behavior after he got elected suggests the Obama is trying to govern from the center and that it was more than just political foreplay. McCain didn't even really need to shift, he was in a pretty good spot politically to reach out to most Americans. He just decided to shift more to the right, which ended up costing him.
I'm not getting into the ethics of what any of these politicians have done, I am getting into the political viability of those choices. I like McCain a lot, to this day, but he ran his campaign like an idiot. It has nothing to do with my beliefs or what I wanted him to be. This whole discussion is about how politically viable his choices were
If McCain was in absolute servitude to anyone, it was the wrong people, his political party. Moving to the center is often the only way to get yourself elected. In spite of all McCain's maverick talk this seemed to be the hardest thing in the world for him to do. I blame his political advisers more than him, but McCain still doomed himself from the start by taking their advice.
And for the record, I like McCain in spite of his escapades during the election. This article is perfect proof that he is still a good guy. I just want him to be his natural self, which fortunately he appears to have done. I just think he ran his campaign very poorly.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
