’)Woot.
The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party’s future.
Mr McCain is now facing calls for him to sacrifice his own dwindling White House hopes and focus on saving vulnerable Republican Senate seats which are up for grabs on the same day.
Their fear is that Democrat candidates riding on Mr Obama’s popularity may win the nine extra seats they need in the Senate to give them unfettered power in Congress.
My guess is that should Sen. Obama win, there is also going to be a fight on the left, between pragmatists (like myself) and others who would wish for Sen. Obama to govern from a more progressive position. But that’s a good kind of fight to have.
Right now the three main GOP contenders for 2012 are Romney, Huckabee, and Palin. If that’s true three years from now, then the GOP are in a world of trouble.
If Palin is in the top ten, they are screwed.
Please god let the GOP get SDPed. Go go go! SDP! SDP!
I’ve long had a theory that any given President, however bad – truly or from the perspective of part of the population – could and would only do so much damage, and that once in office they tend to rise to doing more or less the right or pragmatic thing. I’d not thought about this lately, but Bush has strained that perspective, and damaged the office in a way that makes it easier for those who follow to go too far. I’d like to think Obama will do what he has to do to get elected, and then will be pragmatic – shades of Clinton, maybe with a better defense posture and a backing off of the more absurd internal security measures of the past several years. My fear is that he will be what the deranged crowd expects, and more, taking the Bush years as a jumping off point rather than as a cautionary lesson. I expect we’ll see. Here’s to pragmatism. Yes, I’m basically a libertarian, but even if someone with my outlook were elected, it would be about pragmatically moving the status quo, not trying to be all radical and sudden.
I used to think that too, Jay.
I thought that if we could survive Ronnie Raygunz, sustaining only as much damage as we did, that it couldn’t get much worse than that.
I was completely wrong.
[...] and Democrats make large gains in both chambers of Congress, there will be an all-out civil war within the Republican [...]
Here’s to pragmatism.
that’s the most rational thing you’ve said in weeks, Jay. Kudos. Personally, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by President Obama.