The GOP’s Sergeant Pepper

The other day I heard Rush Limbaugh say McCain seemed surprised that his liberal pals in the media were suddenly ignoring him. Rush’s take seemed to amount to “DUH.” Every intelligent conservative commentator saw this coming. My question: how come the voters didn’t notice? I hate to cite Ann Coulter, given her faults, but she was right on the money with this one. And she made an obvious point, i.e., ordinarily you don’t let your enemies choose your candidate.

The same liberal media goofs who are backing the Stalin-worthy “Fairness Doctrine” are now ignoring McCain with open contempt. Three anchors left the country with Obama, reporters don’t bother to show up when McCain’s plane arrives, and McCain can’t get a piece published in the New York Times AFTER they published Obama’s unaltered work.

I don’t watch much TV, but when I do watch, it seems like McCain is invisible. I saw more of him during the primaries. Where are his ads? Where are the interviews? Does he even have a campaign manager? If you’ve seen a lot of his ads, tell me about it in the comments. I can’t remember a single one.

And when is McCain going to pick a running mate? He should have been thinking about this last year; isn’t that obvious? How can it still be a puzzle in late July?

I thought Fred Thompson was a wimp, but McCain is outdoing him. This election should be a walk for the GOP, once people find out what Obama is really all about. But they’re not going to find out if we don’t get moving. It’s as if McCain and the RNC have swallowed the hype surrounding the 143-day messiah, and they’re afraid of going to hell.

Like I always say, you can’t be made manager at KMart after 143 days on the job. How can the same amount of experience qualify you to lead the most powerful nation in the world?

The party, including McCain himself, needs to get more excited about McCain. Sure, he’s not conservative enough. But he’s more conservative than Obama; so was Che Guevara. And even if he leans too far left, he’s not going to pack the federal courts with socialists. At least not the kind Obama would pick. Nobody cares about that. If you walk into a room with ten conservatives and point out that bad judicial appointments are the most damaging things a President can do, 19 of them will be amazed to hear it. What ignorance. Federal judges are like gods. Do you really want to see Hillary Clinton or Robert Reich or Laurence Tribe on the Supreme Court? Imagine three or four Ginsburgs. And let’s not even talk about the appellate and district judges, who have many, many times the power of the Supreme Court.

I think we ended up with McCain for a couple of reasons. First, Fred Thompson is a fool, and he got our hopes up and then proved he was just teasing us to make his wife happy. Second, Republicans are determined to make Democrats love them. We keep mewling about how we can’t get elected if we’re not aiming for the middle (like Ronald Reagan always did), and we forget that voters are attracted to confidence. The American people are more ignorant than ever, and they are not smart enough to make voting decisions based on the issues. But they love a confident candidate with a strong message. And we’re telling them our message is wrong and needs to be watered down. We’re offering them McCain as our liberalized, improved conservative. And of course, they already have a real liberal, so they’re not interested.

Say what you want about George Bush. The man exudes confidence, at least when he speaks. Remember the first Kerry debate? He just showed up and leaned on the podium. As if it had never occurred to him that he could lose. When he talked about North Korea, he said, “I know how the world WORKS.” Like it was painfully obvious that Kerry couldn’t match his understanding of world politics. Wasn’t that the first debate? I believe it was. I think confidence explains why Bush blew that debate, and it also explains why he won in the long run. He appeared to have total faith in what he said.

His deeds, on the other hand, are disappointing. He talks with great assurance, but then he shoots himself in the foot with that “crossing the aisle” nonsense. Has that paid off even once? I guess he’s willing to talk the talk, but he’s not always brave enough to walk the walk. Oh well. At least he’s not John Kerry.

I’m really starting to wonder if we’re going to turn the country over to Barack Urkel the 143-Day Wonder. I thought it was impossible, but if we don’t see some real campaigning, it might just happen.