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by Frank Schnittger
True to my occasional tendency to be a contrarian, I am going to quote Karl Rove in Crackup? Not So Fast in support of my thesis that a Democratic Victory in November is anything but assured. This will probably get me into almost as much trouble as my piece on Israel/Palestine: One state or two? which lead to some troll rated comments to the effect that I was trying to complete Hitler's work and which effectively ended all further discussion of the topic.
Judging by most of the comments on his Newsweek article, Karl Rove ranks as the anti-Christ for most Americans, with only died-in-the-wool Reagan/Bush supporters being prepared to read, never mind discuss his actual comments. Must of the invective there would probably be troll rated here unless it is ok to be childishly vituperative towards a Republican strategist. I write this as McCain looks set to win the GOP nomination as early as next Tuesday, having established huge leads over Romney and a flat-lining Huckabee. The Democratic contest, on the other hand, is becoming a real dogfight, with Obama establishing very significant momentum on the ground and eating into Clinton's previously unassailable leads in major states like California. It ain't over till the fat lady sings, and she hasn't even cleared her throat yet.
However even here on ET, confidence in a Democratic victory is beginning to wane. Having received absolutely no votes in the first 4 polls conducted at the end of each article in this series, McCain suddenly jumped to being the favourite with 47% predicting a McCain victory in November in Poll 5 in the series. Have we really so little confidence in our ideas and our ability to sell them to the American electorate?
Karl Rove
"We are at the end of the Reagan era." Or, at least, that is the claim of voices as diverse as Newt Gingrich and Ed Rollins on the right and Sen. Chuck Schumer and pollster Stanley Greenberg on the left. It is true the Republican Party is having difficulty retooling its message for the 21st century. But so is the Democratic Party. One does not have to be a Republican sympathiser or agree with his analyses of FDR's or Reagan's legacies to accept that much of the above is at least arguable. McCain looks to have his party's nomination all but sown up, and is seen even by many independents as relatively untainted by the Bush legacy of unjust war, incompetent economic management, encroachment on civil liberties, and a further re-distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. The risks for McCain, in my view, are threefold: Firstly he is the oldest Presidential candidate in history, which presents clear risks to his ability to sustain what is bound to be a grueling campaign and still be seen as fresh and ready for office come November. Secondly, for all his honourable track record as a war hero, Presidential Elections are about the future, not the past. In what way does he satisfy the clear yearning for change in America - other than the fact that he is NOT Bush? Thirdly, he represents a uniting of the Republican party against the Evangelicals, who at one point threatened, in the shape of Huckabee, to take over the GOP. The Evangelicals are very welcome to provide their numbers, enthusiasm, and money to the party, but most Republicans have recoiled from having a Creationist run the country. However this also means that McCain represents a very uneasy compromise who is not enthusiastically endorsed either by the moral, fiscal, security `conservatives in the party. They could have a real problem mobilising their base, come November, and having independent support is all very well provided they actual come out and vote in real numbers. Obama could draw from that same pool. All of which brings me to the Democrats. There is an argument for saying that their establishment candidate, "Billiary Clinton", and the Democratic congress have failed to arouse much broad based popular support not because they have failed to offer an alternative to Bushrepublicanism, but because they have not offered enough of a change. Obama got into real trouble when he conceded Karl Rove's first point above, that the Republican party under Reagan was the party of ideas in the 1980's, and that it was time the Democrats articulated a real alternative. He was touching on the real vacuity at the heart of the Clinton rhetoric - that it is an argument about competence and experience - i.e. doing more or less the same things, only doing them better, and that Clinton does not offer a real break with the past as Reagan had done. The very emotionalism of the Clintonista reaction, much like the comments on Karl Rove's article which declared that they would refuse to even read what he had written, is a cover up of their lack of a coherent set of ideas and programmes which represent a revolutionary change from what has been happening for the past 28 years.
Clinton is the Carter 1980 candidate, with some decent liberal credentials but offering no real change from a model that is increasingly being seen to fail. Obama is the Reagan 1980 candidate, offering a more radical break from the past. But does his platform stand up to closer scrutiny and does it really represent a radical shift and a coherent set of new ideas? Much of the commentary here and elsewhere has focused on the candidates personalities and political tactics. It is time their actual policy programmes were subjected to closer scrutiny. Time for the policy wonks to have their say. |
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Karl Rove and the Republican Revolution: Who is really going to win the Presidency (Part 6) | 197 comments (185 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden)
Karl Rove and the Republican Revolution: Who is really going to win the Presidency (Part 6) | 197 comments (185 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden)
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