Will McCain Drop Out of Race? Don't Count on it

A piece in the Huffington Post by Steve Rosenbaum posits that GOP presidential nominee John McCain will bow out during or around the time of his party's convention, ostensibly for health reasons, in favor of a younger and arguably more electable candidate.

Aside from the fact that it is hard to imagine someone with the Senatorial ego and delusions of personal grandeur of McCain would shelve his ambitions to be the most powerful man in the world, Rosenbaum goes on to list a group of possible choices the yellow elephants may resort to. Here is my assessment of those named in the article:

Condoleeza Rice: The worst Secretary of State in American history and who conducted our diplomatic affairs with all the elan of a giggling high school cheerleader. There are also those rumors about her being either a lesbian or having been serving at the pleasure of Bush's "little W." if you know what I mean *nudge nudge, wink wink.*

If she were in over her head any more, she would be going out in public wearing a scuba outfit. FEMA would have launched a rescue operation. Blacks don't trust her. So a Rice run is a non-starter.

Colin Powell: The second worst Secretary of State of all time. Was part of Bush's propaganda effort. And in doing so, failed the country enormously. It is apparent now that Powell was an affirmative action hire by Scanner Bush and used as a handy tool by Turbo Bush. Look up dupe in the dictionary. Powell's face may be there. He will be destroyed.

Marilyn Musgrave (Colorado Congresswoman): Just another neocon asshole, the type that is being repudiated by the American public. Plus she has no name recognition. And there are Republicans who aren't going to vote for any woman no matter what. This is a joke.

Mitt Romney: Willard "Ratfucker" Romney has flip flopped more than a fish freshly hoisted out of the water and on to a boat. He would be Christmas and the Fourth of July for Democratic opposition researchers. And he's a Mormon, which will cause some of the evangelical wackos to stay home on election day. He will win Utah though. But that's about it.

Mike Huckabee: He not only looks like Deputy Dawg, he turned his primary campaign into a religious crusade, which scares not just those on the left, but independents, women and moderate Republicans. He will get shellacked. Plus some have accused him of having secret liberal social sympathies that are anathema to rank and file reactionaries.

Charlie Crist: He's a secret gay. In fact, he is in trouble among some Republicans in Florida for being kinda easygoing on the homosexual issue. To quote from an episode of Family Guy, he is so far in the closet he is finding Christmas presents. Bigwigs in the GOP establishment know about these rumors and I can't see them allowing a Crist candidacy to occur.

Tim Pawlenty (Minnesota Governor). Who? And that is his problem. At least Obama is the devil the public knows. Pawlenty has no foreign policy experience, which is something the Republicans have hit Obama on with McCain fronting the ticket. So they GOP will lose that meme and they don't have much else.

Bobby Jindal (Louisiana Governor): Tv ads with the theme to The Exorcist playing in the background. It will become a national joke. That is because Jindal has reportedly participated in exorcisms. Even most Catholics aren't prepared to go there. He would get destroyed.

Mark Sanford (Governor of South Carolina): The most likely McCain replacement, I think. But will have a lot of problems with hispanics over the immigration issue and is embroiled in a budget fight with his state's legislature, something the American public isn't going to want to see in D.C. It would be reminiscent of Bush. Would sweep the south, but he also voted against some Republican pork projects when he was in Congress and it would be another message that you can't trust his party on budget issues. Might be able to pull back in some of the disaffected Republicans backing Ron Paul, but that is a hail mary since Paul is almost a cult right now.

The biggest obstacle to overcome fo Sanford, though, would be the "bait and switch" meme the Democrats would throw out there. They would paint Sanford's nomination as undemocratic and emphasize that he hasn't been vetted through the primary process. That will probably sow enough suspicion to doom his candidacy.

John Thune: Rabidly hated by Democrats and not the kind of guy independents are going to vote for. Is an asshole and a half, dishonest to a fare thee well and would drive Democratic Party turnout through the roof.

Chuck Hagel (Nebraska Senator): The GOP rank and file are still smarting from Hagel ranging far off of the reservation vis a vis the Iraq war and, since they tend to be royalist in their thinking anyway, would not permit this kind of lese majeste to be rewarded. Would be very formidable as a national candidate, but with his criticisms of the conduct of the Iraq war, would be hard pressed to come up with a resolution to it and he may not have one. If he doesn't, there is basically no reason to vote for him over Obama. I also don't think that Hagel is willing to kiss enough ass to get back in the good graces of the party apparatchiks.

Dick Lugar (Indiana Senator). The problem is his name. I can only imagine the You Tube parodies and jokes on Leno that will arise out of that. Lugar is well regarded on both sides of the aisle, but he also isn't likely to bring anything new and again, he will get hung with the bait and switch tag. Plus the public at large just doesn't know that much about him.

Michael Bloomberg: No. He is basically a John Lindsay Republican (limousine liberal) and the party long ago swore those off. Plus crime has gone back up in NYC under his watch. Bloomberg's best bet for president is to either run as a Democrat or an independent.

John McCain the Phony

Professional former prisoner of war and Arizona Senator John McCain will now apparently make another run at nabbing the Republican presidential nomination. In his so doing, you will no doubt get the same old bullshit about what a maverick he is. The truth, though, is that McCain is just another rightwing hack.

Let's look at who the former pilot has in tow: Bruce Herschensohn, the failed GOP California Senate aspirant who decried the fact that the UN is filled with representatives of dictatorial regimes on the one hand then lamented that then President Jimmy Carter didn't crush the Islamic rebellion that toppled dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah of Iran.

Yep, that is how you buy credibility in a Muslim region, by killing what may have been thousands of that religion's faithful and perhaps becoming bogged down in a perpetual guerrilla conflict after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam just a little over half a decade previous. That is not to also mention that the Soviet Union, which was barely hanging on at that point, felt that Iran was within its sphere of influence. A U.S. military action there could possibly have stoked tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets and given more spine to military and KGB hardliners, especially after what we had been doing in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen.

So he obviously doesn't really believe in diplomacy, which has been Bush's big problem and he has no grasp of geopolitical realities. It doesn't say much for McCain that he would have this idiot as one of his advisers.

That is beside the fact that he doesn't agree that the federal government ought to aid victims of natural disasters. That falls right in line with Bush, who left everybody behind during Hurricane Katrina while he was on another vacation and only belatedly moved, albeit merely with a series of lame ass photo ops, when the criticism and outrage got to be crushing.

Moreover, Herschensohn is another echo from the Nixon White House days and if McCain is trying to set himself up as some kind of moral paragon, as his recent courting of wackjob religious fringies like Jerry Falwell showed, then his buddy Bruce, a Tricky Dick apologist, betrays that.

One also has to question how conservatives could vote for McCain anyway. Aside from the fact that he has the adultery thing going and his wife is part of the GOPP (Grand Old Pill Poppers), Bush and his campaign made insinuations during the 2000 primary campaign that McCain was a kind of Manchurian Candidate in the wake of the torture he endured whilst a prisoner in Vietnam. That leaves those conservatives now open to being charged with selling out the country by being willing to vote for somebody who may have been programmed by the Commies even if we all know that what was said about McCain in this connection is garbage.


Then there is John Weaver, his political strategist. Weaver also advised another wingnut, Phil Gramm, during his 1996 presidential bid.

McCain is also closely tied to advisers to Bush, as this list demonstrates, including the insufferable former Indiana Senator Dan Coates, who tried to help Bush get Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and who is hardly a stalwart defender of the First Amendment.

It's the same old shit. Don't fall for it. McCain is about as independent of the GOP establishment as Ed Gillespie.