I remember being told when I was growing up that “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”
Now, if we had that phrase in New York City, I’m relatively confident that the rest of you have it in the heartland of Middle-America.
Nowadays, you have Republicans pissing and moaning about how we need more Sarah Palins, more Rush Limbaughs, and more Rick Santorums, as opposed to your John McCains. McCain, they claim, was a RINO [read: Republican In Name Only] and as such, the fake wishy-washy centrism of Sen. McCain is what doomed their brand in 2008, forcing America and, by association the rest of the world to suffer for four or even, God help us, eight years of teleprompter torture and South Side of Chicago socialism.
As is usually the case, the truth is much less convoluted. George W. Bush extended the War on Terror into Iraq. He poisoned the Republican brand with his ineffective manner of speaking and inability to sell his own point of view, effectively dooming his actions to low popularity among the populace, especially given the left-leaning nature of the mainstream press who were more than happy to crucify him in the court of public opinion.
Now, I voted for George W. Bush over John Ketchup, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It’s the old lesser of two evils routine. That being said, you only have George W. Bush to blame for Barack Obama being President today. The same George W. Bush that launched an offensive, and arguably racist ad campaign against John McCain in 2000 turned out to be the one to torpedo the Republican Party in 2006 and 2008. Even in Florida, where Bush’s brother, the former governor remains highly popular, Obama managed to beat McCain on an outsider’s message of change. McCain wasn’t seen as the moderate who would be willing to cooperate for the good of America. The Democrats were effective in branding him McSame, insisting that his election would amount to a third term for Bush. In essence, what the talking heads on TV and the radio aren’t telling you, is that John McCain was seen by the voting public as too conservative. Whether that’s true or not isn’t the issue. What matters is that he certainly didn’t lose because he was an open-minded guy who was able to cooperate with Democrats in order to get things done.
John McCain, for whatever his faults, is the ultimate outsider. He’ll cross party lines whenever he believes it’s for the good of Arizonans and the American people as a whole… and, despite never having achieved a very high level of popularity in his home state, he has always steadfastly refused to add any pork projects for Arizona to Senate legislation. Whether you agree or disagree with the man on a particular issue or not, he has always been a man of honor, principle, and bravery.
While no politician is pure as snow, and they are all crooked to varying degrees, John McCain was simply the best choice the GOP had both in 2000 and 2008… and to have a patriot like him slandered for no apparent reason other than to make him the scapegoat for their own failures is ridiculous. Sarah Palin would not have won the 2008 election were the names on the ticket flipped. No Republican alive could have done any better than McCain did in the climate we’re in today. Not Romney, Not Rudy, and not the Huckster. Each and every one of them had their own flaws. Rudy being a philandering libertarian from a very liberal city, Romney for being knee-deep in big business, a flip-flopping fraud, and a Mormon to boot, and Huckabee being a likeable theocrat, but a theocrat nonetheless.
And yet, if you listen to talk radio or Fox News, you’ll hear people chiming in that the Republican party needs to move more to the right and marginalize people like John McCain and his daughter Meghan who dare speak out in calling for a more centrist approach, calling them pejoratives and throwing them under the bus when really, the situation we’re in now is all of our faults.
And if you think you’re going to win back Congress and the White House in 2012 by offering the people vinegar, get used to Barry’s change you can believe in.
