Donkasaurus Post

For years, Senator John McCain earned the reputation, as a “straight talker.” Perhaps deservedly, although he effectively courted the media perhaps more consistently and effectively than almost any other politician around.  

His campaign for President in 2008 was based in large part upon this “straight talk” theme. Given the radical and contradictory shifts of McCain, up through and including that time, and the many representations his campaign made, we don’t think it continued to apply in 2008.  To Say the Least.

The national media naturally thought differently, and continued to annoint McCain as the real “‘Straight Talk’ Express.”  (The media also annointed McCain, and would hardly contemplate evidence to the contrary, as a preminent foreign policy and national security expert. this is something which we also think was hype — something which was promulgated and then parroted so many times, it simply became conventional “wisdom” without really being deeply explored, and which went effectively unchallenged by the Democrats.  Here is just one example of McCain’s statements on Afghanistan. His statements on Iraq are even more telling.  Those will have to be dug up, and provided in a later post.)

Recently, an extremely popular, overtly partisan (again, we wonder why), political website noted the following, which we share here, from Bush I Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Bruce Bartlett:

I think conservative anger is misplaced. To a large extent, Obama is only cleaning up messes created by Bush. This is not to say Obama hasn’t made mistakes himself, but even they can be blamed on Bush insofar as Bush’s incompetence led to the election of a Democrat.

This should have come as no suprise.  Bartlett, a lifelong conservative, had been affiliated with the Dallas, TX based conservative National Center for Policy Analysis for almost 12 years, when in 2005, he was ostensibly fired for being critical of President Bush.

Other leading conservatives have also criticized the Bush Administration. Mickey Edwards and Bruce Fein both called the Bush Administration Tyranical. Fein was also outspoken in his support of President Obama (although more as a statement against John McCain and the continuation of  Bush Administration policies, than in favor of Obama).

Bartlett may not have supported McCain either, and wrote a piece stating that it would not necessarily be a bad thing if McCain lost.

Other prominent conservatives who supported Obama, or were simply against McCain, included quite possibly former Senator Chuck Hagel, who while still friends with McCain would not proclaim his support for him; Reagan Economic Advisor Larry Hunter; Reagan and Bush I Head of the Office of Legal Counsel Doug Kmiec;  Reagan Assistant Secretary of the Army Delbert Spurlock; Dwight D. Eisenhower granddaughter Susan Eisenhower (who eight months later decided to leave the Republican Party because of the party’s direction, and issued a fairly stinging rebuke of the McCain campaign), former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach, former Senator Lowell Wiecker (although has has become an independent), former Reagan Assistant Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb (who has become a Democrat), former Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee (although Chafee is a very moderate Republican, clearly opposed to the Bush Administration, and almost assuredly did not vote for it in 2004), and others. Even former Bush II campaign strategist Matthew Dowd had stated that the only candidate that he “likes,” was Obama.

Democrats almost never talked about this, because they did not seem to think it was relevant to connecting with voters who may well not have supported McCain if they had known the true facts, or had more credibility been built up with respect to the Democrats’ claims against McCain, and in favor of Obama.

But they say, “well, we won, so what does it matter?”

What matters it that the Democrats were handed that election on a silver, platinum encrusted platter, and don’t even know it. Had they not won THAT election, we would effectively no longer have had a two party system in national politics.

Yet immediately afterwards, all we heard as a nation was how the Republican Party “was dead.”

We here (before there was a “here”), disagreed strongly with this, and in vain tried to get Democrats to realize that if this was THAT hurtful to the Republican Party, Republicans would not be playing into it so easily, and that it was a natural reflection of what was a long predictable (and predicted) backlash to all the rightward lurching over the past several years, as well as a very unpopular incumbent Administration. True, and very relevantly, this general agreement was in part driven by Republicans aghast by the party’s takeover by far right elements. But it was also driven by Republicans, who naturally realize that the best way to succeed in politics, is to downplay expectations of success, and play up the need to fight and strive for it every step of the way (and took advantage of the reality that public sentiment was squarely against “Republicanism,” and that many Republicans were in fact questioning their own party). 

The Donkey Party, of course, does precisely the opposite, and often confuses success, with how well it is able to convince itself that it has in fact been successful, rather than in fact playing down those very same expectations and underselling its own influence therein while working harder to sell and expand it.

Of course, as predicted, we see less than one year later, that the Republican Party, still largely dominated by its own Right Wing, is very much not dead. So much for Democrat Presumptuousness, once again.

How is it that almost all of the experts, including many on this list of the “50 most influential commentators” in America, and others, got it wrong on the state of the Republican Party — prematurely predicting its demise — and we humble predecessors of Donkasaurus Post admin’ got it right?

Hmm. We wonder.