Friday, October 24, 2008

This thing might not be over yet

Friday, October 24, 2008 | Posted by Fredo | | Edit Post
I've got a feeling that PA, FL, OH, NH, MO, and NV are still gettable for Mac. He needs all of them (save he could lose either NH or NV, but not both). The spreads that are showing up in national polls are ridiculously wide. And the number of non-responsive and undecided voters is unusually high for this late in the cycle.

Polls will tighten over the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, in the print (putting on my Chris Rock voice) MEDIA, Charles Krauthamer makes a compelling case for why Chris Buckley, Colin Powell, Ken Adelman and Chris Hitchens were crazy to abandon ship on the McCain campaign:

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
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2 comments:

SheaHeyKid said...

I think the bottom line is as follows: Mac has a real shot at winning if the traditional voter turnout holds this year. However, if this is the year that young people and minorities ACTUALLY show up to vote, it's all over. The record-breaking Dem turnout for primaries suggests that this might be the year that those groups finally turn the corner and actually show up at the polls. But they never have in the past, so who knows.

I think the polls that show some ground being closed recently are quite interesting and provide some optimism for us. NRA and other groups need to continue turning up the pressure with their ads. This country still leans slightly right, so the idea of a very liberal president is not people's first choice.

I think McCain was correct early on in realizing that attacks based on Obama's inexperience weren't resonating for whatever reason (largely due to MSM's unwillingness to fairly cover this instead of just glossing over it). However, a winning strategy would have been to substantively demonstrate that Obama is the MOST liberal senator with no track record of reaching across the aisle, unlike McCain.

McCain made a great point in the last debate that I can't believe he didn't use more frequently. When Obama started describing his "95% middle class tax cut," McCain pointed out that Obama had run on middle class tax cuts for US Senate but then never actually voted for them. So if his promise was empty before, why should people believe it now?

10/24/2008 1:07 PM
Fredo said...

First of all, as the WSJ has pointed out repeatedly, you can't cut taxes for 95% of the people. Because 45% of people don't pay income taxes in the first place.

Obama is offering refundable tax credits--the IRS will be cutting checks to people who are paying NO TAXES. This is welfare and socialism straight up.

The WSJ also estimated that after Obama's plans are enacted, we'll have reached the tipping point for the first time where >50% of people are not paying income taxes. But since they will be getting checks, how hard will it be to convince them to continue raising marginal rates on the minority who actually pay taxes?

Of course, eventually, stagnant growth and high unemployment might convince them of the foolishness of their ways. It took us 20 years of stagnant real growth to undo the Great Society last time. With global competition far more fierce than in earlier times, we can't afford another 20 year walk down that path.

10/25/2008 11:34 AM
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Always sniffing for the truth

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