SOME
"CONCESSION" SPEECH!
The
message put out in the most ungracious concession speech of
all time, while ostensibly directed at his grassroots supporters
in Michigan and nationwide, reads like a message in thinly-disguised
code to his supporters in the media, anticipating and encouraging
the latest line of attack. He had been defeated, he averred,
by a "negative message of fear" – a code word for South
Carolina's sizable contingent of right-wing Christian Republicans,
who mobilized for Bush in record numbers. He had been bested,
not in a fair debate, but by the "defeatist tactics of exclusion"
– an unmistakable reference to Dubya's debut in South
Carolina at Bob Jones University, which supposedly forbids
"interracial dating" and denounces the Church of Rome as a
"cult." The digs got increasingly personal as he ranted on:
in contrasting himself with Bush, McCain characterized the
dichotomy as one of "experience" versus "pretense." Contemptuously
referring to Bush during the South Carolina debate as if he
were little more than an overgrown child – remember his
remark about "the grown-up mentality"? – McCain followed
up this theme with an explicit challenge to Bush's electability,
openly questioning whether Boy Bush is ready for prime time.
Here is a man who needs no intermediaries; he does all his
spinning himself. Bush may have chalked up a double-digit
victory, but as Greenfield put it: "The implicit message of
this concession speech is, George Bush won dirty." Not only
that, but he won due to the efforts of all the wrong people,
the party of "fear" – Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition,
the anti-abortion movement, and even the biggest pariahs of
them all, militant smokers funded by the tobacco industry.
WAR
IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, VICTORY IS DEFEAT
But
there was no real need to send this signal; the candidate
had barely finished his jeremiad and the journalistic auxiliary
of the McCain campaign was already moving into action, starting
with the neocon contingent. Writing in the New York Post,
John
Podhoretz – who once declared that McCain is "basically
toast," and then announced to a breathless world his nomination
is "inevitable" – is now saying that the Bush camp's
Pyrhhic victory is nothing to celebrate:
"The
results in South Carolina are also bad news for those of us
who support conservative causes and principles – because
it remains a sad fact that George W. Bush is not strong enough
a candidate to defeat Al Gore in the November election. Which
means the surge of energy brought to his campaign by last
night's victor will only injure the Republican party if it
leads to his nomination at the GOP convention in August."
ALL
THE WRONG PEOPLE
Yes,
opines Podhoretz, it would be nice if Bush were a better
candidate, but he just can't win – and his South Carolina
victory is precisely the reason why. All the wrong people
have rallied to his cause: the Christians, the gun nuts, the
"ideological special interests" who hold candidate Bush hostage.
The core argument of those neoconservatives who still claim
fealty to the Right – unlike their lider maximo,
Bill Kristol, who last week declared the conservative movement
"finished" – is purely pragmatic: "I've said it before,"
writes Podhoretx, "and I'll say it again: For those of us
who believe that the only thing that matters is beating Al
Gore in the fall and bringing the Clinton era to an end, McCain
remains the right choice – and the Right choice." In
the Podhoretzian view, the right wing of the Republican Party,
to which he pledges his fealty, can only make headway by making
itself invisibile, making no demands, and serving as foot-soldiers
for whatever Rockefeller Republican scores the highest in
the focus group sweepstakes. Never mind what McCain says or
advocates, forget campaign finance reform – it'll never
get through Congress – our best hope is to go with the
most "attractive" candidate. Attractive to whom, Podhoretz
does not say. He is insensible to the idea, insightfully advanced
by Robert Novak in his new book, that this blurring of ideology
and emphasis on a cult of personality amounts to the Clintonization
of the GOP – in effect, the triumph of Clinton. Podhoretz
and his pals at the New York Post, as the journalistic
voice of the Giuliani wing of the New York Republican Party,
naturally completely lack all sense of subtlety or irony.
THE
SPIRIT OF NELSON LIVES ON
Another
New York Post polemicist, Rod Dreher, dropped all the
"conservative" pretenses and let the real face of the Rockefeller
Republicans show through the right-wing mask, if only for
a moment: The "Shiite Republicans" of the "religious right"
who defeated McCain "ought to be as proud of their South Carolina
victory as the Russian generals are of conquering Grozny,"
he screeches. McCain and his most rabid supporters are overly
fond of military analogies, as this absurd comparison of a
free election with a violent assault makes all too vividly
clear. They refer to what happened in South Carolina as a
"scorched earth" policy, and claim that he will wear his southern
victory like a albatross around his neck and therefore be
defeated in November. Dreher revisits each and every incident
of political incorrectness that Bush is supposed to have committed,
from the Bob Jones University appearance to a letter put out
by Paul Weyrich that dares to question McCain's "war hero"
credentials. Reading Dreher's column brings to mind old Nelson
standing up at the Cow Palace in 1964, pouring out his hatred
of the Goldwater Republicans as "bigots" and "extremists,"
glorying in the rising chorus of boos.
CAN
McCAIN CARRY THE UPPER WEST SIDE?
The
serio-comic "news" section of the Post, always entertainingly
uninformative, is even more polemical, with reporter
Debra Orin opening her story
with the words: "It was an ugly win." The article gets uglier
as it goes on, regurgitating each and every known Bushian
transgression against political correctness, including incidents
of racism, sexism, and homophobia – everything but the
fact that Mrs. Dubya has been known to wear fur. I was surprised
to see that "looksism" was left off the list, but this may
have been just an editorial oversight. In any case, Paul Begala
is quoted as gleefully looking forward to a general election
in which "Bob Jones will become as well known as Willie Horton."
To the New York wing of the GOP establishment, to be typed
as a Christian conservative is the equivalent of being characterized
as a ruthless murderer. Their dream is a national version
of the Giuliani campaign, a presidential ticket that can carry
the Upper West Side. McCain is clearly their man.
ET
TU BAUER
As
a comical side note, nothing beats the spectacle of presidential
candidate Gary Bauer's surprise endorsement of McCain. When
gay columnist Dan Savage licked the doorknobs of Bauer's Iowa
campaign headquarters in an attempt to infect Bauer with the
flu – as Savage related in an infamous Salon article
– -perhaps he transmitted something else to the
candidate, or exacerbated an already existing dementia. For
Bauer built his campaign around the issue of opposition to
abortion – indeed, as head of the Family Research Council
and a leading Religious Right figure, he had made a career
out of it. That he should now turn around and endorse a man
who once mused to the San Francisco Chronicle that
Roe v. Wade wasn't such a bad Supreme Court decision after
all does not strike Dreher as odd; he is, instead, content
to pass along Bauer's self-serving rationale for the sudden
turnabout: "My friend Pat Robertson supported Bob Dole four
years ago," says Bauer. "There's not a dime's worth of difference
between Bob Dole and John McCain. Too much of our movement
is effective at forming circular firing squads." Here is the
little dweeb who attacked Alan Keyes as being practically
in league with the Devil for falling into a mosh pit denouncing
his former comrades in the conservative movement for "forming
circular firing squads"! Are we to be spared nothing?
NOT
A DIME'S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE
What
is very telling, however, is the comment about there not being
a dime's worth of difference between Dole and McCain. Bauer
has a point, and it underscores the essentially opportunist
character of the McCain "insurgency.". For if we take that
further, what Bauer is really saying is that there's isn't
a nickel's worth of difference between Bush and McCain
– and he went with the likely winner. With the instinct
of natural-born opportunists, the creepy Bauer and his neoconservative
friends and sponsors have jumped on board the McCain bandwagon,
along with the Log Cabin Republicans, Representative Pete
King of Long Island, and the California Secretary of State,
in a grand alliance of "reformers" who want to "take back"
the party – from whom, or what, is not yet made clear
by the candidate. He leaves that to his surrogates, writing
in the New York Post, who yelp about Bush as the prisoner
of "the far right."
THE
MANTLE OF REFORM
What
is especially striking about this primary election season
is the degree to which both Republican candidates are willing
to go to claim the mantle of "reform." This theme was first
appropriated by McCain in New Hampshire, and then later (and
less credibly) claimed by Bush, and suddenly a new question
was added to the exit polls: "Which candidate best represents
the idea of reform?" A specter is haunting this primary election
season – the specter of the real Reform Party.
GOING
NEGATIVE
All
those worshipful reporters were so mesmerized by their idol
on board the Doubletalk Express that they were shocked –
shocked! – that he could ever "go negative." That
is why they were so taken aback by his ungracious South Carolina
concession speech. They must have forgotten how McCain went
"negative" on Buchanan, calling him a "Nazi," an "anti-Semite"
and accusing the author of "A
Republic, Not an Empire" of "betraying" the veterans who
fought in World War II because he cited well-known historians
who questioned our entry into that conflict. Or perhaps "going
negative" and flinging mud is okay – depending on who
gets hit. Relentlessly smeared and ridiculed in the media,
subjected to an invasion by mega-phony Donald Trump –
and a carefully-staged and choreographed walkout by the feather
boa-bedecked wrestler and his handpicked national chairman
– the Reform Party represents a real threat to the status
quo that cannot be permitted, especially if Pat Buchanan is
anywhere within reach of its presidential nomination.
NOW
IT'S YOUR TURN
Now
the Bush campaign will be treated to much the same treatment
as the Buchanan campaign was and is being subjected to: the
professional "extremist"-hunters will come out of the woodwork,
and the list of politically incorrect Bush supporters will
be drawn up as an indictment – although the McCain campaign,
as the Bushies and professional
"extremist"-hunters point out, is not immune on that score,
with the ties of McCain campaign consultant Ricard Quinn to
the Southern Partisan.
The
appeal of the phony McCain "insurgency" to the New York-Beltway-based
neoconservatives is best expressed in Bill Kristol's screed,
"After South Carolina," in which he tries to rally the troops
in the wake of what would appear to be a major setback to
their cause. Painting the McCain crusade as an effort by outsiders
to reinvigorate a GOP establishment that is practically moribund,
he writes:
"If
Bush prevails, the rebellious impulse embodied by the McCain
campaign will reemerge after a Bush general election defeat,
or for that matter, during a Bush presidency. If McCain is
the nominee, he will have to give shape to the inchoate movement
he finds himself leading, and give content to the embryonic
message he is grappling to articulate. In either case, the
battle for the GOP nomination may effectively be resolved
within the next 48 hours. The struggle over the Republican
future has just begun."
ERASATZ
'POPULISM'
Kristol
and the neoconservatives have always despised all manifestations
of populism as reactionary and even dangerous: Perot and Buchanan
were exiled to the fever swamps and denounced as neofascist
demagogues for mobilizing "the politics of resentment" against
the political elites. In McCain's popular insurgency, however,
they see the opportunity to not only co-opt and defang the
populist danger, but also, as Kristol puts it, to "give content
to the embryonic message" of McCain's variety of erasatz "reform."
With the support of such notable "reformers" as Jeanne Kirkpatrick,
Zbigniew Brzezinski. Lawrence Eagleburger, and Henry Kissinger,
what Kristol & Company want to "reform" is a foreign policy
that, even under the warlike Clinton, they see as altogether
too peaceful. These old Cold Warriors look forward to the
re-starting of the Cold War, with Putin's Russia as a revamped
and revived Evil Empire, and figure they can ride to power
on the coattails of a phony "populist" crusader – and
that is about the extent of their interest in the subject
of "reform."
HEADED
FOR DIVORCE COURT?
With
Big Government "national greatness" conservatism as their
domestic program, and unabashed militarism as the leitmotif
of a campaign to "reform" the world – in the name of
"democracy" and "American values," of course – the McCain
campaign is embarked on a serious challenge to the GOP Establishment
that will last well beyond South Carolina and Michigan. While
it is true that there is not a dime's worth of difference
between Bush and McCain, a civil war is always the most vicious
– and this internecine dispute between battling factions
of the Establishment has every possibility of tearing the
GOP apart. If McCain pulls it off in Michigan, chalks up a
big margin in Arizona, and makes it to California, Bush is
in real trouble. McCain boasted that if he won in South Carolina
he would be "unstoppable." Well, he lost – but may still
be unstoppable. As the media beats the drums for their favorite,
and the GOP Establishment begins to doubt the ability of their
candidate to stand the test, anything could happen in this
volatile election season – and probably it will. Whatever
happens, of one thing we can be sure: the marriage between
the conservative movement and the Republican Party is increasingly
stormy – and could end in divorce before November.
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