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McCain should point to the prospect of an Obama/Sheehan/Moore nation with those views, craziness, and attitudes of the past few years and stress gratitude and pride in America all along.

He should say what exactly is acceptable to us and what is not in the campaign and lecture Obama. And call Obama by his full name.

It’s sad that we on the right may be forced to counter name calling with the same. Call me a racist, I’ll call you a moron. Call me a war mongerer, I’ll call you an unwashed hippie freak.

It’s low. But better than being a punching bag.

I remember the convention floor went wild when McCain called out Michael Moore in 04. If that McCain shows up, he’ll have no problem getting the base or “some kind of base” rallied.

Have we been wrong all along about Barack Obama’s strategy to win the White house? I think in some respects we have, and we may have fallen for a few clever tricks he has played on the media as well as the rest of us. First let me say, I do not think Obama is a Muslim, a Marxist or the Manchurian Candidate. He’s a liberal Democrat trying to get elected President on the thinnest resume of any candidate we’ve seen in ages. He had the audacity to challenge HRC, the Queen of the Ballroom Dems, who initially ran for the nomination as if she were an incumbent. Obama said early on in the campaign he wanted to “change the way politics is done” in this country and he has certainly tried - with some success- to change the rules of the game. He wows the crowds like a rock star, raises lots of money on line and has run a great campaign. HRC made a lot of mistakes and now can’t win the nomination (legitimately, anyway). He’ll be the nominee and face McCain - someone who also wishes to change the rules - in the Fall. So far so good. What have we missed? A few ruses, I think,and a very clever strategy to exploit them.

Obama’s New Rules of political warfare have been thoroughly explained by VDH in several articles. Part of his rules change strategy is to call everything that makes you look bad a distraction from the “real issues”. Obama gets traction from this tactic by foisting on us distractions of his own making, and benefits from the backlash.

Ruse #1: The Patriot Game. In the last general election a decorated Viet Nam Vet was upstaged by a draft dodger who portrayed his opponent as unpatriotic. The winner of that election went on to start an unpopular war that five years later makes Americans a little unhappy with the patriot they selected in ‘04. The Republican nominee this time is someone virtually everyone accepts as a bona fide American War Hero. In this context I cannot believe Obama is truly as cavalier as he pretends to be about wearing the flag pin or not (same for the hand over the heart during the National Anthem). He offered an inane explanation as to why he stopped wearing the pin post 9/11 and now wears it intermittently. The blogosphere (myself included) went nuts, and the MSM still write articles about the pin and patriotism. Because of what happened to John Kerry, the backlash is strongly in Obama’s favor, nullifying the patriotism issue. Take home message: Don’t Swiftboat Obama over a flag pin that John McCain doesn’t wear. His nonchalance about the flag pin was always intentionally incendiary, and it’s a ruse that worked. Touche Obama.

Ruse #2: The Red Herring. Obama’s a Marxist! Right? Well he’s always talking about Marxist-lite writers and uses phrases that sound vaguely Marxist influenced. His supporters are enamored with Che and his campaign hires a band named The Decemberists to play to a crowd of 75,000 in Portland (apparently the band occasionally opens with the National Anthem of the USSR). While baiting the Republicans to begin red-baiting Obama hasn’t worked as well (yet), charges of McCarthyism still abound. This will be a bigger issue when the degree of Obama’s true association with Bill Ayers becomes more generally known. Ayers is of course a Bolshevik bomb thrower from the 60’s who still wants to bring down the government. So what’s Obama to do about his friend Bill? He throws the masses a little Marxist bone to chew on, while he tries to stuff the rest of the Ayers skeleton back into the closet. Did you really believe his answer about Ayers during the ABC debate (”he’s an English professor who lives in my neighborhood”)? Obama knows he’s an education professor and the two are much closer than he implied. That question was of course a distraction from the issues and ABC was roundly chastised for the interview. Backlash favors Obama who must know that the only difference between terrorist Ayers and Timothy McVeigh is McVeigh made a better bomb. We’ll see if Obama’s Marxist distraction continues to work.

To be cont’d

McCain needs to draw a clear distinction between those who believe in the good intentions and hard work of ordinary Americans vis-a-vis leftist elites who preach that there is something fundamentally wrong with Americans who disagree with the revealed truths handed down from on high. It shouldn’t be a difficult strategy because Obama (and more so his wife) make known their contempt for the common man in what is now a habitual pattern. Media spin can only cover for so long before average Americans catch on to the condescension. As apparently many in West Virginia and Kentucky already have.

VDH-

The main Dem mantra was left off of your list: McCain is Bush.

I think you are right. It will be a spectacle when McCain’s deftly crafted cutting remarks collide with Obama’s thin-lipped restraint. I predict that the two champions will behave more responsibly than the hoards behind them.

Anger will work against McCain. Fervor could work for him. So can humor. What he must do is peel back the nonsense and anti-sense in Obama’s description and promises. Such actions are most effective when they are oblique: when they put the truth in front of people without actually stating that the other side is offering lies.

McCain has to seize the agenda. Obama appears to be very thin skinned and will lash out when he is challenged. Security and Foreign relations are two obvious areas where McCain should set the agenda by proposing detailed policies that Obama will have to respond to. McCain also has an unparalleled record of reaching across the aisle in the Senate. He should push this to emphasize that he can get things done on domestic issues.

My point of view is always that of a political emigrant from the Soviet Union. So I hope an eventual reader of this comment will forgive me for my errors. I was witness of the anti-Bush hysteria here, in Europe, in 2004. The leftists of all kinds (and even “liberals” in European sense of the word) wished so much Bush’s defeat that some newspapers announced Kerry’s victory before knowing the exact results. An Italian newspaper announced that Kerry threw Bush out of the White House with 20 million votes lead. I have read again Oriana Fallaci’s memories about these extraordinary elections. It was also the most critical moment of Iraqi situation. I can say that actual Obamania is much less hysterical than Bushphobia in those days but the Europeans’ wish of seeing as the US President a nonentity like Obama is always the same. “L’obsession anti-américaine. Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconséquences” by Jean-François Revel helps to understand the irrational hatred for the US. It’s a sharp analysis of the anti-American mentality. Revel was the last great European political thinker. He has also written the best book about the US: “Ni Marx ni Jesus” (1970). It’s still useful and helps to understand the present situation. Obamania is not a new phenomenon in American society, as this book demonstrates.
So I see the current electoral agitation through Revel and Fallaci’s books and my personal memories. I have the impression that all by-products of American society have gathered around Obama in a last effort to realize their delirious dreams. The results of the democratic primaries in poor West Virginia and Kentucky show (in my estimation) that the working people (Democrats and Republicans) will not vote for Obama but rather for McCain. They don’t trust this pseudo-black “intellectual” and his “rules” have no sense for them. It explains very well the abhorrence that the Social-elitists, like Obama o Edwards, feel for the free working class. They want slaves, not free workers.
I have observed (against my will) many “popular” demonstrations: in Russia, Italy, Spain. So I know well their “technique”. I am sure the crowd that Obama drew in Oregon, was organized according to a classical scenario written by a publicity screenwriter and put in scene by some Hollywood director. In any case their model was the communist and fascist mass meetings. I have seen the photography of Obama speaking to the enormous crowd. It seemed me to see an old Soviet propaganda film and I felt nausea. Nihil novum sub sole.
Obama spends much money for propaganda of the most vulgar type and the liberal media seek to impose “Obama’s rules”: who doesn’t vote Obama, is racist or fascist (accoding to the very old European prescription). As an ex Soviet citizen I know that obsessive propaganda can be counterproductive and self-defeating. It’s Obama’s case. The reasoning of Obama’s creators is typically “capitalist”: with money you can buy even Immortality (not only the Presidency).
I like very much John McCain. He reminds me the Byzantine general Belisarius from Robert Graves’s novel and Pope Benedict XVI. It may seem strange, but he, like Belisarius, is above all an old soldier who wishes to serve his country in danger. And he is wise man who wants to save the fundamental values of the Western civilization, like Pope Benedict.
I think after revolutionary Bush’s presidency (yes, revolutionary: spreading of democracy in the places where an open society seemed impossible is a true revolution), John McCain would be ideal President for the US. There is need of a tranquil period to stabilize the fundamental results of Bush’s policy, and not of mindless experiments of demagogues like Obama or Hillary. It is not necessary to be an American to see that these two individuals are very dangerous and can inaugurate a very turbulent period not only in the US, but in the World. I think it can be a decisive reason for the majority of the American citizens to vote the sane McCain and not the Idol of hashish smokers that seek strong emotions.
It was discussed here (in the comments) if McCain is charismatic or not. But in what sense? The Greek word “charisma” means “gift”. It can be a gift of gods, but also of demons. Obama has the only gift of hybris-arrogance and ignorance. It is a gift of demons (according to the ancient indo-European concepts). In this sense Obama is undoubtedly “charismatic” but, as we know from the Greek mythology, hybris always invoke Ate-punishment. In what way it will happen, it is impossible to know: the Gods are unpredictable, but their laws are immutable and eternal.

In regards to your first paragraph on energy. I couldn’t agree more.
Why is it that one particular group of politicians are always talking about us being addicted to oil, and that we need alternative sources of energy that are good for the environment, etc?
Why do they also complain about the price of oil being way to high, and it being a result of “Greed’when supply and demand is the real force behind it?
Why do these same politicians confuse record revenues and profits, with profit margins? The profit margins in oil have always been narrow. It takes a lot to get the oil out of the ground, refined, and into your Prius.
Last, wouldn’t you think that these politicians would be happy that the high price of oil will force the public to seek alternative sources of energy but they’re not because they are bogus populists sticking their finger in the wind to see where the political sentiment is.
I agree that we should be drilling more in the USA. Why not, China is drilling 40 miles off the Florida coast via Cuba. This is a non topic in the media. On the other hand, more drilling in the states at this point is like asking your wife to sell tupperware to help pay for an ever increasing adjustable rate mortgage.
If McCain is going to go Green (I’m a global warming skeptic in the Al Gore world ) he should tie to it to a realistic energy plan. In all honesty the markets are going to force people to find ways to conserve energy and I’m not a big fan of Gov’t tinkering around with market forces but since McCain is going this route he needs a plan that ties to the war on terror, the American economy, etc. Obama has more radical greenies to please so his plan will end up looking more pie in the sky, whereas McCain’s will seem realistic. Just a thought of how McCain could steal an issue from the dems and make it a conservative one.

Wednesday

McCain had a decent speech today for the Cubans. I felt like I was the only one who cared.

A famous rock band turned Obama’s popularity contest into a charade. Michelle Malkin calmly and clearly listed Obama’s gaffs. But it’s too frightening that he may just win anyway. C’mon channel McGovern.

Maybe the Republican honchos are keeping their powder dry. Maybe they’re waiting to ’see the whites of their eyes.’ Whoops…did I say ‘WHITES?’ Should I have said that? I hope I don’t get the good professor in trouble here.

$133.00 or was it $138.00 a barrel today? I can’t keep up. Shouldn’t something explode or something? Why aren’t the car companies up there in congress with the oil companies? Hummer? Expedition? Suburban?

Sue Saudi Arabia and OPEC? Call John Edwards.

the House will sue Saudi Arabia…

I wonder what happens if we won?

Stop the Saudis from selling their oil to us? Stop buying oil from the Saudis? Forbid the Saudis and the rest of the oil world to use the US Dollars as the currency of transactions? Geeze, if I were the Saudis, I would start flooding the oil market with cheap oil to forestall the House’s wrath.

What a bunch of worthless buffoons!

Ruse #3: The Boys Who Cried Hussein. Obama is a Muslim, right? Wrong. He’s the Reverend Wright’s most accomplished Christian convert. I don’t think Camp Obama started the Muslim rumor which has gone viral in the right-wing blogosphere (and, absent proof, it is a rumor). But it almost appears as if some of those posts come from Obama trolls in disguise. I know it’s a stretch, but hear me out. What’s the advantage to Obama to promote this rumor? It’s an easy one to dispel, and he can claim he’s the victim of right-wing paranoid propaganda. Note, his religion and religiosity are tied to Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Keep labeling him a Muslim and he gets to use his twenty year association with a Christian church run by a racist bigot to disprove a bigoted religious slur. The issue is not Obama’s religion, it’s his religious mentor’s racism. Don’t conflate the two. Also, he spent many years being tutored by a master in the science of victimology. He knows how to play this one. Don’t be duped by the Obama-the-Muslim scam. The web savvy Obamaniacs are out there trolling for suckers. You take the bait, we all take the barb. Duplicity, not audacity is Obama’s real forte.

use #4: Prince Obama and The Magic Carpet Ride to Teheran. What should a 47 year old neophyte Senator with NO experience in international or military affairs do when facing a John McCain in the general election. Why, propose the most simplistic solution to all of our foreign policy problems and bluff his way through November of course. Just talk your adversaries to death, without preconditions. Well, that’s a pipe dream right out of 1001 Nights. How sophomoric junior Senator Obama. Would you talk to all of our enemies? Including Osama bin Laden? You do know, don’t you, American Presidents traditionally talk to our adversaries when there are clear gains to be made, and our conditions are met? Personally, I doubt that’s the case with the Iranians, and I doubt Obama is serious about his proposal to talk to them. First of all, who’s gonna go to Teheran? President Obama? Might wanna check their current list of fatwas against apostates first. Who else? The State Department? Hell, they don’t even want to go to Baghdad where they’re surrounded 24/7 by those trigger happy killers employed by Blackwater. Good luck talking them into going to Teheran where I’m pretty sure the Quds Force will want to be their guards. Oh, by the way, we got any Farsi speakers down at Foggy Bottom? Seems George Bush realized we had a deficit of Middle East linguists about four years after he invaded Iraq. And finally Senator Obama, are you old enough to remember what happened in 1979? If you wanna send diplomats from State over to Teheran, they won’t be able to “talk to our enemies” when they get there because you’re gonna have to bind and gag ‘em first just to get them on the plane. And in that case, all you’re doing is saving the mullas the trouble. Seriously, this is all a feint by Obama, absolving him of the customary requirement for a candidate to put forth specific and realistic solutions to our foreign policy dilemmas, so we can evaluate them before we vote.

SEN Obama demonstrated behavior toward women like Maureen Dowd, SEN Clinton, et al and his ‘fear’ of Mrs. Obama are similar to another ‘two for one’ 1990s outfit.
Seething is an apt description. To seethe about anything in this wonderful country is a mental disorder. America is the only place in the world where you can start over-brand new-today.

the opening salvos of obama’s early primary campaign were brilliant (newcomer from out of left field-concentrate on caucus states,get a grabby catchword,”change”-be able to ramp it up after hillary tried to co-op said catchword, “change we can believe in, etc.) but by and large vacuous.

i can close my eyes and see the same scene playing out in the roman senate of antiquity. exotic, charismatic newcomer from the heartland sweeps thru the staid, old-fogey demigods of power and seemingly initiates a tidal wave of new thinking. emotions run high. intrigues abound as some of the old farts jockey to get on board with what looked like the new power vortex.every so often somebody got knifed, usually the old guy. but that was then, this is now. we are a civilized society.

never the less, mccain needs to hit him hard and ruthlessly. he needs to come out ranting about the farm bill big time. he needs to keep up unrelenting observations, based on obama’s current and surely-to-come gaffs concerning international policy. michelle is in this whether she now thinks she likes it or not.( actually, it’s probably the campaign moguls who want her duct taped.) the vestiges of republican conservatism in the national govt need to breathe into paper bags and hold their tongues or support mccain when and where they can.

and rush limbaugh needs to tread very carefully.

m.e.: you rock

Obama is a Muslim, right? Wrong. He’s the Reverend Wright’s most accomplished Christian convert

Interesting point, TLM. But I think it misses a key element, if I may.

Wright’s “Christianity” itself, is a bit of a misnomer. A deeper review of that particular sect at TUCC finds that Jeremiah is preaching a far removed splinter group-think that shrouds itself in a “Christian” cloak.

The teachings there are predominantly hostile to traditional Christian beliefs and followers.

In fact, a very strong argument could be made that the belief system is more aligned with the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan than with, for instance, the Crystal Cathedral.

The Jeremiad that gets spewed on the South Side of Chicago is more political movement than religious movement. It is Marxist inspired and tinged with black separatism.

This is NOT a secret…from which ANY congregant would be easily misled or fooled. Certainly not for 20 years.

Jesus as God is indeed a basic tenet…but as an anti-white God…because if He is not anti-white, HE must be killed. That is the preaching that the congregants are taught and inspired with, that is the sermon that defines the theology portion of the politics.

Sen. Obama was not particularly devout as a Muslim child in school growing up…following his mother’s footsteps …viewing religion and religiousity as more historical artifacts
for curious study, than for living a faith based lifestyle.

However, he was tutored and mentored by “Frank” Marshall Davis, his most radical professors, Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright, Ayers & Dorhn, and the like.

It was this radical political theater that attracted him to TUCC…it offered more than simple prayer and hymnals. It offered the adrenaline rush of hostility, anger, bile, …the heady 60’s redux, for community activism via protest and rage against the establishment.

THAT is the common thread that binds Sen. Obama and Michelle to TUCC. THAT is the tie that binds “Frank” Marshall Davis and his imposed “wisdom”, the radical professors, the far leftist voting record, the association with Ayers & Dorhn, the Edward Said, Ali Abuminah, Rashid Khalidi ties.

Sen. Obama is not only a product of hard leftist mentoring, he is and has been a lifelong seeker of attachments to hard leftist mentors and advisors.

TUCC isn’t about religion. It’s about political theater. It is about anger, bile, hatred, racialism and racism, blame, rage against the establishment.

However, a hard leftist can’t get elected dog catcher in a national election in this country. So, he must come with the cloak of a centrist. Peel the onion. Connect the dots. What is left underneath…is what is real. Forget Muslim/Christian. You hit the nail on the head…that’s a sleight of hand to fool the eye.

Keep our eye on the real trick. How does he continue to be able to run away from a lifelong attraction to the shrill voices that espouse hatred of America?

Re cfbleachers:

I agree with your depiction of TUCC and of Obama. I’ll admit, though, I am always surprised when someone as intelligent as Barack Obama adopts the leftist course in life, seeks out radical father figures to guide them on their journey beyond bitterness to blissful ignorance, clings to religious/political malarkey, and then wants to take the rest of us with him.

To cfbleachers:

“Jesus as God is indeed a basic tenet…but as an anti-white God…because if He is not anti-white, HE must be killed. That is the preaching that the congregants are taught and inspired with, that is the sermon that defines the theology portion of the politics.”

Very deep and exact analysis. They worship a God that “must be killed”, adore a victim that they must sacrifice. As a scholar of archaic traditions I can say: here we are in the centre of a chthonic religion, of extolling of the spirits of earth and of death. It is clear that this archaic (or archetypical, in terms of C.G. Jung) credence must be presented in some political guise. An archaic coincides here with a radical. It is what happens in Avant-garde art: a return to the most archaic forms. In the same way a political radicalism or radical ideology is a return to the most archaic (or chthonic) vision of human life as doomed to absolute destruction. This chthonic vision is the essence of all religious or political radicalisms. You have touched, I think, a central (“ontological”) point of Obama’s phenomenon. And it is very serious problem because here “the Devil leads the dance”. Marxism is only a cloak for this “theology”. But what is Marxism if not a kind of “theology” without God?

With all due respect to John McCain, he cannot and, I believe, will not run the kind of “respectful” campaign he dreams of. He will be blamed for any anti-Obama mudslinging anyway, and virtually every time he or someone else contradicts Obama it’s considered dirty politics. The gloves will come off and he’ll speak his mind. I’m sure he believes junior Senator Obama is manifestly unprepared to deal with the foreign policy and military issues facing this country over the next four years. And on these matters, the ones that have always been of the utmost importance to John McCain, junior Senator Obama is not merely naive - that word no longer pertains - he’s downright dangerous. Yes. Have faith. The gloves will come off.

Just read McCain’s response to Obama’s comments in the Senate today on the VA bill. Obama must be trying to goad JM into blowing his cool. That he made those comments on the Senate floor is good. Maybe some of JM’s friends on the Democratic side of the aisle will realize what a wild card they have on their hands in junior Senator Obama. He lacks the experience or the class to be a United States Senator, let alone the president.

To Trudy B. Taylor:

“never the less, mccain needs to hit him hard and ruthlessly.”

I have read McCain’s remarks on Senator Obama calling “tiny” Iranian threat (May 19), on Cuban Independence Day (May 20) and the statement on Senator Obama and National Security (May 21). I don’t know what you mean by “ruthlessly”, but McCain’s statement seems me ruthless and pungent enough, but above all exact. And they show that Obama is not only an absolute ignorant in foreign affairs and political history in general, but that he has very clear goal: to save the most criminal regimes in the World. It is sufficient to quote these McCain’s words:
“I have news for Senator Obama: I have met some very bad people before in my life. It is not fear that drives my opposition to unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, Kim Jong Il, and Raul Castro; rather it is my clear understanding that such a course will fail to eliminate the threat posed by these rogue regimes. I don’t fear to negotiate. Instead I have the knowledge and experience to understand the dangerous consequences of a naive approach to Presidential summits based entirely on emotion” (On National Security).
One can ask: why this obsession to save Islamofascist and communist dictatorships? It is perfectly explicable by Obama’s radical milieu. It is also completely obvious that to negotiate with “rogue regimes” means to reduce the US to the lowest place in the international politics. It is the weakest point of Obama’s foreign program, but he cannot give it up because it is the essence of his radical program of “change”. And McCain hits him “hard and ruthlessly” exactly in this weakest point because he understand as a true soldier that here there is at stake not simply democratic or republican “presidency”, but the very existence of the US as great democratic country, as the only foundation of all democracies in the World. A rule of radical demagogues, like Obama & Co., would have catastrophic consequences.
Dr. Hanson’s prognosis was exact: “in Obama we are witnessing the slow formation of a McGovern candidacy, a disaster to come that won’t be fully appreciated by now starry-eyed Democrats until September or October when, as in 1972, it will be too late.” Now this formation is completed.
As a political emigrant from totalitarian country I could appreciate the clearness of McCain’s remarks. All political emigrants, Cubans, Iranian, Russians, and many others staying in the US or Europe, see in Obama their absolute foe.
I am not American citizen, but I vote in my soul and spirit for our companion in arms John McCain.

m.e.:–political ruthlessness — make an accurate, non-compassionate statement and follow through, follow through, follow through. too often in politics it’s a stab-and-parry,ebb and flow debate. conservatives never seem to go in for the kill. maybe we have it with mccain. i just hope we get the chance to see.

tlm: dont ever be surprised by how insecure, immature, or compliant obama will be concerning his black identity. remember, this individual was not just abandoned by his father at a very young age, he was, in effect, repudiated by his father. the short time young obama spent piddling around in the madrassah did not reflect a genuine concern by his father to “school” obama jr. in the religious ways of obama sr. it was a holding pen for the kid. obama never connected with his father, nevermind the very obvious wishfull thinking embodied in obama’s first book. so obama’s inherent intelligence does not help him in this area. obama’s tragic character flaw is this probably insurmountable deficit caused by his father’s treatment of the child. it is why the u.s. can never send this man to the bargaining table of international politics and policies–he will always be looking to please an ever elusive phantom of a long gone father.