McSame?
July 12th, 2008 at 02:06pm Mark Noonan
Nevada Pundit has a word to say about this rather tiresome Democratic talking point:
…Democrats love to say “McSame”. I think that there is something that they are overlooking, President Bush was elected on a platform of strong conservative beliefs, ideas that enough people believed in that he was elected President. President Bush’s unpopularity was not with his ideas so much as his implementation. The part that I don’t think the Democrats understand is that the Republican party doesn’t want those ideas to go away, they want someone in office that will be effective in getting their ideas through.
Very little that I have heard from McCain is a continuation of Bush’s policies, what they are are a continuation of Republican ideas in a way that McCain and many feel will be much more effective than President Bush’s approach. The idea of “McSame” is only being used, in fact can only be used as a scare tactic to the moderate voters…
I can dispute the exception on Bush’s effectiveness - personally, I think he’s been very much so - but I see the point: It is, perhaps, a situation now where GOPers are looking for someone less ideological and more practical…someone, that is, who can take core GOP values and get them implemented without the extraordinary level of nastiness we’ve seen directed at President Bush; a nastiness partially engendered by President Bush being clearly identified with a very conservative set of moral values as expressed by his evangelical Christianity. The left has spent so many years demonizing the religious right that, to the left, President Bush was pure evil even before Iraq. The fact that some Democrats are still seeking impeachment - six months before Bush leaves office - shows the level of hatred felt on the left for President Bush. A President McCain, however, won’t be carrying around the baggage President Bush has been saddled with and, addtionally, given McCain’s hero status, it will be very hard to tag him the way the left has tagged President Bush. And thus we see “McSame”.
While President Bush is unpopular, I don’t think he’s hated the way the left hates him - but they believe he is so hated, and so we’re seeing an attempt to closely tie John McCain to President Bush, even though McCain has been a strong GOP critic of the President. For the left, they feel that if they can really make people think that McCain is a Bush clone, then their task is done - Obama will be elected in a landslide. Time will tell if the left has hit upon the winning tactic, but the fact will always be that McCain and President Bush are two very different sorts of Republicans - sharing some core values, but having a very different conception of what is to be most emphasised and what means should be used to effect the desired ends. Democrats are, in short, using their tried and true method - lying.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Republicans
24 Comments Add your own
1. Stretchrun | July 12th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I would think Blogsforvictory would welcome a McSame. That means four more years of what con posters, Limbaugh and Hannity have been defending for eight years. Don’t cut and run away from McSame; embrace it.
But I am a realist, I say bring them both on stage in Minneapolis and explain to the American people which Bush policies McCain will change in order to get us out of the whole America is in. He can start with the Bush tax cuts he opposed in 2001 and 2003 and then move to his support for stem cell funding.
This will be a good test of the McSame/McBush theory.
2. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
The left use to define McCain as the “maverick”, the lone, sane voice of the GOP.
Evidently they think the electorate doesn’t remember all of that and are now trying to label him as another Bush.
There is no end to their hypocrisy and deception.
Merci Beaucoup
peace, neocon
3. FmrMarine | July 12th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
How about
obamacarter!
or
jimmahobama
or
obamaworsethanjimmah
4. Tractatus | July 12th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Evidently they think the electorate doesn’t remember all of that and are now trying to label him as another Bush.
Or, the more reality-based rationale is that McCain has gone back on all those “mavericky” things and has flip-flopped to put his views more in line with Bush’s.
But you guys are Bush dead-enders…why don’t you welcome the idea of McSame?
5. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Tractatus,
I actually think Obama is sounding more like Bush than McCain.
FISA, faith Based, 2nd amendment, listening to generals on the ground, etc.
peace, neocon
6. Magnum Serpentine | July 12th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Lets see. As we all know McBush is the effort to get george a way to remain president after the election. If McSame is elected, its possible that one way to keep george in the white house is to have Laura Bush be the Vice President. But then its more likely that McSame is going to let Bush continue to live in the white house. And remember, about this time, in 1988 President Ronald Reagan was preparing to move to his home in California. george has not only not done anything about getting ready to move from the White House, george acts as if he is already elected president for life.
Items that are the exact same as george in McSame’s election bid (so called election bid)
1. economics. Exact same as george
2. Education. Exact same as george
3. The george War in Iraq. McSame says he will keep war going 100 years. Same policy as george.
4. Environment. McSame will continue george’s war on the environment.
5. Social Security. McSame claims that people on SS are disgraceful. Exact same thing that george said in 2001 before 11 September 2001.
There is absolutely no difference between McSame/McBush’s platform and george’s disastrous loser platform.
next.
7. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Mags,
I could go down your list of 5 issues and show you definitive differences between McCain and Bush on each one, but that would be repetitious and tedious as it has been done previously countless times.
And you have no intention of actually learning something when parroting the talking point du jour is so much easier, right?
Merci Beaucoup
peace, neocon
8. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I am beginning to sense a pattern. Everytime Obama stumbles, or should I say “tropezar”, the hate McCain dial gets turned up.
Stay tuned.
Hasta luego
peace neocon
9. Stretchrun | July 12th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
8. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
the hate McCain dial gets turned up.
Mark it down July 12th the first hate McCain post. It is like saying you hate your own papa.
10. Stretchrun | July 12th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
This whole post doesn’t make sense. Matt, Mark, Neocon, and FmrMarine make post after post in praise of Bush. Do you want four more years of Bush’s paradise or don’t you?
11. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Men don’t create my paradies’s Stretch. They may for you though.
And there’s nothing wrong with that
Que sera sera
peace neocon
12. Jerry Winters | July 12th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Deleted - off topic.
13. Magnum Serpentine | July 12th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Neocon
The citizens of this nation know that mcsame is about continuing the disastrous policies of the george administration. the Citizens are sick of it and I believe the republic party needs to change its message drastically.
Oh, when will george start removing himself from our white house? He hasn’t done a thing about it yet. Most presidents by this time in their administrations have already began moving their possessions back home. One President even bought a home at this point in their administration. yet george has not done a single thing. george hasn’t even packed one suit case or moving crate. not one. one wonders if he intends on staying as an uninvited guest?
14. neocon | July 12th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Mags,
george is staying. I hate to break this to you, but it’s true. The Constitution is no longer and you will now refer to Bush as His Majesty.
And when you start sentences with the phrase “The citizens of this nation”, it takes me a minute to stop laughing before I hesitantly read the post.
Jerry,
Great Job. You’ve stumbled upon something that means absolutely nothing.
peace, neocon
15. phnx | July 12th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news for you leftists:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/145737
Despite having spent 1/4 BILLION dollars to defeat Hitlary, and despite the 14 point media encouraged bump after he defeated her, Obama is in a virtual dead heat with McCain. McCain has spent what? $342.78 on his election so far.
At this point Kerry was leading Bush by double digits, and he lost.
Gore was leading Bush by double digits and he lost, despite your conspiracy theories, HE LOST.
Carter was leading Reagan by 14 points at this stage and he LOST.
And this isn’t even October. Wait until the rest of the electorate begin to take notice of your socialist messiah.
It doesn’t look good for you over confident leftist wackos. So the next thread should be a contest to determine the most likely excuse/conspiracy thoery, following the November election, as to why the messiah lost.
Here are my top 10.
10. The gun toting Bible toters came out in force to vote against Obama.
9. Jesse cut his nuts off.
8. Michelle cut his nuts off.
7. The pro al Queda vote wasn’t a s big as he expected.
6. Angry white women write in Hillary
5. High gas prices prevented Obama supporters from getting to the polls.
4. Campus vote depressed due to pop quiz
3. (Ed Note: Over the Top bit deleted).
2. Elitist votes depressed by 12 hour Gucci sale on election day.
1.Its Bush’s fault!!!
16. Mark Noonan | July 13th, 2008 at 12:58 am
stretch,
Here’s the thing - you see, come this November, you won’t find President Bush on the ballot. Hate him or love him, he’s not there to vote for or against…I know that since President Bush has run rings around you leftists for the past 14 years (if you count Texas) you really, really would like to beat him but, ya know?, you’ll never get the chance…2004 was your last shot at him, and you blew it.
So, now we GOPers have nominated John McCain…given that he’s a Republican of conservative bent, there’s bound to be some similarities between Bush and McCain, but they aren’t the same man and they don’t want the exact same things…in fact, there is far more divergence of opinion between McCain and Bush than there ever was between Obama and Hillary or, indeed, any of the Democrats who sought the nomination.
What will happen in November is that the American people will choose between Obama’s leftism and McCain’s conservatism…Bush won’t factor in except for those kook left voters who weren’t ever going to vote for a GOPer anyway…everyone else will, by then, have moved on, ya dig?
17. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don\'t-mess | July 13th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Mark: This has been a very bizarre 24 hours for us indeed. We’ve already agreed on Pelosi and Tony Snow, avoided falling into a quarrel about abortion despite being 180 degrees apart, and I’m going to AGREE with your analysis here in this comment to Stretchrun, with whom I generally agree.
I’ll quibble with you about the labels (”leftist” and “conservative”), but you make sense. The ideological choice is clear. McCain probably has a more REPUBLICAN record overall than Bush has and Obama’s voting record tends to the middle-left of the Democratic Party (despite the mathematically-weak National Journal viewpoint). Obama’s certainly to the right of Feingold, Sanders, Kennedy, Boxer, Levin, Wyden and Lautenberg, just thinking off the top of my head.
I’m not a Democrat anymore but I was one for many years and I’ve often chided Democratic friends for taking a too reflexive view of Bush’s administrations. I don’t think there’s a “left” in the sense the world has come to know in America, but using that short-hand, I think you’re right that Bush has run circles around the Democratic Party. I’ve often suggested that imitating some of Bush’s style and political strategy and tactics might not be such a bad idea for Democrats.
When Rove quit, I said I thought Dean should sign him immediately!
I’ve admired Bush’s steadfastness and have despised Democratic flip-flops despite being — on many issues — a REAL “LEFTIST.” Obama strikes me certainly like a flexible guy when it comes to his views but I also believe that he thinks he’s got a good chance to win very big, so he’s now willing to take a chance on cutting into some Red-State points.
We’ll see what happens.
18. neocon | July 13th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Tampa, or Mr V,
I applaud you for a well written, well articulated post. There was no evidence of white christian paranoia, or the liberal epidemic of BDS, so well done.
I think the Democrats have become to beholden to far left groups; KOS, CodePink, Environmentalists, Abortion on demand lobby etc, and those groups vote en masse during the primaries and they now expect allegiance.
The problem many Dem candidates have is that they pander to those groups during the primary to secure the nomination, then eventually lose much of that support as they tack to the center during the general. Those far left groups are so myopic, and self centered, that they don’t realize that they are a minority and any candidate that trumps their agenda, and only their agenda, has no shot at winning the general.
Now the GOP certainly has it’s wingnut base, albeit on a far less obtrusive scale.
The other problem Obama has is the public’s familiarity with him, which is negligible. You state that he is politically right of Boxer, Lautenberg, etc. Well, I don’t know that, and I don’t think many others do either, and his current “re-defining” of issues is also further confusing the general electorate and seriously irritating his far left base.
It will be an interesting sumer.
Que sera sera
peace, neocon
19. Mark Noonan | July 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Tampa,
Obama is sure showing a level of flexibility - the worry is that he’s not just smoothly rolling through the stresses of political life but cynically using whatever tool comes to hand to advance himself. Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to know that in advance for certain…but I don’t want to risk America on finding out of Obama’s just pragamatic or if he’s just a cynic…we had, on the GOP side, a politician who was that un-moored from core values, and his name was Richard Nixon…
Be that as it may, I use “left” and “liberal” pretty interchangably these days and, yes, I know there are differences between a Houston liberal and a San Francisco liberal. My point in this sort of writing is to try and demonstrate just how far hard left ideology has penetrated what used to be American liberalism…which had enough of its own problems without getting mixed in with the dregs of Marxist thought…but, if you like, you can mentally switch “liberal” for “left”, if you really want to continue to keep some distance between them.
And, yes, Obama has a chance to win it big - but so does McCain. The real oddity of 2008 is the number of plausible scenarious one can present for how things may go. While I’ve long thought it would be a high turnout election, I’ve started to see some indicators that it will be a rather ho-hum turnout election…we don’t really know how many conservatives will show up for McCain, but we also don’t know how many Democratic moderates will show up for Obama. This could be the kind of year where rain on election day plays a huge role - depending on where it is. Additionally, we don’t know how many new voters will be brought in - the conventional wisdom is that lots of new voters works to Obama’s advantage, but the GOP is also going to be out there dredging for new voters (which, if you like, could be the GOP looking for people we haven’t ticked off, yet)…
neocon is spot on - it will be an interesting summer.
20. Ricorun | July 13th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Mark: The real oddity of 2008 is the number of plausible scenarious one can present for how things may go.
Perhaps it has something to do with another real oddity of 2008 — it’s the first time since Stevenson ran against Eisenhower in ‘52 that neither a sitting president or vice president is the nominee of either party. It’s also the first time ever (I think) that both nominees are sitting Senators. Obama is the first black nominee, McCain the oldest first time nominee. This is a very odd election year by any measure.
21. Toothpick | July 13th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Deleted - mindless insults.
22. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don't-mess | August 1st, 2008 at 4:03 am
@ NEO: I haven’t been by in a while and was glad to see this civil discussion between us resurface. I appreciate your kind words.
I’ll get to this in greater detail in my response to Mark but having lived now in 10 countries, I really believe more than ever that words such as “left” and “right” in America in ABSOLUTE terms don’t make sense. In RELATIVE terms, they do.
Most of the two signficant parties in each country of the developed West outside the USA self-identify as “center-left” or “center-right” because both Marxism and Nazism have been completely discredited. Some sort of democratic capitalist system prevails everywhere in West.
The problem with the labels that tossed around here is this: if Barack Obama ran with his American platform in any country with a “center-right” government he’d be considered “a right-wing extremist” and couldn’t get 20% of the vote no matter how big his crowds were two weeks ago. Obama would have to campaign pro-death penalty, in favor of incarcerating minors with adults, against single-payer health care, against subsidized university education, against the ICC and World Court, against Habeus Corpus, very fuzzy on property rights, and with a far more aggressive foreign policy than any other Western country.
As “leftist” as you may consider Obama, he’s surely right of all of the major center-right or right-wing Western leaders: Harper, Calderon, Uribe, Garcia, Berlusconi, Merkel, Sarkozy, Olmert…I’m sure I’m leaving some out.
I think Democrat and Repubican are more specific and meaningful.
@ MARK: I favor Obama in this although I don’t vote in the USA. That said I suppose Ron Paul or some Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich fusion ticket come a lot closer to my beliefs than Obama does. I’m a fairly strong free-marketeer and civil libertarian.
I really don’t see a lot of Marxism in Democratic Party politics. Any, in fact. You’d consider me to be very “left-wing” but my views on such things as taxes, regulation, property rights and capital markets are probably more purely capitalistic than those of most Republicans. And there are certain populist ideas of Pat Buchanan’s which I like as well, although I’d consider myself much more of a fiscal and monetary conservative.
If I wanted to get really specific, I think a grid of Populist, Liberal, Conservative and Libertarian gives a fully picture of the range of US ideology.
It is on foreign and social policy, I think, where you and I disagree usually. I see no reason to bring any of that up now.
I also agree that Obama’s campaign could use a lot more clarity and now I have no idea what kind of an effect Ron Paul or Bob Barr will have. I don’t see McKinney or Nader having any effect at all. Looking at thngs today, I once again agreeing with you that this race is so volatile that a landslide for either one is possible as is a Florida 2000 tie scenario.
23. Anonymous | August 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
God bless President Bush for bringing about the death of the modern Republican movement, and I hope you all enjoy 8 years of President Obama.
Peace friends.
24. Looking for the Logic | August 16th, 2008 at 2:03 am
The leftie bloggers keep telling me that McCain is a Bush Clone. They also seem almost pissed that the body count on American soldiers in Iraq has dropped precipitously in the wake of the troop surge. This makes me wonder: There was a time when both Bush and Obama didn’t support a troop surge in Iraq, while McCain was well ahead of both of them in pushing hard for it. Does that make Obama the real Bush clone when it comes to Iraq? Only if I employ the same wacky logic I’m seeing from the left.
I just don’t get it. I mean, I don’t assume Obama is a male incarnation of Hillary Clinton just because they agreed on most every material policy issue raised during their primary battle (and thus, had to resort to name-calling on the immaterial issues). Nor do I presume that McCain is W. Redux just because he has some things in common with Bush. Instead, where Obama is like Hillary in ways that I don’t like, it will count against him in my eyes come election day. And where McCain is like Bush in ways I don’t like, it too will be counted in the negative on Nov. 4.
Rather engaging in all this guilt by association crap, why don’t people just judge the candidates on who they really are and where they really stand? Am I asking too much of our political process? Probably.
Thankfully, there’s only about 75 days left until all this is over. For sanity’s sake, I plan on tuning out 90 percent of what I see and hear from either side until we get inside the final 30 of them.
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