Blogs For Victory

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.