Letters to the Editor
jwr_12
Published Letters: 149 Editor's Choice: 45
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RANDOLPH REPLIES TO GREENWALD
[Read the article: The GOP is the party of the Iraq war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Glenn,
Sorry for the all cap headline, I wanted to make sure that the response was visible if you looked, since you asked for one.
To recap: I disagreed not with your general notion that the GOP is the war party (it's clear, as you show, that polling data show that the base of the GOP remains committed to Bush's war), but rather with your specific contention that McCain's stance on the war has little to do with his current campaign woes. I claimed that McCain's stance has hurt him by shattering his vaunted (if largely mythological) reputation as a straight-talking maverick. You ask for evidence that it has hurt him.
Okay: first let's agree about what we're talking about. I agree with your general contention that a candidate will have to support the war to receive GOP primary votes, because that's where the base is. That said, McCain's current woes are not so much that he isn't getting votes--none have been cast, nor will be cast for some time--but rather that his fundraising efforts have collapsed, his political operatives are bolting or being fired, and the general media perception of him as a serious contender is fast eroding. At this rate, he may not make it to the primaries.
In saying that the stance has hurt him, then, I have in mind not just how it plays to local GOP organizations, but how it plays in all the fields of the primary run up: fundraising, enthusiasm among politicos, and spin. You'll agree, I hope, that all these things are crucial to primary politics.
What makes me think McCain's stance hurt him in this broad field?
Let me start with the last item, spin, and return to the example of the Baghdad shopping trip.
How many politicians have staged such political photo-ops in Iraq? Too many to count! Yet when McCain's venture provided visible evidence that he was full of bull on "improvements" in Baghdad, it became a widely reported scandal on all sorts of media, and rapidly made him a national laughingstock for a week or two.
Why the sudden scandal? Because McCain wearing a flackjacket while buying oranges was a joke that told itself. People expect hypocrisy from 99% of politicians and won't hold it against them when they are false (sadly). But here was the drama of the straight-talker exposed as a fraud.
His strength became his weakness, and he looked ridiculous, something no campaign can stomach. (Alas, see the political aftershocks of H. Dean's "scream"). Now, I suppose some conservatives could say he was jobbed by the "liberal" media, but obviously you've shown that it's not the liberal, but the conservative agenda that controls how things are presented in this country. One has to conclude from this that even conservatives found some Schadenfreude--despite their own support for the war--in McCain's self-exposure.
Moving on to the realm of fundraising, it has collapsed for McCain this last quarter (the quarter during which his support for the war has become the defining issue of his campaign, whether he liked it or not). Fundraising for primaries is not solely a matter of collecting contributions from "the base." It also involves big-level donors whose perspectives are not tracked by the kind of single-issue polling you cite, as well as independents who are not part of the "base" as it is typically conceived. As the nation's opinion in general of the war tanks, is it possible this has not contributed to McCain's fund raising woes? I'm speculating here, admittedly, but I'm not sure the evidence you've cited speaks to the possible fundraising effects either.
I would say much the same thing about the enthusiasm of the political class--and here your own excellent reporting shows that its best to think of the mainstream media as part of the political class. Their opinion of McCain is determined not simply by whether they agree with his position on the war, but their perception of him as a political actor. And McCain, it seems to me, remains vulnerable (as measured by the souring of the press, as well as the collapsing morale in his campaign) to the vicissitudes of war in a way that people who's persona is not based on the myth of candor and realism aren't.
There are plenty of GOP movers and shakers who--having been shown up by this "maverick" for long enough--are perfectly willing to laugh at the spectacle of his exposure--and this is why Iraq hurts him.
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Wonderful Dating
[Read the article: How much credence should Gen. Petraeus' reports be given?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hopefully some reporters with an interest in understanding their once and future source will read this piece. What's great is the huge collection of quotes you have praising our "working strategy" from 2005: the same time when--according to the dogma behind the Surge, the dogma that Gen. Petraeus is credited with inventing (along with Kagan)--we were pursuing the wrong strategy, now replaced with the right one.
In other words, Petraeus was publicly for the old strategy until he was against it, and now asks that we believe that his current public statements somehow reflect actual Iraq reality.
Caveat emptor.
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What will the Supreme Court Think
[Read the article: Bush's magical shield from criminal prosecution]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I suppose the ultimate acid test will be when this doctrine works its way through the courts. I take Glenn's point that Congress needs to have the political will to file such a suit--say by trying to hold Harriet Myers in contempt--but assuming it does, what will the Roberts court eventually rule?
Bush, et. al. have judged, probably correctly, that this will all happen long after they are gone, given the slowness with which all this will be played out...but still, will the neocons on the court care so much about the fate of neoconism that they rule against the power of the judicial itself? Overturn the famous maxim that it is the judicial branch's power to determine what the laws, including the constitution, are?
That will be the moment when we learn whether Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, etc., see themselves as judges and true conservatives or as ideologues in the service of the Republican machine.