The Love Affair: Bush and McCain

Juan Cole has got another great article over at Salon about John McCain. Cole compares Bush to McCain and it turns out that, at least in terms of policy, they are quite similar. McCain has bought into the neoconservative mantra hook, line, and sinker. McCain supports an ever toughening stance on Iran, staying in Iraq for hundreds if not thousands of years, and perpetual war in general. As I've said before St. McCain loves war. War, in his eyes, is not a means but an end in itself. He believes that the state of war is good for the country. All this is very disturbing to the sane mind.

While Cole is a foreign policy expert by trade, he also delves into holy John's support for tax cuts and radical conservative economic policy. McCain use to oppose Bush's tax cuts, but now he supports them, stating that his previous opposition was concentrated on the absence of offsetting spending cuts. However, at the time, McCain stated that his opposition was based on the fact that only the very wealthy stood to benefit much from the cuts. What this means is that St. John McCain, son of God, heir to the throne of the Lord, is the ultimate flip flopper. He is just as flip floppity as Mitt Romney. McCain has sold his soul in order to lock up the GOP nomination. Interesting that the meida's ongoing love affair with McCain allows them to continue labeling him a "maverick."

Tune Her Out

Over at the Plank, Jonathan Cohn has an interesting post suggesting that the Obama campaign should just ignore the musings of Geraldine Ferraro. I agree. Granted, it is frustrating that the brilliant Samantha Power had to resign after calling Hillary Clinton a monster (off the record!!!) and the Clinton campaign is making no such move in regards to Ferraro. Ferraro's comments were made on the record and have a clear racial connotation. "Monster" is not a gender or racial specific label, so calling Hillary a "monster" could not be implied as sexist. Moreover it should be noted that what Ferraro said is, for the most part, accurate. Barack Obama more than likely would not be were he is today if he weren't a black man. At the same time, if Hillary Clinton wasn't the wife of a two-term president she probably wouldn't be were she is today either. My boss pointed out to me that this was a great year for John Edwards to run for president, but the presence of strong African-American and female candidates did much to destroy the luster of his campaign. I think this is correct, and I would go so far as to say that if either Obama or Clinton had decided not to run, John Edwards would be the current Democratic nominee for president.

Anyways, I digress. Obama should ignore Ferraro because she's just destroying her own credibility and making herself look like a jerk. She now even is alleging that the only reason the Obama campaign is attacking her is because she is white. What? This is an odd thing for a liberal Democrat to say. Seriously, turn on your television and watch Ferraro destroy herself. Plus, in the end, this is just going to make Clinton look bad. As Cohn points out in his post, the exit polls in Mississippi showed that the vote broke down on racial lines and it makes sense (though it's dirty as hell) for the Clinton campaign to keep Ferraro around for Pennsylvania where similar working class racial divisions exist. My point is that Obama should just ignore this and turn all his guns in the direction of John McCain. Obama is the frontrunner. He has a substantial delegate lead that it is very unlikely that Clinton will ever be able to surmount. It is the role of the Democratic nominee to respond to attacks from the Republican nominee. Obama shouldn't bother himself with the nagging attacks of dying campaign.