Your Dad Lost, Now Get Over It
As best I can surmise, Meghan McCain has never forgiven George W. Bush and Conservatives for keeping her out of the White House. At the same time, she works tirelessly to get a liberal Republican elected to vindicate her father's failed presidential bids.
Meghan's latest temper-tantrum bashes Rick Perry as "George Bush 2.0" and "in every way unelectable on a national scale." (Aren't those mutually exclusive given that Bush was elected twice?) She continues:
Who exactly are we kidding here? Do we really think possibly nominating George Bush 2.0 is going to fly with independents in a post-Obama era? Why as Republicans are we are more concerned with retaining our moral high ground in picking a candidate who hits every qualification of a “true conservative” litmus test than thinking about the national stage of a general election? Why do we still, after all this time, and in all the ways that the world is changing, continue to put a politician front and center who has very little crossover appeal?
Perry may not be the most Conservative candidate currently in the race. He may not be the best candidate. But to call him unelectable is laughable, especially when the next election is likely to focus on the failure of Obamanomics. As for the independents, the best "crossover appeal" seems to come from full-throated Conservatism. Scott Brown ran to vote against Obamacare; he won "the Kennedy seat." Bob Turner ran on supporting Israel and opposing gay marriage and replaced a hardline Progressive. In the 2010 midterms, Republicans took a record number of seats, not by extolling the virtues of bipartisanship, but by campaigning against Obama.
Meghan takes a few more swipes at Perry, then concludes:
I spent almost two years trying to get my father elected president. The notion that we as a party are going to nominate the most conservative candidate simply to prove some kind of ideological point about extreme conservatism, instead of looking at the broader picture concerning the general election, is suicide. At some point, we are going to have to ask ourselves if this is about nominating a candidate who one small faction of the party thinks is right or about nominating the person who is going to bring us to the White House.
She may be onto something in this paragraph, but she fails to heed her own advice. In 2008, we tried it her way. We nominated the candidate "one small faction of the party" thought was right. The result was the election of Barack Obama. Einstein said the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." John McCain delivered one of the most liberal presidents in our nation's history; why should Republicans expect the next moderate to fare any better?
Read More in Elections, GOP, RinoWall.
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