Conservatives desperate to stop McCain

As Super Tuesday looms — and the possibility that McCain could all but wrap up the nomination — the chattering conservative class is in an uproar. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh has warned that McCain as standard-bearer would destroy the Republican Party. Author and pundit Ann Coulter, in jaw-dropping heresy, said she would campaign for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain wins the party nod. Commentators Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin have come out in support of McCain's rival, Mitt Romney. ...

"If you are a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now, and that's Mitt Romney," said former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

No matter how irritated I find myself at the Democrats in the Democratic party, all I have to do is cast a glance rightward and my heart warms.

In the short-term, McCain is helped by Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher who remains in the race and could split the conservative vote with Romney in the Bible Belt and elsewhere. Seeking to capitalize, McCain visited Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia on Saturday.

In the long-term, "it is critical for him to build a strong and stable bridge to the constituency that every cycle rings the phones, knocks on the doors and gets the vote out," said Greg Mueller, a conservative Republican strategist. "Endorsements alone will not be enough. Many conservatives will look to see what issues he emphasizes on the campaign trail from now until Election Day."

And that's where he will very likely lose. The base is so utterly demoralized that if they refuse to work for McCain as the nominee, then he is doomed from the beginning.

Frankly, I can't see that happening. Coulter's "endorsement" aside, Republicans will no more stay home in droves than they will vote for the Democrat. The one thing I'm sure of is that it will be a close contest in November if Clinton is the nominee -- too close -- and it won't if Obama is.

With Clinton and McCain still the probable big winners on Tuesday as this is posted, third-party entries will begin to gain momentum. Some combination of Michael Bloomberg, Ralph Nader, almost certainly Ron Paul and possibly a reactionary right candidate could easily combine to siphon off 15% of the popular vote but little of significance in the Electoral College.

An uninspired electorate with demotivated activists on both sides ultimately produces some plurality president in the mushy middle. In 1992 its name was Clinton.

In other words, business as usual.

Sunday Funnies

And starring Hillary Clinton as Tracy Flick

Separated at birth?

McCain-Giuliani 2008

A nation's nightmare for four more years.

After their public lovemaking yesterday in advance of the Maverick-Mittens "liberal-liberal" smack-off, I remain convinced that the Neanderthals and neoconservatives in the Republic Party will overcome the Talibaptists and the millions of Mormon dollars and nominate the best candidate they have left.

They will do so in spite of the alarmed nativists who want a border wall constructed, and who keep screaming that McCain isn't actually a Republican -- a pretty hilarious bit of hysteria, truth to tell. And they will goose-step to the polls in November and pull the handle (or spin the wheel and push the button, as the case may be) for whomever is at the top of their ticket, like they always do. Caterwauling about the lack of a 'conservative' candidate aside.

Rudy on the ticket strengthens McLame in so many ways that it just makes too much sense, their personal fondness notwithstanding.

The Republics are set, they just don't know it yet.

*heaviest of sighs*

Edwards leaving the race. Hope Elizabeth is okay.

From Dallasdoc's diary "John the Baptist", published in the wake of the Iowa caucuses:

It's been clear for over a year that the Democratic primaries would come down to Hillary vs. not-Hillary. Many of us hoped for Al Gore to come into the race and fill in the blank, but he didn't do so. It appears tonight that Barack Obama is The Alternative.

But John Edwards represents something big, something important, something the Democratic party needs to get back in touch with in order to build a durable ruling coalition: economic populism. The ongoing destruction of the American middle class by corporatism disguised as Reaganomics has progressed to the point that political reaction is inevitable. The institutionalized corruption in Washington which has replaced democracy with plutocracy has severely wounded our economy and gutted our Constitutional form of government. Fighting back against these realities is the political work of our time. John Edwards is the messenger of the Gospel of Economic Populism.

Franklin Roosevelt redefined our party and gave it a raison d'etre. His political philosophy was lost in the Cold War consensus, and was one of the casualties of the Vietnam War. The middle class his New Deal built began to fall apart when the ethics of economic democracy Roosevelt preached was forgotten. The economic royalists (as Roosevelt called them) seized their opportunity with a shiny line of bullshit and a soap salesman named Ronald Reagan. They slowly, methodically dismantled Roosevelt's achievements, as far as they could, and persuaded Americans that greed was good.

Roosevelt had a different vision, one we must recapture and honor again. From his Second Inaugural Address:

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.

More than Iraq, more than torture, more even than the Constitution, this is the vision the Democratic Party must embrace and offer the country. The middle class is dying and must be revived. Its would-be murderers, the wealthy and big corporations, must be penalized and controlled. That is the vision John Edwards offers the Democratic party. His emphasis on poverty, his fingering of corporate influence as our true enemy, his recognition that recapturing the party will require a long tough fight -- these are lessons the Democrats must truly take to heart.

Barack Obama appears to be the anti-establishment alternative Democrats will be offered. He has a different message to offer, meeting the nation's hunger for change with a different recipe. He has adopted some of the notes in this Rooseveltian symphony, but the feel of his campaign is different. Perhaps he is charting a new winning course, perhaps he is on a detour. I hope Obama realizes that if he takes the mantle of the Democratic party that its soul was defined by Franklin Roosevelt, that Roosevelt's task will be his, and that Roosevelt's enemies will also be his.

John Edwards may not be the party's nominee this year or any year. But John Edwards' message is the one Democrats will need to embrace to build a new New Deal. He may not be the Messiah we need, but he is showing the way.