Great Post-Election Moments: The K-Hammer Gives History's Verdict

Charles Krauthammer's head has been spinning wildly over the last month at the thought of a Democrat in the White House. Today, it goes into overdrive as he passes history's verdict on "people" (the naive, panicky, unthinking people who would not vote Republican) and John McCain.

Correctly identifying the September/October economic crisis as the moment when the GOP lost the campaign, Charles then makes a leap of logic to drop-kick the real villains of Election 2008: "people [who] seek shelter in government".

This, however, is only the prelude to his historic proclamation:

"[McCain] will be -- he should be -- remembered as the most worthy presidential nominee ever to be denied the prize."

Ummm, no, he won't. Really.

Where Now for the Republicans?

Mark McClelland of the University of Birmingham offers this analysis and challenging questions:

Not a great night to be a conservative...

At least the Senate races weren't a complete disaster. Was surprised to see Coleman just about hang on in Minnesota (although there is bound to be a recount), McConnell won in Kentucky, and it looks like somehow the disgraced Stevens is going to win in Alaska. Chambliss won in Georgia but looks like he may be a few votes short though of avoiding a run-off. And Smith is 15,000 ahead in Oregon with 75% of precincts reporting. Given Obama's convincing victory, I suspect the Dems will have hoped for more victories on Obama's coattails. They have only really picked off the low lying fruit. Some good filibustering lies ahead. Small crumbs of comfort given the wider picture, but c'est la vie...

I'm interested in your thoughts on the McCain campaign. Given Bush's approval numbers and economic meltdown, was this the best result McCain could have hoped for? If you think he could have done better, do you think he should have completely avoided any negative campaigning and run positively as a centrist, or would McCain have been better served. as John Bolton suggested on the Beeb last night, by being far less restrained, taking the gloves off and systematically hammering Obama on his liberal record for the whole campaign, not leaving it until the last 10 days to do so. My feeling is that ultimately the campaign lacked cohesion, and would have been more successful (though still may not have won!) if he had focused on just one of these strategies, instead of trying to do both (badly) and falling between the two stools.

In contrast to shrewd reflection, George Will in the Washington Post goes in for a fatuous rallying of the troops:

Conservatives should note what their current condition demonstrates: Opinion is shiftable sand. It can be shifted, as Goldwater understood, by ideas, and by the other party overreaching, which the heavily Democratic Congress elected in 1964 promptly did.

Sorry to rain on your attempt to spark Republican fire, George, but you want to consider that the 1968 Presidential election was not won primarily by arch-conservative ideas or by the Great Society effort of 1964-68, but by the disaster of Vietnam.

By coincidence, I've just been debating the "Where Now?" question on BBC Radio Scotland with Robert McGeehan of Chatham House and Republicans Abroad. We hope to post a clip later.

The Final 24 Hours: High Anxiety for the Democrats?

The early morning snapshot of the Presidential race:



Perhaps the worst media attempt to big up the electoral drama came from the BBC's John Pienaar, who declared yesterday, "This campaign is...sweaty." Across the board --- print and broadcast, in the US and here in Britain --- the thump-thump today will be of a mad dash to the finish line, with Big John charging from behind. As CNN framed it this morning, "Republicans have moxie."

Well, apart from looking up "moxie", I've been looking at the far-from-sweaty trends. Yes, as Enduring America projected last week, McCain has a slight overall bounce in the final days. Yes, the Republicans have stemmed the Democratic rush towards a landslide --- in part because the campaign rather than the economy is front-page news, in part because of a (belated) attempt to counter the Democrats' 50-state strategy.

But it's a ripple, rather than a wave. Weekend polls in Pennsylvania with relatively small samples have Obama 4-7 points ahead, with the trend-adjusted average still showing a Democratic advantage of +7. The Republican logic is becoming clear --- because Pennsylvania does not have early voting and because it's considered a more "static" state in terms of population (i.e., not as many pro-Democratic white-collar folks coming into the state in recent years, as in Virginia), fire your last big shot here for Joe the Plumber and all other good ol' Americans. It's still a desperation shot.

Elsewhere, the good news for the GOP is that Florida is now a (trend-adjusted) 50-50 race. Apart from the Sunshine State, though, it's very bleak for McCain. Even taking trend-adjusted numbers, which reflect the recent "bounce" for the Republicans, Virginia is still Democratic by 4-5 points, and the Republicans are still down 3 points in Ohio, which has had heavy early voting favouring Obama. In the Western hat-trick of swing states, Democrats are up 4-5 points in Colorado and Nevada and more than 9 in New Mexico.

So, the floor for the Democrats --- barring divine intervention by a pro-Republican God or mass conversion by voters --- is handing over Florida to the GOP and still winning comfortably 311-227.

The Inside Story on the Palin Nomination?

If the election goes the way that I'm suspecting next Tuesday, one of the Republican post-mortems will be on how the McCain campaign settled on Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential material likely to win over undecided voters.

Through a stroke of fortune, I just picked up an inside lead on that story. At an academic dinner, I was seated next to two political operators close to the Republican Party. Both were resigned to an Obama victory, and both were somewhat gloomily considering what the Republicans might do to repair the damage after 4 November. Both also were clearly unimpressed with Palin.

So I ventured the obvious question, "Why did they think that the Republican Party made such a damaging mistake in the choice of their Number Two?"

The first part of the answer had no surprises. John McCain had indeed favoured former Democrat Joe Lieberman as his Vice President and had been told, predictably, by his handlers that two old white guys weren't exactly a vote-grabbing combination. Then came the twist. I had always thought that McCain's staff had pushed Palin on him but the two operatives were forthright that it was Big John who reached out for Sarah's name. His staff, with less than a week before the VP had to be announced, scrambled to Alaska to interview a Governor about whom they knew little.

Why had McCain made so bold and unexpected a move?

The two Republicans offered some basics. It was known in GOP circles that Palin was a well-liked Governor, and she had a bit of the clean, maverick image in taking on and taking out some of the Alaskan political establishment. And there was that dangerous whiff of political opportunity: pick a woman and bring over the disaffected women who had supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

Still, I ventured, there were other women with longer track records --- records of steadiness and political shrewdness --- like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Even with the notion of McCain as an unconventional politician, why such a big gamble?

That's when my two dinner companions offered a chapter raising this political story to more than run-of-the-mill. They explained that certain right-wing, GOP-supporting political journals --- either for profile (Weekly Standard) or essential funds (National Review) --- put on cruises where readers could hobnob with middle-ranking politicos as well as writers and editors. One of the popular destination for those cruises is the Alaskan Fjords. So the scene was set for Governor Palin to meet and greet the cruise-goers, winning kudos for helping out the journals and more than admiring smiles from the (almost all male) editorial staff.

So the somewhat tangled networks of money, media, and politics put forth America's Hockey Mom for her run at a top office. It's not quite the "neo-conservative" conspiracy that one publication breathily described last month, but it does explains why certain scribblers like William Kristol, via the New York Times as well as the Weekly Standard, continued to push Palin even as her political stock turned from admiration to ridicule.

It's a nice little closer to the Bush years. In the right place at the right time, folks like Kristol can punch way above their column weight by making the right contacts and pushing the (very) right folks towards key political locations. That doesn't make them wise, however, just lucky in matching convenient place and time. And no amount of luck, in the end, can cover up a marked lack of wisdom, both in their own political judgement and in that of those who they choose to promote.

Post-Modern Election Talk: When Does a Campaign Go Beyond a Joke?

Seventy-two hours after Barack McCain dropped a 30-minute political "info-merical" on the US public, John McCain responded in the fashion appropriate to this 2008 Presidential election: he appeared on Saturday Night Live, the comedy programme that converted his campaign into a running joke.

Gotta hand it to Big John, who never winced as he appeared along the comic masterpiece Fey-Palin, the one that he inadvertently created with his Hockey Mom gamble in August. But, as a reader notes, "OK, this is just surreal... Lucky this campaign is over in three days or I seriously struggle to imagine what comes next."

John McCain and Fey-Palin Sell Their Campaign on QVC