Home › Blogs › Sean Oxendine's blog ›

Jay Cost Is Smart

Submitted by Sean Oxendine on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 09:17

If you don't make HorseRaceBlog part of your daily read, you should.  Jay Cost is one of those people who has forgotten more about politics than most of us will ever know.

Anyway, I just mention this because he has a piece up today that is germane to the contributor discussion we've had going about how McCain turns this thing around.  It is a good read just for the commentary on the historical development of the parties, but also for his spot-on depiction of McCain's problems:

Above all, the Whigs had a pro-banking reputation. The Whig Party formed partially in response to the actions of President Jackson against the Bank of the United States. Believe it or not, banking was a big issue in the 1830s - and the Whigs were for a strong, central bank. The Republican Party, having inherited much of the pro-business sentiment of the Whig Party, has been pro-banking in spirit for 150 years. Your average voter might not know the historical reasons for why the GOP is a pro-banking party, but s/he understands that it is.

That could be hurting the GOP as much as anything right now. If this were an economic crisis precipitated by a massive labor union strike - akin to what Harry Truman had to put up with after World War II - I'd wager the horse race numbers would be reversed right now. After all, the Democratic Party is identified with labor. But this is a crisis precipitated by the banks. Combine that with the fact that George W. Bush is at the helm, and it's unsurprising that the public has assigned the blame to the GOP.

This has put John McCain in a terrible spot. McCain's key electoral strength (at least relative to GOP also-rans like Mitt Romney) is that he is not an orthodox Republican. His relationship to the GOP is a bit like Diet Pepsi's relationship to Pepsi. That's why he had such stiff competition for the GOP nomination - lots and lots of people in this country are still big fans of the GOP (we call them Republicans), and they weren't tickled with the idea of a Diet Republican winning the nomination. But in the broad middle of the country, there is disaffection with George W. Bush and, by extension, the Republican Party. McCain's maverick label was his best hope for overcoming those sour feelings.

. . .

Average voters do not have anything approaching perfect information. They are probably not keenly aware of how McCain is different from the average Republican. I think they have a sense that he is - and in a vaguely anti-GOP year, that might be enough. However, this banking crisis means we are no longer in a vaguely anti-GOP year. We're in a year when one of the groups the Republicans are thought to stick up for gets the blame for screwing up the economy. That changes things. To return to the soda metaphor - it isn't enough to be Diet Pepsi when the country really wants a Coke.

He has some interesting perspectives on the solution to this problem as well.  Well worth the read.

0
Your rating: None

Comments

Problem: McCain's own words/record

Submitted by Caroline on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 10:18.

Interesting analysis. The problem with McCain trying to position himself as all mavericky and non-GOP-ish is that he is on recent record gushing over Bush and has agreed with Bush on most things. That's why  "I am not like Bush" doesn't/didn't work for JMac. He shouldn't have sold his soul in 2000.

Question: What to say about the Keating video

Submitted by TimW on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 10:46.

I got an email from a neighbor pointing to a video released by the Obama campaign about McCain's ties to Charles Keating.  It's 13:26 long.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/keatingvideo

I tried to find something on the McCain website to clear this up, but couldn't.

I only found this on The Weekly Standard site:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/10/mccain_campaign_on_keating_a_c.asp

Thanks in advance!

 

If McCain doesn't consider himself a Democrat.

Submitted by henryblack on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 11:24.

Obama is unlike any major party nominee seen in over a hundred years. Public opinion of him is based largely upon political claims about him, as opposed to an immutable record of accomplishment or even a long history on the national scene. That means that the perception of who Obama is might be quite changeable. If the Republican Party can succeed in changing it, they can win the election - even as the banking industry's reputation falls into the gutter. Hillary Clinton couldn't pursue this back in April when her back was to the wall because she would have been obliged to repair whatever damage the attack caused her party. The Republican Party is under no such obligation to the Democrats. That's one big difference between a primary and a general election. 

That is if McCain doesn't consider himself a Democrat.

McCain's prior luck ran into a greater force that defeated it: McCain's liberalism. Handed by fate an opponent whose radical leftist record would doom him if the record were exposed, McCain declined to expose it or even mention it. It is precisely because Obama's radical record is so objectionable, and because McCain does not find it objectionable enough to oppose him over it, that McCain deserves to lose.

And what about the financial crisis? More than two weeks after blaming the crisis on "unbridled greed" and Chris Cox, Maverick belatedly hints that maybe Democrats had something to do with it. It is too late to make up for those weeks wasted sending the wrong message, because his advisers were afraid to blame Democrats. As long as a Republican was blaming capitalism and Republicans for the problem, Team Obama was only too happy to let him.

 

Lets face it!

Submitted by Big Ben 4 liberty on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 12:01.

MCain is really Scoop Jackson-Harry Truman type liberal who would no longer be welcome in today's Democrat party now that it is beholden to the radical anti-American, anti-war left.  Thus he is this GOP "Maverick" that occasionally throws a bone to real conservatives in order to keep him alive in the GOP.

 

The Cost of Winning

Submitted by jhmccloskey on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 16:32.

I read that one somewhere else before seeing it here, and even the second time through I cannot make out the Coke-Pepsi bit.

__
It is nice to find somebody who thinks history might matter a little, but does Mr. Cost pick the best parallel for JSM?  Because of the financial panic, it is easy to see why he goes to 1836/1840, but for general parallellism, 1872 is better:  Mr. Greeley (a Whig/Republican all his life) ran against Gen. Grant, and ran at the top of the Democratic ticket.  A RINO not even in name!

They did not say RINO, of course, they said "Mugwump" and that, beyond a doubt, is how Sen. McCain is to be classified.  As to how he got that way, I suspect he read President Sorensen's _Profiles in Courage_ at an early age and swallowed it whole:

Q.  Why did John Sidney McCain join the Republican Party?
A.  In order to have a party to rise above.

The history part is easy.  Much harder is "How does a courageously self-profiled Mugwump win in 2008 -- win starting from only a month left and High Finance suddenly gone haywire?"

Mr. Cost says "We're in a year when one of the groups the Republicans are thought to stick up for gets the blame for screwing up the economy. That changes things. To return to the soda metaphor - it isn't enough to be Diet Pepsi when the country really wants a Coke."

If that does not mean that he thinks McCain can't possibly win, what on earth DOES it mean?

At this point there is nothing that is certain to work, but the best bet would be to tackle the crisis head-on and announce some definite and reasonably detailed plan for the economy that Sen. Obama could not possibly endorse.

Mr. Kudlow suggests

"Tomorrow night he must sound expansionary for economic recovery.  Tax cuts, free trade, and money growth -- those are the pillars of recovery.  An across-the-board tax cut for individuals and businesses will boost jobs at home and our competitiveness worldwide.  Free trade benefits both consumers and businesses.  The Fed’s money supply must keep expanding.

"That message gives McCain a fighting chance."

The problem with that is pretty obvious:  the man has just taken everything that he proposes himself and put the words "McCain should say" in front.  Still, it might do.

Anybody who is not Lawrence Kudlow can suspend judgment about the economic merits.  Whether JSM should do that or the opposite when he gets in is entirely a different question and one that can be postponed.  At the moment the need is to be firm and decisive and reasonably detailed, even if not necessarily right.  Also to be firmly in favor of something not totally incompatible with McCain's own voting record and not easily appropriated by the Democrats.

 Kudlow's stuff seems to me to qualify.  Probably there is something similar out there but even better, but at this point McCain needs something QUICK.   (What is it, only four hours till the debate?)

--JHM