Calling out Steve Schmidt and the far-right base

[chumdawg]

I’m starting to believe that the reason John McCain is losing this race is not because of John McCain but rather because of the filthy and ugly elements of the Republican party and its practitioners. Two elements at play here. One, the far-right base that is so willing to believe that Obama is an Arab terrorist, that Palin is righteousness incarnate, and so on. And two, the strategists who would capitalize on this sentiment. That’s you, Steve Schmidt, you failed Karl Rove protégé.

Rove was at least right when he figured that bringing out the base was enough to win the election in 2000. (He won that gamble very slightly, but he did indeed win.) But 2000 was a different time. There weren’t the meta-threats that we face right now. The country was evenly decided between don’t-give-a-shit and don’t-give-a-shit. It didn’t really *matter* to most folks.

Rove was a good political scientist, and he knew how to win an election. Steve Schmidt, you are a fraud. You have bounced back and forth from strategy to strategy, and all you have accomplished is to make this campaign season a train wreck that is hard to watch.

You have succeeded in making a mockery of your own candidate. I was moved today when I saw John McCain step up and face the boos from his own crowd, tell his own town-hall questioners that no, Barack Obama is not an Arab. No, you should not be afraid of him. No, you should not shout “off with his head.”

John McCain is a better man than the campaign Steve Schmidt has run. He's a freaking American hero, who is being dangled by Steve Schmidt as a lifeless puppet. It is an abominable disgrace.

I felt for McCain today. I admired him when he admonished his own crowd. I’m aware of the defeat he suffered in 2000 in South Carolina when the Rove camp suggested he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. John McCain is better than that. But his handlers aren’t.

That’s the thing that has bugged me the most about this whole campaign. McCain has come across to the public as a petty, vindictive, mud-slinging candidate who has no respect for the political process. He showed me today that he is not that—which is exactly what he has shown the public throughout his career.

This is the first time I have watched a candidate and watched a campaign and seen such a disconnect between them. I really do feel sorry for McCain. When he loses—and he will certainly lose—it will be down to his miserable handling and not down to his worth as an American servant.

Fuck you, Steve Schmidt. And eff the far-right-wingers who feed at your trough.

[Epitome22]

I think you've got it backwards. The reason we're hearing so much from the far right and the reason why they're even uglier than usual (with no objections and not a little encouragement from the McCain campaign) is because they're losing substantially.

The Republicans are going to lose 5-6 seats in the Senate and another 10-15 in the House. As is always happens in these things, the Republicans that end up losing will be those in ideologically purple areas of the country who are generally more moderate and around the Center. The result will be a smaller Republican party but one that is even more right wing and hardline conservative. Some Republicans and conservatives will undoubtedly look on such a development as a good thing. As a Democrat I most certainly se such a development sd s good thing but for self serving reasons. The GOP definition of who constitutes a real American becomes narrower and narrower. More rural, more xenophobic, more reactionary, more paranoid, less averse/ashamed of displaying outward instances of racism & bigotry.