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Thursday, October 16, 2008
McCain closes Gallup gap, but debate may halt his momentum
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The latest Gallup polling puts the spread between Obama and McCain at six points, down considerably from the 11-point spread of a few days ago. I’m not at all surprised that the gap has closed, but I suspect that last night’s debate may squelch whatever momentum McCain might have been building.
Against his better political judgment, McCain let the GOP base bully him into attacking on the Ayers stuff, just as he earlier let them bully him into picking Sarah Palin. In both cases, he made the base happy at the expense of the rest of the electorate, and there’s every reason to think he would govern that way if elected. The “maverick” campaign has been anything but.
In the debate, McCain did go out of his way to try to separate himself from George W. Bush, and to some degree he succeeded. But as the debate went on, he reversed any progress he might have made in that direction by reiterating the same basic GOP ideology of the past 30 years. In essence, he argued that government is the problem.
McCain made that point bluntly. But as I mentioned last night, “the truth is that under these circumstances, he will probably lose because conservative principles just aren’t all that attractive to voters at this point in our history. After eight years of Bush, that approach has lost all credibility.”
Joe Klein of Time magazine, among others, makes the same argument:
“But 2008 has proved to be a new and frightening moment for the American electorate, and having the government help in finding, and funding, health care doesn’t sound like such a bad idea anymore. … This is simply not a good year to say, ‘Joe, take care of your health care yourself.’ It seems an impossible year for McCain’s Reagan Republican philosophy.”
The impact of the debate won’t start to be seen in polls until tomorrow’s three-day tracking numbers are released, and its full impact won’t be seen until Sunday. But I suspect we’ll see that gap start to widen again.
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Dems try to hang FairTax around Saxby’s neck
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I was wondering whether this would happen. Now it has. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has weighed into the Chambliss-Martin race with a lot of money and a new attack ad, focusing on Saxby’s support for the FairTax.
Politically, I think it’s a great idea. Chambliss has long allowed himself to be listed as a sponsor of the heroically bad FairTax idea in hopes of keeping the peace with FairTax cult members among Georgia conservatives. But as far as I know, he’s never done a thing to actually try to enact the plan.
But if you take the idea outside the core of FairTax fanatics, I bet it polls terribly. Theoretically, FairTax supporters ought to be thrilled with this, because it gets the idea some badly needed publicity.
But if it ends up contributing to Chambliss’ defeat, that publicity won’t be favorable.
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Libyan parrots leave mark on democracy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A flock of trained Libyan parrots came to roost Wednesday night on the campus of Hofstra University, site of the third and final presidential debate.
Libyan parrots, you ask? At a debate? Yup.
The story of the Libyan parrots goes back to ancient times, to a man named Apsethus who wanted to convince the locals that he was a god. So, according to the early Christian writer Hippolytus, the wily and ambitious Apsethus of Libya captured hundreds of wild parrots, caged and fed them and taught them all to repeat the same message: “Apsethus is a god.”
When he released the birds into the wild, the parrots endlessly repeated their newly learned talking point (parrots being very good at staying on message). And for a while, it worked.
Today, modern political lingo gives us other words for those trained Libyan parrots, words such as “surrogate,” “contributor,” “consultant” and on occasion, sadly, “journalist.”
After events such as debates, parrots from both sides gather at the TV cameras and microphones to repeat their message. It doesn’t matter what actually took place; it doesn’t matter how dishonest or nonsensical the message may sound: Their guy still won; their guy ought to be a god, or at very least president. The better parrots even take a peculiar pride in their shamelessness. Going into last night’s debate, for example, this cycle’s reigning king of Libyan parrots has to be former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani. After the vice presidential debate, he told interviewers that Palin delivered one of the best debate performances he had ever seen.
“Only the liberal media could deny her this victory,” he squawked.
Libyan parrotry is a sad, tragic use of the freedom of speech that so many have fought to preserve, but it has come to epitomize our nation’s political discourse. The parrots you see on TV aren’t there despite their refusal to speak honestly and independently. Too often, that dishonesty and message discipline are job requirements.
In recent weeks, though, the story has taken a bit of a twist. On the Republican side, the official message has become so nonsensical that, to their credit, a growing number of professional parrots have decided they can no longer utter such things as “Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president” and “John McCain is a steady leader.”
Instead, people such as Kathleen Parker, Christopher Buckley and David Brooks have expressed honest reservations about the GOP ticket and the party’s direction.
“I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for,” conceded Buckley. “Eight years of ‘conservative’ government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance.”
For such honesty, Buckley and others are being attacked as traitors. (The same is true of attacks from the left on Joe Lieberman, by the way). But those who make that claim have lost sight of what treason really is.
Stating your honest opinion about what is best for this country is not treason. Those who argue otherwise value loyalty to a political movement above loyalty to country, and that’s just the kind of distorted thinking that got us into this mess.
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The post-debate polling numbers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s what I could find:
The CBS poll of uncommitted voters gave the nod to Obama. Fifty-three percent thought the Illinois senator won the debate, while 22 percent thought McCain won.
Politico’s poll of undecideds by Georgia-based Insider Advantage had it basically tied, 49 percent for Obama and 46 for McCain. Among independent voters in that poll, McCain won 51-42.
The CNN poll gave it to Obama, 58 percent to 31 percent for McCain.
A polling outfit named mediacurves.com gave it to Obama among independents, 60-30.
And from Fox, via Politico: “On Fox, pollster Frank Luntz asked his group to raise their hands who won, and overwhelmingly, the group gave the victory to Obama. “This is a good night for Barack Obama,” Luntz said.”
Now we’ll see if any of that moves the tracking polls. Nineteen days to election day.
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