A few days ago I wrote a diary about the strange hold that Bill Kristol has on the Republican Party over the last two decades, starting first as a far-right provocateur of the vast right-wing conspiracy that harrassed Bill Clinton, then founding the NeoCon movement and PNAC, culminating with his and Gauleiter Rove's Goebbelesque campaign for and their puppetmaster role in the Cheney-Bush presidency. The irony, of course, is that he's been dead wrong just about every step of the way.
But he's still hanging in there, bullying McCain into a far-right caricature, complete with a ruby-lipped pitbull at his side. Predictably, following his marching orders has resulted in McCain's trainwreck of a campaign. And as the poll numbers decline with the calendar days left in the campaign, he's about to put McCain on a track to nowhere. Sunday he writes in the New York Times:
It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign. He has nothing to lose.
Yes he does. The presidency for one. What candidate fires his campaign with three weeks to go? Can someone say, erratic? And what would he replace it with?
What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.
Kristol's a raving lunatic. Televised town halls? That's must-see TV. Half-hour addresses in prime time? To say what? More stuff the American voters are clearly rejecting?
And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.
..why don't you babe? Happy warriors? Good grief. What's there to be happy about? Two wars and an economic meltdown? Why doesn't he just bring a violin and fiddle for us? Palin on flute. A-one-and-a-two....
Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.
Civility and substance? Just call him Saul of Tarsis. The rehabilitated Bill Ayers of the right.
McCain can make the substantive case for his broadly centrist conservatism. He can explain that our enemies won’t take a vacation because the markets are down, and that it’s not unimportant that he’s ready to be commander in chief. He can remind voters that even in a recession, the president appoints federal judges — and that his judges won’t legislate from the bench.
And he can point out that there’s going to be a Democratic Congress. He can suggest that surely we’d prefer a president who would check that Congress where necessary and work with it where possible, instead of having an inexperienced Democratic president joined at the hip with an all-too-experienced Democratic Congress, leading us, unfettered and unchecked, back to 1970s-style liberalism.
After nearly two terms of unchecked NeoCon Republicanism, I'd say the only way to undo the catastrophic political and economic knot is with unchecked Democratic values. This country needs to vanquish all traces of Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney.
At Wednesday night’s debate at Hofstra, McCain might want to volunteer a mild mea culpa about the extent to which the presidential race has degenerated into a shouting match. And then he can pledge to the voters that the last three weeks will feature a contest worthy of this moment in our history.
"My friends, for far too long I and President Bush have towed the Kristol line, but tonite I'm going to break with that past and once again follow the Kristol line by denouncing the Kristol line. And then I'm going to stand on my tippy toes and dance like a ballerina while I juggle live rabbits and sing Magic Bus."
Someone is clearly insane here. The only question is which one: Kristol or McCain? Or both?