My reason for writing this diary is the strange feeling I got at the annoucement of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP. -- Fear and confusion. It's such a WTF choice. I mean on the surface it seems so incompetent and weird a choice it really threw me. I mean, what the hell is going on? WHY, I wondered would they do this??
When McCain stood in front of Schmidt's Fudge Haus in Ohio for a photo op while Obama was rocking Berlin in front of hundreds of thousands I definitely thought that maybe he or some of his handlers had given up, but now I know it to be true. Palin is too green, too unknown, and not a "star" politician or even a connected insider. What could she possibly bring to the ticket that many other Republicans could not? Nothing...her only attributes are that she a woman and that she's a conservative ideolog. Many other Republicans with more stature could fill either of those roles. So what gives?
The choice of Palin as VP is only baffling if you try to look at it from the point of view of a candidate trying to win. Make no mistake McCain, and more importantly the Republican party, WANTS to lose the presidency at this point. Thinking on it I realized that there are actually some good reasons (long term) for them to do so.
Before I go over all the possible reasons why I just want to clarify that I'm not arguing that the Republicans WANT to be in this situation, just that there are many logical strategic reasons why they might want to throw the race and that they have reluctantly decided to do so. They (a small cotery of the leadership) would NEVER admit this publically.
Okay here in a nut shell is the logic behind my suspicions -- the Republican party is in no shape to run a country and they know it. They NEED to rebuild now that GWB has destroyed their brand and they can't do that while in power. The economy is in the shitter, there are serious risks to the dollar (see my notes at the bottom) and the Republicans have always functioned better as a minority opposition operation. Plus, now is a "safe" time for them to re-group. The Supreme Court is locked up 5-4 in their favor and all those who might be replaced in the next administration will very likely be Democrats. They aren't going to regain any houses of Congress so running the Executive would just be a fools errand - a stop-gap rear-guard action where they gain no new ground. Meanwhile, goes their logic, Obama will be too busy cleaning up those messes to get anywhere serious with a Democratic agenda. It will be an achievement just to hold the line and there is a real chance that Obama could be presiding over a country on the brink of a depression by 2009. They can run an effective minority operation and stall any Democratic advances while avoiding direct responsibiity for the economy as we slide into serious difficulty.
The fear that I felt at McCain's choice was this strange sense that the powers that be behind the Republican party, the corporate prime movers who have access to all the insider data on the global economy, can see the writing on the wall here and have decided to throw the game. It was definitely a "what the hell do they know that I don't?" moment because nothing about the Palin decision makes any sense.
Now a major political party isn't going to just roll over, even if only to give the pretense to the faithful that they're fighting for something. So they go through the motions and once the political decisions are down to a controllable few they change their game and fix the fight.
The Republican party in modern times is about securing corporate power and running the economy for the big guys. Right now is a perfect time for them to step out the way and let the Democrats deal with all the problems and hopefully, if the Rovian machine plays its cards right, they can shift the blame for all the trouble they've caused to the Democrats. Am I crazy? Is this just conspiricy? Occam's razor tells me that the only two answers are that I'm right or that McCain has totally lost it and is incompetent because Palin is an incompetent choice. I just think it might be deliberate.
~Discuss~
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Just a few background notes about why I think the Republicans are looking to get out of power before the real shit hits the fan and why it might be an opportune time for them to do so:
- The economy -- It is likely that before November there will be a bailout of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. With a $5 Trillion loan portfolio that is mostly crap this will sink the dollar horribly. I work in finance and I've seen predictions of a possible 4 to 1 exchange rate with the Pound and oil over $200 from reputable sources like Goldman Sachs. Should such a bail out go forward the world's oil price will jump and the oil bourses may switch from "petrodollars" to "petroEuros" despite that currency's own problems. This resession will be global in scope and VERY intractdable. This is a real calamity and the Republicans may want to be out of the way when the shit hits the fan so they can point the finger at the Democrats.
- The Supreme Court: The justices on the Supreme Court that are most likely to replaced anytime soon are all Democrats. this means a major benefit of holding the presidency is negated for the Democrats. Would the Republicans like to replace them with their own picks? Of course, but given the circumstances, now is the perfect time for them to take a break from power since Bush has already won that battle at the moment.
- The Congress: Since the Republicans know they aren't going to retake the house or the Senate, why hold the Presidency if that's a long shot anyway? The calculus here is this: Would it be better to hold the Presidency and try to prevent the Democratic Congress from doing anything and take full blame for the economy? Or assail Democratic polices from a minority opposition position which they are very effective at and block progress that way while avoiding the brunt of the blame for the deteriorating economy? (At least in the eyes of the uninformed.) I think the Republican leadership has looked at those two choices, sighed, and chosen the latter as the better of two evils.
- The Republican Brand: Given that ~80% of the population thinks the coutry is going in the wrong direction and the sitting president is the most unpopular since such polling began, it appears that one strategy that might work for the Republicans is to lay low for a while. With all that shit hitting the fan and all their cronies haven gotten seriously fat on all kinds of Govenment give aways this approach certainly makes sense. After all they've accomplished a lot of what they wanted - they've looted the treasury, destroyed government oversight, and rigged the tax code in their favor. Mission Accomplished. Maybe if the Democrats had not put up a great canditate there might be an argument for the party to go on, but then given the situation, why not just get out of the way and let all the trouble that's been caused be dealth with by the other party? After all, most of the voters who support the Republicans are either too ignorant to know where all these problems came from (that's why they vote Republican in the first place) or do so for other reasons - pure tax selfishness or religious dogma. These are the type of voters will blame whoever's in power for the problems at hand without knowing their origin, and have incredibly short memories about who did what and when so down the line they can come back in when things are going better to take credit.
[Update - I just want to note for the record that I don't think it's a bad idea to nominate a woman for this position. Actually it's VERY smart. But given that there were other Republican women that would have been better suited to this and not seemed like such left-field choices, it becomes a losing choice.]