I just couldn't figure it out. This was not the Republican machine of 2000 and 2004, the one that organized a fundraising juggernaut, convinced Americans the only thing standing between us and imminent terror attack was George W. Bush (WTF?), and consistently managed to motivate just enough supporters to the polls to pull out electoral victories in the end.
The McCain campaign, by contrast, has been badly advised, poorly run, off message and funded by the Shoestring Bank of Loserdom. And then they picked Sarah Palin for their VP nominee? Right then I knew he had lost the election.
I spent two weeks telling all of my nervous Democrat friends, who were seeing the polls swinging towards McCain, not to worry: that the race was over. How could he possibly be that stupid? I wondered. For the life of me, I can only think of one reason.
The Republicans know they are going to lose.
The only thing left to them now, in terms of strategy, is to scorch the Earth, and save whatever can be saved.
Back in February, well known Republican pollster Frank Luntz spilled the beans, though in a subtle way, by saying it would be much better to face Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama:
"I used to think Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president," he said. Sen. Clinton is beatable because the public looks at her as a staple of the Washington establishment and voters want change more than anything else. The public wants to say to Washington: "Go to hell."
And what of Barack Obama? Said Luntz:
"What's fascinating about Obama is that he's got some Republicans, he's got independents. He's got people from all over the political spectrum, conservatives, liberals. This guy really is the real deal. I feel like he's channeling Bobby Kennedy. ... If Barack Obama gets the nomination, I don't know how to beat him." A McCain-Obama election would be an election about looking back vs. looking ahead.
They don't know how to beat him. God, what wonderful words. And that unintentional admission may explain what happened in the months that followed.
The Republican Party looked at Obama's fundraising numbers in the hundreds of millions. They looked at the massive small donor base. They saw an unprecedented ground game and voter registration drive. They looked at his inroads into traditional Republican strongholds like Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia. And finally, they looked at the electoral map, and knew no matter how they sliced it, no matter how optimistic they were, they couldn't make it add up to a win.
And so somewhere in the Republican hierarchy, the so called brains of the Rovian Axis of Evil, they made a decision to scorch the Earth, and secretly concede the race by choosing Sarah Palin.
McCain reportedly wanted Lieberman as his Vice President, an idea that was soundly rejected by the party leadership. But if they knew he was going to lose, why would they care if it was Lieberman or not? At least then they wouldn't be damaging a Republican. Well, with the Armageddon Strategy, Lieberman would make McCain even less appealing to the base, particularly in the Bible Belt southern states.
Enter Sarah Palin. No, they didn't properly vet her, because they didn't need to if they weren't expecting to win. Yes, she does appear to be dumb as a bucket of mud, and can't give a coherent interview to save her life, but that doesn't matter. If you're planning for electoral Armageddon, you simply have to save what you can, and Sarah Palin could motivate both the religious right and the anti-choice wing of the party. Hopefully, that would be enough to bring red meat Republican voters to the polls, take some red states out of play, and save as many House and Senate seats as possible.
Yes, Barack Obama is scary to Republicans. They see another FDR, a political force they don't know how to beat, a veritable popular revolution of the left, perhaps undoing everything they have tried to establish since 1980. But more scary to Republicans than President Obama alone is President Obama with a 60-seat Senate, and a one hundred seat House Majority, both real possibilities in this race.
And so they have pulled out all the stops, giving Democrats the White House virtually unchallenged, and are now putting the Armageddon Strategy into effect to prevent their nightmare scenario from taking place. This would explain the overly negative tone of the race in the past few weeks, and the strategy of not, until at least recently on McCain's part, having the candidates say anything to calm down overtly racist and potentially violent campaign crowds.
I haven't heard this theory from others, though I'm sure someone else has probably said it before aloud or in print, and probably more eloquently than I. To me, it seems to be the only reasonable explanation for the pathetic incompetence of the Republican Party in this election.
But then again, maybe the party leadership really is just dumb as a bag of hammers. I like that theory just fine too.
There you go, flame/rec away... I'm interested in what you think.