Two Reasons (Among Others) That McCain Lost

Executive Summary – For those with short attention spans… here it goes:

Two major issues with this year’s election – (1) Conservatism was not represented adequately and (2) the rabidly-liberal press made it impossible for any Republican to be successful.

DISCLAIMER – These are certainly not the only 2 reasons, but the ones that come up in my mind most often. Certainly the large turn out by new and excited voters for Obama and the historical significance that he represented was another major factor, but I’m not touching that one, at least for now.

Okay. Now that has been said. The cat is out of the bag. Let’s elaborate a bit on these two reasons…

FIRST: Let’s face it – John McCain is no conservative.

Conservatism consists of three “legs” if you will.

1. Fiscal conservative – government spending limited as much as possible, accented with tax cuts and what Reagan called “trickle-down” economics.

2. Social conservative – anti-abortion, pro-family, anti-gay rights, etc.

3. National Security / Military conservative – very strong national defense, with US taking lead in the world when it comes to military issues

So how did McCain represent these “three legs”?

• McCain, in my opinion, can really only claim the mantle on the military side, represented mostly by his long support of the military in Iraq and his pushing of the “surge”, which ultimately is leading to our success in Iraq.

• He did not have much of anything in the campaign to say about social issues (he left that up to the true conservative – Sarah Palin – to voice.) Historically he has seemed to side with pro-abortion wing of the Republican party

• As for fiscal issues, initially he talked a lot about curtailing “ear marks”, those multi-billion dollar expenditures that Senators and Representatives “hide” in bills to help out their own states and districts, however, again, that issue dropped off the radar as the economy sunk. His support of the Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac bail-outs sealed his fate with Conservatives on the fiscal issues – HE ISN’T ONE!

To McCain’s credit, he realized that he must do something for the conservatives. He attempted to make up for this conservative short-coming by picking Sarah Palin for the ticket, which if you recall 3 month ago, is when the Republicans really seemed to get jazzed-up for McCain.

If it had not been for her, I think that the popular vote would have been a landslide in favor of Obama, not the relatively close count that it was.
That being said, even the rising up of Sarah couldn’t save McCain from himself and his lack of true conservative credentials.

SECOND – The Anti-Conservative media was too big of an obstacle to overcome.

In my opinion, the media picked our candidate for us in the Republican Party.

If you recall during the past several years, McCain has always been a media “darling”, and was tagged by the media as a “maverick”, meaning that he would oppose Republicans and conservatism any chance he got. They fawned over anyone that would poke conservatives in the eye, especially another Republican.

McCain gladly accepted that mantle.

An example of this is the ridiculous “McCain – Feingold” campaign reform bill, which was vehemently opposed by conservatives and Republicans. (Yes, that bill is the reason why that stupid tag-line on all campaign commercials “I am blah-blah and I approve this message” is required, among other requirements).

So this love affair with McCain that the press had, and the media’s contempt and negative press for the other more Conservative candidates (think Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney) proved too much and McCain was finally selected as the “last one standing” on the Republican side.

THEN the press turned on him (not unlike they turned on Hillary when Obama came along, but that is another story for later)…

Obama was christened as messianic and god-like by the press (One MSNBC correspondent – Chris Matthews – even talked about “tingling running up and down his legs” when Obama spoke.)

1. McCain was now in the media’s way to getting Obama elected, so they turned on him. The press all turned negative and extremely biased polls were taken by the press, and then reported on by the press (I thought they were supposed to REPORT the news, not MAKE the news).

2. No Republican or conservative could have held up that media on-slaught!!

   And Palin coming along only put “blood in the water” and worked the press up into an absolute frenzy. But more on that later, if comments on this blog are positive and I have time to write about it.

So – in the future – in my humble opinion – the Republicans must move back to the right and support all three legs of conversatism, and hopefully fair and balanced media will return when they realize the success of Fox News and other fair outlets may be the only way for them to be successful again. (not likely, though).

Regards.