Here's an interesting article on selling Obama to the Republicans who feel disenfranchised by McCain. The author, a former lifetime and Goldwater Republican, has some good bullet points, and they are fleshed
out in detail in his article. I'll give you the short version:
1) Don't waste time on Democratic cornerstone issues like health care, education, and jobs. Republicans have other priorities.
2) Don't bash Bush. He's not in this election.
3) Do not try to change Republican sensibilities against higher taxes.
4)Obama was cosponser of a bill in the Illinois State Senate that resulted in the largest tax cut in state history. McCain was highly critical of Bush's tax cuts before flipping and supporting them.
5) Despite their rhetoric, the last five Republican presidents have grown government spending considerably, resulting in large deficits. Much of this is due to untrackable pork. Obama has passed legislation to make government spending public and transparent, resulting in this website.
6) Obama is the one that has engaged free market, nongovernmental solutions to problems personally. McCain's wealth comes entirely from the public trough and his heiress wife.
7) McCain defends the intrusive and unconstitutional expansion of executive power that has occurred over the last 8 years.
8) Obama is more willing to attack Al Quaeda wherever they are, whereas McCain is going to continue the policy of leaving them safe in places like Pakistan.
9) McCain, the child of privledge, and having a father who was an admiral, still only finished 894th out of 899 cadets at Annapolis. Obama, the rugged individual, came from a home on food stamps and earned academic scholarships to Harvard, and graduated Magna Cum Laude.
It will be interesting to see how much crossover there is. It is also interesting to see that the Republican party has drifted so far from its conservative roots (as embodied by Jefferson, not Robertson) that a Democrat could actually outscore them on their issues.
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7 comments:
Not that I support McCain, but careers in the military and congress are honorable service, not "public trough". I'll also give him credit, though little is said about it, that when he talks about war policy, he has his own blood invested in it.
It is so sad to see someone with his reputation as a maverick pandering to the (perceived) conservative base. It makes him seem weak and ineffectual.
I grant the point on honor of military service. At least when McCain opines on torture, it is not just idle theorizing.
However, it still does not speak well for McCain's conservative credentials that he's never held a private sector job.
I used to buy into the idea that McCain could at least be trusted to be objective and realistic about war until he started blatantly lying about the reality of the war situation.
I don't have a problem with reasoned support for the war or a belief that we have a moral obligation to keep trying to clean up our mess. I have a serious problem with leaders misleading the public about the state of a war when they're supposed to be leading us based on a sober appraisal of reality.
It's possible to be the smartest guy in the room and trick the people you're leading into doing the right thing. You're not doing anybody any favors if you do, though. A real leader gives the people he's leading the same information he has and tells them why they need to follow. That's the type of person we need leading the public debate when we're deciding weighty issues like war and peace.
That's one reason why I appreciated Ron Paul, even though I thought a lot of his positions were crazy and I would never want him to be President. At least he acts the way a leader should. Nobody else on the stage with him had the guts to do that. I'm tired of people who want to scare me or trick me into agreeing with them instead of treating me like an adult and convincing me.
S.A. You may wish to double check your list. It goes like this:
1.2.3.4.5.6.4.5.6.
troublesome frog writes:
"That's one reason why I appreciated Ron Paul, ... I'm tired of people who want to scare me or trick me into agreeing with them instead of treating me like an adult and convincing me."
If you've ever read Ron Paul's old newsletters, you'd realize that you completely contradicted yourself.
If you've ever read Ron Paul's old newsletters, you'd realize that you completely contradicted yourself.
No, I can't say that I was a reader of Ron Paul's old newsletters. I was referring more to the Republican primary debates.
More to the point, I never said the guy wasn't a nut. I simply appreciated the fact that he generally didn't beat around the bush about why he took certain positions. I've heard enough, "Here's a defensible position, and here's a total lie to get you to go along with it" to start to appreciate, "Here's a really wild idea, and here's my actual chain of reasoning that got me here."
I think that the heart breaking moment for me was watching the debates when Ron Paul said essentially, "You're acting like idiots. They don't hate us because of our freedom. They hate us because we keep pissing them off." It's one of very few of his positions that I agree with, but I wanted to cry when I heard every other person on the stage act like it was the craziest thing they'd ever heard. Guiliani, who obviously knew better, actually said something to the effect of, "I have never heard anything like that before." Seriously. As if an intelligent public policy professional in New York had never heard the idea floated.
My only reaction was, This is the most important foreign policy issue of our generation, and the only person who will speak the truth and get the public to think about it is this crackpot. We're doomed.
Great response, TF!
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