The McCain Speech

Palin showed divisions in the country; McCain, divisions in the party

I suspect the idea was to play good cop / bad cop on the country. Palin would come out screeching fire and brimstone, firing up the base with lurid tales of how all Democrats and the media wanted to do was tax America out of existence and surrender to any terrorist who would put up with America. The following night, McCain would be the statesman-like voice of reason, emphasizing his ability to reach across the aisle and work with all to the betterment of America.

With a more diverse audience to play off of than what the Republican National Convention offered, it might have worked. Normal people prefer to work with their fellows, and when they talk about “Country First”, they mean the country, and not just a small pack of religious whacks and various major corporations.

But there just weren’t enough normal people in the audience that McCain faced tonight. Palin had given them their 40 minutes of hate the night before, and they visualized a speech at the end of which they would storm the booths, tear apart the media, and go out slaying Democrats with the stripped femurs of their foes, ripping throats out with their teeth, and maybe torching a few winos.

That would be the male delegates. The females were thinking more along the lines of the Furies of Grecian myth, only decently dressed.

So McCain faced an audience primed to boo and hiss and pump their fists and chant USA! USA! USA! and maybe burn Darwin in effigy to show how much they loved freedom and nolij.

Instead, he talked for a bit about how he served his country, learning humility at the hands of his Vietnamese captors (the red-meat crowd wanted to hear how he laughed and spat in the face of his tormenters, and none of this namby-pamby bullshit about how he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was) and from there, how he became a maverick instead of rebel (the red-meat crowd, most of whom were horrified by the sixties, want a President who is willing to say “fuck the establishment!”) but who could work with those with whom he disagreed. (“What? Hell no. CRUCIFY the bastids!”)

McCain wanted to appeal to the moderates, most of whom were probably put off by Palin the night before. But someone forgot to tip the marks in the convention hall. They sat on their hands at the wrong moments, and got raucous at the wrong moments. When he started talking about a new approach to working with America’s allies, they tried – and nearly succeeded – in drowning him out with that “USA!” chant. He spoke of trying to please the founding fathers, and they nearly drowned him out again, leaving me wondering what Jefferson would have made of people screaming America’s name in order to drown out ideas they didn’t like.

Outside of the convention, it was a good, if uninspiring speech. I doubt many people sitting in their living rooms whooped and pumped their fists in the air, but I’m sure a lot listened with varying amounts of respectful silence.

The trouble is that the party faithful in the hall were demonstrating that they were on an entirely different frequency, and because of that, McCain wasn’t having much luck trying to rebrand the GOP as the party of change and reform and love of liberty and peace.

It came on a day when Cheney was blundering around Georgia, shaking a palsied fist at Russia, and the market, for no visible reason, plunged, taking itself to the level it was the day George Putsch stole office – not counting the nearly 60% erosion in value of the dollar which means the Dow is actually about 5,000 in 2000 dollars. Reform is definitely needed. That Republican economic miracle has been a bit disappointing, it would seem. And the tough foreign policy doesn’t seem to have impressed anyone with American toughness.

To that end, he mentioned the sitting President and head of his party exactly once in his entire speech. Like anyone who has seen what America has become in the past eight years, he wants to change it. According to polls, 80% of Americans do, which puts the red meat loyalists of the Putsch junta in the same general category as those people who are convinced the UN is planning to invade North Dakota from Manitoba any day now.

He spoke well of his opponent, expressing his respect and admiration for Barack Obama, which doubtlessly caused a few Obama campaign mangers to gleefully lick their pencils and start drawing ideas, while the delegates went round-eyed with dismay. It was a chivalrous, classy thing to do, but it’s been many years since the rabid ideologues of the far right had any truck with chivalry or class.

The right speech, the wrong venue.

Not that it would do much good. He can’t really run for president without admitting he’s a Republican, and he’s going to have to visit many states and stump for sleazeballs whom he can’t stand and who can’t stand him. He has to convince the party he likes and respects Guiliani or Huckabee whilst simultaneously trying to convince the country at large that he isn’t nuts or a sleazeball.

The GOP let itself be taken over by the type of people who want to force the world to their wishes, and when the world doesn’t oblige, they want to scream their rage to the indifferent skies. The moderate Republicans can only look at them in horror and console themselves that if this election is as much of a stomping as it appears its going to be, at least they might have the leverage to throw the lunatics out. If it means 40 years wandering in the outer darkness, so be it; it’s better than the position they are in now, when they have to pretend that blobs of protoplasm are sacred life and that Darwin was a commie atheist. It must be hard to keep your self respect when your political party begins demanding such absurd beliefs of you.

I’m guessing that McCain will be game and put up a fairly good fight, but his biggest enemies won’t be in the Obama camp; they’ll be the lunatics who think that threatening to assassinate Michelle or dwell on Obama’s color is the way to convince ordinary Americans of their moral superiority, or that peace and respect can only be gained by picking fights with allies while running from confrontations with countries that could shoot back.

It’s too bad McCain didn’t get the nomination in 2000. The party hadn’t been completely taken over by the crazies back then, and he might have been able to prevent it from happening.

Too late now, though.