Per aspera

16 Responses to “John McCain is not running for President”  

1. 1 Eric Feb 19th, 2007 at 12:58 am

   I can’t believe I used to kind of like this guy. Doesn’t he realize the tide’s turned and ingratiating yourself to a lame duck president might not be the best way to go.

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/

2. 2 Eric Feb 19th, 2007 at 12:59 am

   Oh, and how come AmericaBlog is gone from your list on the right?

3. 3 Steve Feb 19th, 2007 at 1:09 am

   For all that he’s doing the political dance now, sucking up to the religious right and all, I think the part of him expressed in the Imperial Stormtrooper Chic (as Atrios called it) of his website is genuine, or at least Inspired By True Events. I think where Bush has his boy’s own fantasies of effortless greatness and reshaping the world — a sixty-year-old absurdly casting himself in a bildungsroman — McCain has his own ambition to be a Great Man, and it’s a martial ambition. He wants to be President now not just because he believes it’s his time — though obviously, he does — but also it seems like he thinks he’ll be the one to lead the country to military victory. I think Lieberman must be the only other guy in the Senate who can equal McCain for commitment to the war.

4. 4 Steve Feb 19th, 2007 at 1:11 am

   Oh, and how come AmericaBlog is gone from your list on the right?

   ‘Cause Aravosis is being a poopyhead again, and I don’t read it much anyway.

5. 5 Ananth Feb 19th, 2007 at 6:10 pm

   Eric
   Quote :
   Doesn’t he realize the tide’s turned and ingratiating yourself to a lame duck president might not be the best way to go.

   Maybe he actually believes that losing the war in Iraq is not just a loss for the Bush Administration, but a loss for America, and fundamentally puts us all in a far worse position?

   John McCain, for whatever his faults may be, is already a great man. He spent give years in hell, in conditions that could have destroyed any of us, and came out of it to be leader . But being a veteran won’t matter to the dems this time around.

   Running for commander in chief may not be the worst strategy in wartime. Better to run as the man who can win the war than the man or woman who can best surrender.

6. 6 Steve Feb 19th, 2007 at 6:20 pm

   Better to run as the man who can win the war than the man or woman who can best surrender.

   Not when you can’t actually win the war, it isn’t.

7. 7 Tom Feb 19th, 2007 at 8:21 pm

   I didn’t think Eric was implying that McCain is now all Ra-Ra-Iraq; more than McCain was now slobbing on the knob of those whose knobs Bush previously slobbed upon and continues to slob upon, no?

   There was a knob/Dobson joke in there that I couldn’t quite pull together. My apologies.

8. 8 Ananth Feb 19th, 2007 at 9:35 pm

   Everyone slobs on the knobs they have to get the nomination. That’s the game. You guys went after Joe Lieberman for failing to do just that, and then cried bloody murder when he stuck it to those knobs and ran as an independent. If that would work in Presidential Run, I am sure McCain would do it, but it doesn’t.

9. 9 Steve Feb 20th, 2007 at 3:01 am

   That’s the game. You guys went after Joe Lieberman for failing to do just that, and then cried bloody murder when he stuck it to those knobs and ran as an independent. If that would work in Presidential Run, I am sure McCain would do it, but it doesn’t.

   I’ll indulge the performance to the extent that it enables what I consider to be the greater good. Neither McCain nor Lieberman have earned my indulgence. The opposite, in fact. Their performances serve to push my country further down the road of empire and fascism.

10. 10 Eric Feb 20th, 2007 at 4:36 am

    I think this goes well beyond just throwing a bone to the base, and/or ingratiating himself to the prez as I mentioned earlier. My thoughts on McCain have gone from: “he should run as Kerry’s VP”, to “I guess he can bite his tongue until ‘08″, to “really, he thinks that?” His statements now leave no room for interpretation. Love him or hate him he’s “for strength”, the same idea that won numbnuts 43 the white house so I guess it makes sense, but the shift is still surprising to me.

11. 11 Steve Feb 20th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    His statements now leave no room for interpretation. Love him or hate him he’s “for strength”, the same idea that won numbnuts 43 the white house so I guess it makes sense, but the shift is still surprising to me.

    I don’t know how much of a shift it is. I didn’t know much about McCain before, except that a) the press loved him in 2000 and b) his positions on choice are abysmal. It may be that he’s been all about America the Military Power from day one, and I just never knew it.

    But he’s one of the last holdouts on this war, and he made sure he got his name associated with the “surge” idea.

12. 12 Eric Feb 21st, 2007 at 4:04 pm

    “‘Cause Aravosis is being a poopyhead again, and I don’t read it much anyway”

    Frankly, you’re a poopyhead sometimes too but I haven’t boycotted you yet. Even if I don’t always agree with his analysis the site is pretty diligent about posting new political information. I say bring it back.

13. 13 Tom Feb 21st, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    Wait a minute. Someone clicks on Steve’s hippie-roll?

14. 14 Steve Feb 21st, 2007 at 4:44 pm

    Frankly, you’re a poopyhead sometimes too but I haven’t boycotted you yet.

    You can’t boycott me. We go to the same Christmas dinners.

    I never read Americablog, and I’m not such a huge fan of petulant arrogance and comment-deleting in the name of racism.

    I mean, I’m not totally against petulant arrogance, obviously, but once someone starts disappearing critical comments down the memory-hole, it’s going to take some planet-sized mitigating factors for me to keep making time for him.

    I ain’t stopping you from putting it on your own RSS reader, y’know.

    Also, I reserve the right to be totally capricious and autocratic in the application of the above-articulated principles. In addition to being petulant, and arrogant, at my whim.

15. 15 Steve Feb 21st, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Someone clicks on Steve’s hippie-roll?

    Let me see your hippie roll!

    To the left, to the left

    To the left again, to the left…

1. 1 University Update Trackback on Feb 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

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