The Wall Street Journal, broadsheet voice of America's Uber Right, can't bite its tongue any longer. The Rupert Rag has come out questioning whether the Republican presidential candidate has the intellectual mojo to run for dogcatcher.
WSJ editorial page writer Dan Henninger gave McCain both barrels in his Wonder Land column:
"Is John McCain losing it?
On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't."
This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.
...What I'm asking is, does John McCain have the mental focus, the intellectual discipline, to avoid being out-slicked by Barack Obama, if he isn't abandoned by his own voters?
It's not just taxes. Recently the subject came up of Al Gore's assertion that the U.S. could get its energy solely from renewables in 10 years. Sen. McCain said: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." What!!?? In a later interview, Mr. McCain said he hadn't read "all the specifics" of the Gore plan and now, "I don't think it's doable without nuclear power." It just sounds loopy.
...The one thing -- arguably the only thing -- the McCain candidacy has going for it is a sense among voters that they don't know what Barack Obama stands for or believes. Why then would Mr. McCain give voters reason to wonder the same thing about himself? You're supposed to sow doubt about the other guy, not do it to yourself.
Yes, Sen. McCain must somehow appeal to independents and blue-collar Hillary Democrats. A degree of pandering to the center is inevitable. But this stuff isn't pandering; it's simply stupid. Al Gore's own climate allies separated themselves from his preposterous free-of-oil-in-10-years whopper. Sen. McCain saying off-handedly that it's "doable" is, in a word, thoughtless.
...Why as well shouldn't the Obama camp exploit all of this? If Sen. Obama's "inexperience" is Mr. McCain's ace in the hole, why not trump that by asking, "Does Sen. McCain know his own mind?"
At one level I like John McCain, the McCain of 2000 before he abandoned his core values in his desperate bid for the presidency. The John McCain of 2008 is a hapless caricature of the old McCain, an attempt to stuff a plainly declining mind into the psyche of a George w. Bush.
The guy is terrible on his feet. He's trying to follow a previous administration's playbook even when it runs roughshod on McCain's own principles. I've watched a lot of the Obama/McCain coverage and I get embarrassed for McCain when he shows, repeatedly, that he doesn't grasp an important issue or badly needs someone to tell him what to say. McCain, after all, is the guy who touts his experience as the main (only) reason he should win over Obama. There's just something so very sad about it all.
WSJ editorial page writer Dan Henninger gave McCain both barrels in his Wonder Land column:
"Is John McCain losing it?
On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't."
This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.
...What I'm asking is, does John McCain have the mental focus, the intellectual discipline, to avoid being out-slicked by Barack Obama, if he isn't abandoned by his own voters?
It's not just taxes. Recently the subject came up of Al Gore's assertion that the U.S. could get its energy solely from renewables in 10 years. Sen. McCain said: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." What!!?? In a later interview, Mr. McCain said he hadn't read "all the specifics" of the Gore plan and now, "I don't think it's doable without nuclear power." It just sounds loopy.
...The one thing -- arguably the only thing -- the McCain candidacy has going for it is a sense among voters that they don't know what Barack Obama stands for or believes. Why then would Mr. McCain give voters reason to wonder the same thing about himself? You're supposed to sow doubt about the other guy, not do it to yourself.
Yes, Sen. McCain must somehow appeal to independents and blue-collar Hillary Democrats. A degree of pandering to the center is inevitable. But this stuff isn't pandering; it's simply stupid. Al Gore's own climate allies separated themselves from his preposterous free-of-oil-in-10-years whopper. Sen. McCain saying off-handedly that it's "doable" is, in a word, thoughtless.
...Why as well shouldn't the Obama camp exploit all of this? If Sen. Obama's "inexperience" is Mr. McCain's ace in the hole, why not trump that by asking, "Does Sen. McCain know his own mind?"
At one level I like John McCain, the McCain of 2000 before he abandoned his core values in his desperate bid for the presidency. The John McCain of 2008 is a hapless caricature of the old McCain, an attempt to stuff a plainly declining mind into the psyche of a George w. Bush.
The guy is terrible on his feet. He's trying to follow a previous administration's playbook even when it runs roughshod on McCain's own principles. I've watched a lot of the Obama/McCain coverage and I get embarrassed for McCain when he shows, repeatedly, that he doesn't grasp an important issue or badly needs someone to tell him what to say. McCain, after all, is the guy who touts his experience as the main (only) reason he should win over Obama. There's just something so very sad about it all.
1 comment:
flip flops???? like bo's sudden change of heart, about oil exploration off shore? once in power, (god help us all), he and his boss pelosie will say no and the price of food will raise, what about the poor???? u lefties are turning us right...remember this if bo and pelosie are seen as to left, it will bounce toward dion and his gas tax proposal...
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