Conservatives have enjoyed great success pilloring Democrats and liberals with accusations of “flip-flopping”. Any lefty who everv changed their mind, voting against a flawed bill and then voting for a repaired bill was labeled a “flip-flopper”. It worked because the party’s base, the average Sean Hannity listener, wants glib judgments made for him, and made with instantaneous and unequivocal bias.
As we see today with Mitt Romney, that “flip-flopping” can cut both ways. But I’m more fascinated with the “pander factor”, where supposedly intelligent, worldly, sophisticated men (as all the Republican presidential candidates are … “men”, I mean) not only attempt to out-Sgt. Rock each other on the issue of who can be the most ruthless toward our “enemies”, (long, murky list there), waffle on their acceptance of evolution — EVOLUTION, for chrissakes! — and, in the case of John McCain the other night on “The O’Reilly Factor”, let pass with out comment, much less condemnation, one of the most naked assertions of gender and ethnic privilege I’ve ever heard.
Here is the YouTube link. The most interesting stuff begins at about the 1:40 mark. That is where we hear this exchange:
Bill O’Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.
John McCain: In America today we’ve got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don’t need so many.
O’Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don’t know, I don’t know. We’ve got to cap it.
McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.
In fairness, McCain is “agreeing” with O’Reilly’s notion of a cap on immigration. (Get back to me with those enforcement details, Bill.) He is not specifically “agreeing” with O’Reilly’s Berchtesgaden-like view that, “the white, male, Christian power structure” is some kind of inviolable, God and Constitution-ordained law in this country.
My point is that unless McCain’s earplug went dead at that precise moment he had an obligation, as a candidate for President of the United States, a country where over half the population is female and the percentages of the other-than-white and other-than-Christian citizenry has been substantial and growing for a century, to say something to the effect, “Well look, Bill. I’ve got to stop you there and tell you that I’m not on board with the idea that what you call the ‘white, male, Christian power structure’ is something so pure and faultless it isn’t long overdue for a little enlightened evolution.
“Sorry, bad choice of words, there. But even though this is Fox News and even though most of your audience is 68 year-old white guys sitting in their boxers in their trailers cleaning their guns, I’m just not comfortable with your assertion, or is it Pat Buchanan’s?, that white, male and Christian is the only way to run this country.
“Now, back to your point about making it tougher on the brown crowd to clip hedges in San Diego … .”
Let me ask you, has any politician with as much crossover appeal as McCain had even two years ever squandered as much so fast? It is astonishing.
Also, if you missed Jon Stewart’s “interview” with McCain about a month ago, here is that link.
It really is a shame. But I guess we knew all along that McCain’s biggest problem was going to be the GOP’s nutball factor. But, personally, I thought he’d blow his chances by doing the “straight talk” thing with Jerry Falwell, James Dobson , O’Reilly, Hannity and the rest of the court of fools and tell them how their combination of rigid sanctimony and crass, low-denominator marketing would sooner or later kill off their party.
Instead, McCain has shot his feet off by declining to play truth-speaker and pandering instead to their post-Weimar lunacies.
There’s a book in this one.
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