On Ratfucking the Vermin in John McCain’s Cell
I’m in the same camp as Brad the Sadlynaught. The politics of spite must be exploited by the Obama camp if they hope to win, to wit:
It’s time for the Dems’ dirty tricks team (does one even exist?) to start ratfucking operations, my friends. Ideally, you’d want to exploit St. BBQ’s divisions with the anti-immigrant wingnuts and the religious wingnuts, and McCain’s warm embrace of Daddy Yankee has created an opening to do just that. I’m picturing a new 527 group called Values Voters Against McCain.
Although completely true, we must understand that this breaks from the Rovian calculus of attacking an opponent’s strengths. McCain is woefully weak already on immigration and family values. The voters he’s won who might be demotivated by Brad’s concept have already forgiven Sen. McCain–the Anybody But Obama crowd. But if you can successfully present a reluctant Republican voter with a strength repackaged as a weakness, you’re one vote closer to landslide. (V.P. Gore and Sen. Kerry were serial victims of this kind of onslaught, by the way.)
An important aspect of the tactic I’m describing will involve sowing discontent among online wingnuts to reap activist apathy. I’ll present a decent point of attack:
McCain does not share in the American Exceptionalism that is so pervasive among the Limbaughs, Malkins, and Ole Perfessers out there. Here are just two paragraphs from McCain’s March 26, 2008, Foreign Policy Speech:
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.
This is damning rhetoric that the wingnuts should really be defensive about.
Not to mock his agony, but McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war informs only one of these policy positions–whether or not GTMO should remain operational. Does this not raise doubts among McCain’s accidental supporters concerning the application of torture victim bona fides? That maybe, having been in that box for five years, not knowing if he might be executed on any given day, is a path toward good will and humanity–things totally antithetical to the goals of movement conservatism?
Because there are these other nagging issues with McCain’s policy positions: Consulting the global community on the proper way to fight terrorism is an antithesis to the Bush doctrine; “international good citizenship” sure sounds a lot like “global test” (that is, we’d probably have to take a citizenship test); and “successor to the Kyoto Treaty” may be a greater hindrance to “free markets” as modern conservatives see them.
And this doesn’t even get into his views on China’s emerging as a clear and present superpower or his analysis of how the Cold War was won. Sen. McCain is not one of Them. Our challenge is to remind Them of this over and over.
