"Cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism. Surely we're not just now noticing this?"

Kevin, don't you know that it is considered to be the height of political incorrectness to remark on this!

More seriously conservatism, having jumped with both feet into the utilization of emotional marketing, has forgotten that coherent policies (as opposed to being on message) do matter. But so far not enough of the electorate has figured that out.

They don't fight their campaigns on a substantive policy basis because their policies are ignorant and bonkers, at least if you take them at face value. Since the real impetus for modern conservatism is to advance the financial interests of a small oligarchical class, their policy positions are of necessity dishonest, and unable to withstand scrutiny. Thus we get a presidential campaign that amounts to a series of schoolyard taunts.

Poor Andrew Sullivan. He actually thought they meant all that crap about limited government etc. What a tool.

How effective will these commercials actually be?

My guess is that your typical Red State voter doesn't even know what arugula is.

The fact that the McCain communications operatives do know what it is, is most likely due to the fact that they shop in stores that sell it and eat in restaurants that serve it.

This is why I am encouraged to see the Obama campaign countering with the message that this is about cynicism, rather than racism.

the GOP goes to the mud pit because it sells well between the two coasts.

Hate to say it but individually, people can be very smart. But as a group they are short sighted, ingorant and self centered.

People don't really care that we are up to our skulls in debt. They don't really care that we are in a war with no real end in sight. They don't care our way of life is wrecking our world environment. What they care about is cheap goods, relatively cheap energy and what is on the idiot box tonight.

What the GOP does understand is that if you campaign like a commerical. Repeat and keep repeating whatever you want to sell. It does not matter that it is a lie. Just keep repeating it. Enough people will buy what you have to sell. The Democratic party seems to never get that. Until they do nothing will change.

the GOP goes to the mud pit because it sells well between the two coasts.

Hate to say it but individually, people can be very smart. But as a group they are short sighted, ingorant and self centered.

People don't really care that we are up to our skulls in debt. They don't really care that we are in a war with no real end in sight. They don't care our way of life is wrecking our world environment. What they care about is cheap goods, relatively cheap energy and what is on the idiot box tonight.

What the GOP does understand is that if you campaign like a commerical. Repeat and keep repeating whatever you want to sell. It does not matter that it is a lie. Just keep repeating it. Enough people will buy what you have to sell. The Democratic party seems to never get that. Until they do nothing will change.

And the sad thing is that McCain's tactics are probably going to work.

I'll never underestimate the stupidity of the American people to fall for this crap after 8 years of Bush.

The McCain camp is going to turn this into a race war and in a majority white country, that will mean McCain wins.

Better comment than Sullivan's on the same source at my poli sci profesor's office-hours blog, profburgos.blogspot.com. And he's funnier than Sullivan.

Why would the Republicans stop this? The Democrats have shown no ability to counter it, and the media have shown little interest in doing anything more than playing along. I do find it sad that Sullivan seems surprised that McCain would play this game, but there are a lot of things about Sullivan that I find sad.

Kevin you astound me quite often with your mealy-mouthedness.

This is not a result of cultural-insecurity but because of the bullies and the thugs that populate the operational wing of the GOP if not its ideologues and leaders.

Your excessive delicacy in this case is quite maddening. Aggressive Centrism in face of gangsters is no virtue at all.

Andrew had been hoping that McCain was above all that, and that this election--between two guys who had promised not to mud-wrestle their way to the highest office in the land--were going to spend the next few months talking about issues.

Given that most, if not all, of McCain's positions are profoundly unpopular, it's pretty unsurprising that his campaign is taking the low road right out of the gate. Andrew let his wishes get away from him, I'm afraid.

Teresa wrote:

And the sad thing is that McCain's tactics are probably going to work.

On the contrary, I'm feeling more and more certain that the Republicans are feeling like this one isn't working for them, are resigned to the fact that they may lose and can't really fix the election (unless perhaps the true result is very close), and are trying to turn this one into a referendum on race-- just sort of a gamble to see whether if they go full-bore with the negative campaigning, the American people will turn out to be racists like the Republicans hope/think they are. Who knows whether the lies will work better as time goes on, but right now they seem very desperate.

Granted, "full bore" for them doesn't mean "overt racism." That's a chance I think the Republicans aren't willing to take-- they have to make their appeals to racism at least kind of subtle and seldom. Otherwise it will be too hard to pretend they are not racist when that is what they want to do. In other words, they might try to appeal to racism, but they are not going to come totally out of their shells-- for example, John McCain pretends he supported making MLK Jr.'s birthday a holiday now.

We are if we're British.

McCain isn't really running for president. He's running for Player- Hater-in-Chief.

The gerbils in Andrew's rectum made him say that...

If you never want to fight campaigns on policy, why bother crafting any?

They have LOTS of policies; they just don't dare run on them. Modern conservatism is based on a desire to return to the quasi-feudalism of the robber barons, where the upper crust got preference in all things (the courts, the jobs, property disputes, educational opportunties), the lower classes knew their place and women were the property of their fathers and husbands. They have much in common with the tribal leaders in Pakistan, in fact.

Gregor: you remind me of two things.

First, this quote: "Fighting fair with a known scoundrel puts you at a tremendous disadvantage."

Second, a story: in the old West, a known gun slinger was shot in the back by Joe Ordinary Non-gunslinger. When asked why Joe shot the guy in the back, he replied, "Well, he's dead and I'm alive, and that's the way I wanted it to be."

My guess is that your typical Red State voter doesn't even know what arugula is.

The fact that the McCain communications operatives do know what it is, is most likely due to the fact that they shop in stores that sell it and eat in restaurants that serve it.

there is arugula in McDonald's salads.

I'm shocked, just shocked, to find politicians acting like politicians.

I'm just glad us liberals never do that, except once a month when periodically our claws come out. (Or in races where we act to disqualify our opponents.) And kudos to Fred above for the bigotry, I'll assume you're actually a Republican, because Dems are never homophobic.

Yes, us Dems ONLY run on issues.

It should be glaringly obvious to everyone by now that the basis of the GOP campaign is that Obama is "not like you and me." That will be driven home on big and small issues, on substance and in optics. The question is, will Obama combat this meme more effectively than Kerry did?

On November 5, as we try and figure out how to carry on under four years of McCain and prepare ourselves for Clinton's 2012 "I told you so!" tour, we'll look back at this week as the one that made President McCain inevitable.

Americans don't believe that Obama's a Muslim, that he refused to visit the troops, or that he's somehow both an elitist snob and a dangerous Black Panther because they're stupid, necessarily. They believe that shit because the media constantly and consistently reports on the campaign to the benefit of McCain and the detriment of Obama.

And they don't do it because they want a horse race. They do it because they are actively working to elect McCain. It's time for Kevin and all our other favorite "liberal" bloggers to accept the fact that the game is rigged and stop all the buffoonish head scratching and wondering why the press keeps "getting played." They're not getting played. They're in the game.

This is the country now and forever. And there ain't a fucking thing anyone can do about it. Hunter S. Thompson found the only way out.

Re: 2:01

There very well may be arugula in McDonald's salads. But how many people who eat it know that?

At any rate, the McCain campaign would probably have equally negative things to say about someone ordering a salad at McDonald's. Kinda like ordering orange juice at a diner...

With Dukakis it was endive, with Obama it was arugula.

In both cases, the candidate was urging farmers to consider branching out into high-markup crops for which the market was growing.

But that doesn't matter, if they'd mentioned so much as whipped butter, they'd be getting the same treatment. Obama drinks orange juice!

They really played the arugula card?
Going negative on McCain, are we, for the crime of effective political ads?

McCain and Obama are virtually clones, so one has to find differences some way. The Britanny, Paris ad was effective in demonstrating that Obama is in truth a celebrity by virtue of being a celebrity like Paris Hilton. He was a completely unknown Illinois state senator, and I mean unknown even in his home state, who lucked out in the senate race when his primary opponent and senatorial opponent both self-destructed, gave a speech, and was then canonized by the lib media; but other than his celebrity, he is still in his unknown state senator level of experience and politics.

McCain and Obama are virtually clones, so one has to find differences some way.

Yeah, I bet they're often mistaken for one another. Hilarity ensues.

Swan, TPM just posted this:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/206827.php

David Gergen nailed it. Hope somebody was watching.

Ahhhh, just relax......just relax and enjoy it folks. We know what americans want and it's not healthcare reform or new energy programs, it's crasstastic ENTERTAINMENT! Whoo-wee....good times.

If you never want to fight campaigns on policy, why bother crafting any?

Modern American conservatism is about ruling, not governing, so there's very little downside to scorched-earth campaign tactics.

You don't convince the night watchman to look the other way while your friends back the truck up to the door. You don't even bribe him -- that cuts into the profit.

You shoot him.

I don't get it. What's wrong with ordering orange juice at a diner? I drink orange juice with my breakfast.

I would also like to point out that all the diners I have been to server orange juice.

C'mon now Kevin. Now you're just phoning it in.

A refresher:

On the April 10 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, after reporting that Sen. Barack Obama "campaigned today in northern Indiana, shaking hands and chatting with people at a diner near South Bend," MSNBC correspondent David Shuster stated to host Chris Matthews: "Well, here's the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, 'I'll have orange juice.' " Matthews replied, "No," to which Shuster responded: "He did." Shuster continued: "And it's just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, 'Here, have some coffee,' you say, 'Yes, thank you,' and, 'Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?' You don't just say, 'No, I'll take orange juice,' and then turn away and start shaking hands." Matthews added, "You don't ask for a substitute on the menu," and then said: "David, what a regular guy. You could do this. ... I mean, go to the diners." Matthews then began an interview with Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), an Obama supporter, by asking Casey: "Isn't that interesting, Senator Casey, that Barack Obama, your candidate, can walk before 15,000 people with complete calm and assurance, but he seems a little out of place in A) a bowling alley and B) a diner? What is the problem with your guy?"

For me McCain is a worthless piece of ancient history. His views of the world are based entirely on the aggressive projection of power. This worked in a manner of speaking during the cold war, but it's grotesque in the extreme when used against a bunch of criminals who hijack private airliners or set off bombs in public places. McCain is over the hill. He has been living off a manufactured heroism based on events which occurred more than 30 years ago. Personally, I'm more interested in this thing he seems to have for rich blonds. Let's have more on why he has this big (or maybe not so big, depending on how it's measured) thing for Paris and Brittany.

gee you blue state voters must be purdy darn smart to know what arugala is. we red staters don't even know raddechio from a radish.

"And the sad thing is that McCain's tactics are probably going to work.

I'll never underestimate the stupidity of the American people to fall for this crap after 8 years of Bush.

The McCain camp is going to turn this into a race war and in a majority white country, that will mean McCain wins." - Teresa.

are you talking about the "stupid" american people that actually voted to put al gore in office? or the stupid american people that came within a few hundred thousand votes of unseating an incumbent - something that rarely happens - despite an incredibly inept campaign run by john kerry?

arrogance never wins elections.

Re 3:34

You spelled radicchio incorrectly, but you have proved my point. The kind of person who reads Washington Monthly and knows what radicchio is (even if you can't spell it), is exactly the kind of person who generated the McCain ads. It isn't however, the kind of person to whom the ads are designed to appeal.

Cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism.

How droll.

McCain and other conservative, more or less extreme than he, also criticize Obama's substantive policy recommendations, such as his idiotic proposal to increase oil company income taxes and use the money to pay rebates to Americans for their gasoline purchases. And if you can figure out what Obama's actual policy on Iraq is, maybe you can tell him, because he does not seem to know how it differs from McCain's.

Of course, Andrew Sullivan does not take his idea to its logically conclusion. AS the Republican Party collapses, what will politics be like as the U.S. become a one party state. If you want a good example look at the U.S. House race in Memphis where the Democratic primary is the real election. Or you could look at 125 plus seats in the U.S. House where the incumbent is running for election unopposed.

But of course it's going to be about, race, and anti-intellectualism, and anti-liberalism. These are all themes which to various degrees are present in the minds of many voters. Most white males of voting age, at some level have a fear of sexual competition from black men (even I am sure KD). Showing Obama, and attractive white females together is a deliberate tactic meant to tweak subconscious negatives. Making fun of him, as well. Painting him as elitist, tweaks anti-intellectual feelings. The collective effect of all this is supposed to give enough voters vague emotional dislike of Obama, so they will pull the lever for McCain. The only real risk from this strategy is if they do something so obviously over the top, that the media has to call them on it. But, McCain's handlers are well aware of the risk of him having a MaCaCa moment, so they will seek to avoid it.

Are there others that are finally realizing the owners of 'the media' are rich Republicans! Stop wondering why the media is pro Republican, the media is Republican.

Why do I see Joe Liberman on Meet the Press insulting our intelligence?

And while we are at it, Why in the God's name do I see John Kerry, the person who could not defend himself, defending Obama?

What the fuck! Why does Obama want to lose the election?

I don't know folks, I think it is pretty telling that after a full week of the Rovettes childishly assaulting Obama, David Gergen feels free to school Jake (McCain's Base) Tapper on the ugly racist undertones of the McCain ad campaign.

John McCain's line of attack is in the process of backfiring. Oh, today's Gallup shows that Obama has moved out in front again.

I think McCain's Rovettes might be about to implode.

Marler, idiot extraordinaire, ignores the fact that McCain's proposals to deal with the oil companies are so fucking boneheaded that no rational person could support them - oh yeah, let's cut government revenue and pass the savings on to the oil companies - that's what Marler considers "substance."

Even someone as stupid as Marler should be able to tell the difference between occasionally stumbling on criticism of policy proposals and the campaign. The campaign isn't about substance because the American people don't want what the warmongering, race-baiting, wild-spending "conservatives" are selling. So the campaign is about how evil it is the Obama is popular, it is about how Obama doesn't look like the dead presidents, and it is about that uppity negro man trying to take what rightfully belongs to Grandpa Simpson.

As for determining positions on the Iraq war, what's McCain's position now? He's had pretty much every one. Last I heard he was following Obama's lead - you know, the same position as the "sovereign" Iraqi leader?

So, why is it that McCain's commercials don't focus on substance? It is because cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism. He doesn't have any substance to show.

Give it up Marler you are, as always, a joke.

... if you can figure out what Obama's actual policy on Iraq is, maybe you can tell him, because he does not seem to know how it differs from McCain's.

It's fairly straightforward, so even someone as simple as you can understand -- it's called "phased withdrawal:"

Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Prime Minister al-Maliki understands it & agrees with it.

John McCain, understands it & says it's "a pretty good plan."

Why do you hate freedom for Iraqis?

GWB and Karl Rove proved you could take the low-road to the White House. Now John McCain and Karl Rove are trying to get there through the sewer. It's disgusting.

On the other hand it was gratifying to see the likes of David Gergen actually acknowledge that McCain is playing the race card and using code to call Obama uppity. If there are any other honorable republicans left they should step forward too. Unfortunately, the silence is deafening.

Most white males of voting age, at some level have a fear of sexual competition from black men

This is the sort of racist smear that it is always okay to make of "white" men, regardless of the fact that:

a) Flipping the "color" and people would scream
b) Apart from the website, what white people like, there ain't no "white" culture. The KKK was not in every white male's background. The potato famine, or the Soviet Gulag, or the French Revolution, or Bloody England, or Johnny Get Your Gun, or GEDs, or College, or Vietnam, or living in a mansion, or a plantation, or in Malibu, or in the Valley, THERE IS NO "WHITE" CULTURE.

It's is grotesque that a country that moves from melting pot to tossed salad insists on making gross sweeping generalizations about "white men" and their fears.

The answer to ugly free speech is more free speech, but it's not more ugly free speech. And the answer to racism and sexism is not more racism and sexism.

Promoting racism or sexism didn't used to be considered a progressive liberal value.

And the fallacy of "whites don't have it as bad, so it's okay and you're whining" is the same fallacy as we accuse rightwingers of "I made it, so everyone can make it."

Fuck you.

It's somewhat amazing to me that "conservatives" bother at this point. After eight years of near complete dominance the United States has seen what little a governing philosophy of "lie, cheat, and steal" accomplishes. Oh sure, we've lost several thousand to the worst terrorist attack on US soil, and we've lost even more soldiers, and we did manage to take a nightmare in Iraq and make it far, far worse, but other than that, what can conservatives point to as successes?

OMG, did you read Greenwald?

9/11 was an inside job.

Why were White House aides given cipro weeks before the anthrax attacks, and why "on the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, [did] the White House Medical Office dispense[] Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David"? [Washington Post, 10/23/2001];

BECAUSE 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.

Bush and Cheney KILLED 3000 American citizens for Big Oil's right to invade Iraq, AND Then 4,125 more US miltiary members in an invasion of Iraq for control of oil resources.

Bush and Cheney should tried in the US courts for MURDER, murder of American citizens.

They really played the arugula card?

Didn't the arugula offense, so to speak, originate with Sen. Clinton's supporters? It hardly seems appropriate to call it a "conservative" strategy. It seemed to work well for Clinton in the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries. It may not work as well for McCain in the general election as it did for Clinton in the primaries, would it would not be intelligent of McCain supporters not to try it a few times.

All 'buy' decisions, including the decision to vote are base on emotion.

The Republicans have almost always sold an inferior product. But the decision for voter's to buy their product has always been based on emotion. With such inferior product, they're going straight for emotion and by-passing policy altogether.

In the past, stuff like "State's Rights" or "Trickle Down" or "Supply Side", like "intelligent design", are false pretext that just provide a psuedo-intellectual fig leaf for cover.

"Hate to say it but individually, people can be very smart."

And I hate to say it, but where I come from individual Repukes I know are dumber than turnips.

Marler, idiot extraordinaire, ignores the fact that McCain's proposals to deal with the oil companies are so fucking boneheaded that no rational person could support them - oh yeah, let's cut government revenue and pass the savings on to the oil companies - that's what Marler considers "substance."

The quote that we have been commenting on asserts that there is not debate on the substance of energy policy, yet there is a debate on energy policy! to date, Obama and McCain both have stupid policy recommendations. The best energy policy now is to live with the most recent energy/environment/farm bills, and write new bills in 2010 based on progress to that date. Perhaps liberalizing the drilling reglations, as recently debated in Congress, will help some by 8 years from now -- at minimum they'll keep some of the oil company profits here in the U.S., and possibly reduce the speculative excesses.

junebug: John McCain, understands it & says it's "a pretty good plan." Well of course McCain would say that, because it is identical with McCain's plan, including keeping combat troops deployed in or near Iraq in case they are needed. At least that is what Obama says his plan is; the question is: Since he does not believe that the surge worked (or that it did not work, he being now agnostic whereas he voted then against the surge because the war was "already lost"), does he really think it's good to keep the troops there "for some time" (as he put it)?

Andrew Sullivan, to wit:

"There's really nothing worse than an old queen with a headcold." -- Toddy (Robert Preston), Victor | Victoria (1982)

... it is identical with McCain's plan...

Um, you'd be right if you hadn't gotten it backwards, and if you had acknowledged McCain's bald-faced hypocrisy. McCain's plan, after al Maliki gave it the thumbs up & Dear Leader adopted the language of "time frames," is now exactly like Obama's.

Jake tapper, via The Huffington Post:

Back in January of this year, John McCain pilloried Mitt Romney for encouraging President Bush in April 2007 to develop a private "series of timetables and milestones" for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

"Timetables was the buzzword for those that wanted to get out," McCain scolded Romney at a Jan. 30 debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

How the (time)tables have turned.

Care to spew more bullshit for us?

Every Tory knows it's called, "rocket" -- clearly a manly lettuce!

No wonder Andy's not fooled!

Sorry Kevin, but we do not elect a list of policies. We elect a man. Character matters.

For the third time in succession you guys have chosen a dud candidate. This matters. Your desperate attempt to deflect the discovery of this into some dry comparison of list-of-policies-A versus list-of-policies-B will not fly.

We're entrusting an enormous amount of power (more for bad than for good) into the hands of one individual. It is vital that this be a good individual.

Character matters. Examination of character is vital. You're pissing in the wind trying to stop it.

Character matters. Examination of character is vital. You're pissing in the wind trying to stop it.

What the fuck does one's choice of foodstuffs have to do with "character"?

"Character matters."

Character does not exist in a vacuum. In part, it is the sum of opinions, beliefs, behavior.

A little bandy-legged strutting runt doesn't get it for me.

Marler, there is no debate on substance. McCain's advertisements are all trying to avoid substance. That he accidentally stumbled and suggested something, no matter how stupid and counterproductive, does not represent substance. And, even if it did, it isn't what the campaign is about for Grandpa Simpson.

If you were honest (well, if you were honest you couldn't support Republicans), you would look at where old "onion belt" McCain was spending his money and simply admit that cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism.

And yes, it is nice that McCain has adopted Obama's position on Iraq as his own (or has McCain changed his position, yet again?), and yes, it would be nice if McCain had not demonstrated his unfitness to lead the nation by supporting the slaughter of innocent Iraqis in the first place, but your claim that the surge worked is just another example of why you, and pretty much the entirety of conservatism, are not competent to discuss politics.

Kevin,

How 'bout embedding the first segment of Thursday night's Daily Show. Dealt with the emerging McCain-Obama media memes more effectively than I can imagine any written piece or blog post.

I share the notion that actually existing conservativism is about cultural insecurities and the threat of the weird, and agree that it's rich that Sullivan is just now glomming on to this. But I'm hesitant to chuckle and sneer at those running the McCain campaign for having no real issues to run on (so they're resorting to this cultural insecurity stuff) -- these people are deadly serious and by no means dumb. They've decided they can rustle up the electoral equivalent of 50% plus 1 this way, and I doubt we're anywhere near the bottom of the dungheap.

Jerry, you reacted before trying to understand. The political advertising is all about how the human brain makes judgments, mostly via subconscious emotions. We all have them, there is no point in putting moral judgments on them. The Repubs have understood this and made it the basis for their campaigning. We also hold subconscious memes we are not proud of, that is why race baiting has to be subtle, if we realize what they are trying to do to us, we will be disgusted and angry.

The whole point is that the republicans have been successfully using these methods to win elections, while Democrats have been campaigning on issues alone. But only policy wonks care about actual policy, and it rarely determines the outcome.

Now you aren't happy, that current norms are not symmetric regarding black/white racial stuff, i.e. for the most part a black person can be openly racist about whites, without suffering nearly as much opprobrium as does a white racist. Thats simply a matter of the current culture. And the fact that we (whites) outnumber blacks. Only in fairly tales is the world fair, we can only strive to make it better.

The slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy....

I think we've seen over the past several years that what passes for conservatism these days is not a governing philosophy at all. It's a right wing philosophy of gaining power at any cost for the sake of gaining power. Every time they get power, the right simply turns to looting taxpayers, which lasts until people get tired of it and hire someone else to come in and clean up. Then the process repeats. It's very depressing, if not completely predictable.

In his farewell to the lovely beach post, Sullivan writes another couple of decent paragraphs: (was he influential enough that he could have made a difference if he hadn't been so utterly wrong for so long a few years ago?)

"I did some reading and writing. Ron Hansen's "Exiles" was right up my alley. But Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" stayed with me. It's the most important book yet written about the Bush presidency. Perhaps it was seeing "The Dark Knight" at the same time, but if you read that book, absorb what is tells us about what has happened to this country these past seven years, and then read or watch this election campaign filter through the ether, it is hard to avoid a sense of deep concern about where we're headed. We have war criminals as president and vice-president, and a constitution staggering after one serious terror attack. But the campaign is about whether Obama is like Paris Hilton.

"The threat of Rove and his ilk is not that their petty, deceptive and irresistibly subjective tactics are evil in a petty, deceptive, childish kind of way. It's that their venial sins distract from their mortal ones. It's the mortal ones we have to be worried about. And the mortal ones that they are getting away with."

Why is it that the moron brigade imagines that Iraq policy began with the escalation? Shouldn't the monumentally bad decision to go to Iraq count? If, for example, one candidate had such poor judgment on world events that he voted to attack a nation that was of no threat to the national security of the United States and had no humanitarian emergency, shouldn't that candidate pretty much have his "national security credentials" revoked? Hell, just because I drove drunk once and knocked a busload of kids into the ocean, people still hold that decision against me, and only 22 schoolchildren died because of me. Hundreds of thousands of people have died because of McCain's poor decision making.

(I suppose there are humorless people who will read that as an admission of guilt in a drunk driving accident - it was a joke, and not in as poor taste as suggesting that we hand the nation over to "onion belt" McCain)

Hey, check out the latest turd squeezed out by CBSNews, "O Force One". And the vicious comments underneath.

This uppity black man has a nicer plane than McCain!

That's Andrew. He just noticed. Don't worry. He'll forget again. Then notice again. Surprised!

McCain's advertisements are all trying to avoid substance.

Not all.

Now you aren't happy, that current norms are not symmetric regarding black/white racial stuff...

It's fairly simple. Dog whistle adds designed to conjure fear & loathing of a black candidate are simply politics as usual. If you wanna get a tantrum out of jerry, you've got to toss out a generalization about white folks. Clear a space on the floor & watch him do St. Vitus dance.

The 18th and 19th century wars are over, including the Cold War and beginning in 1993 with Bill Clinton we thought we'd gotten past all that. The economy got better and everyone could sense a new time had begun -- a time of peace and prosperity for everyone.

But, the Conservative Bush Republicans weren't done inflicting themselves on us. And, Lord knows, they might not be finished with Dubya. But, now, after two more terms of that nuttery we are nearly free (again) and a lot of us want to return to that long national nightmare of peace and prosperity -- the peace dividend.

McCain offers us the Vietnam war and endless occupation of Iraq and the Southern Strategy and Lee Atwater style political campaigns (forever).

I'm not absolutely certain where Obama might take us, but it has to be something better. It can't be as bad as the Bush era and it certainly isn't reliving days of tragedy half a century ago.

I'm waiting for an Obama ad where some sexy black chick like Halle Berry goes on seductively about the senator who parties and then whispers, "John, call me."

Sounds like fun, huh?

The funny thing about Obama's tire inflation remarks is that they were absolutely, totally correct.

Meanwhile, over on the other side, John McCain has become the White Pride candidate.

when reflecting on the McCain ad strategy and those who run it, it's useful to keep an observation by WH Auden in mind: "Propaganda is the use of magic by those who no longer believe in it against those who still do."

I went to Border's today, and somehow, in spite of all logic, there are still ample books to hide or shitcan. Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" (with the Ironic cover featuring a Wal-Mart smiley face with a Hitler mustache!) probably takes the NYT Oxymoron prize for sheer moronic content. Where did these Regnery-backed idiots come from? There is no intellectual basis for conservatism in the United States any longer. These O'Reilly-Hannity excremental screeds are purchased en mass to sit alongside thoughtful books to give the conservative movement the APPEARANCE of legitimacy. Screw-'em. Hide, toss, or harangue book-store manager over the White Power series of crap foisted on us. Freedom of speech ends with racist propaganda. To Hell with the stultifying simpletons. And order any God-damned green you want with your salad; with the Bush administration, we have ever-diminishing safe produce from which to choose.

Your sentence is ambiguous and open to interpretation. (Whose cultural insecurities--the insecurity of OTHERS, like exploited workers voting against their own economic interest, is the basis of modern conservatism? Etc.) But whatever it was you really meant to say, let me just tweak your wording thusly:

Let's change it from "Cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism" to "Cultural HATRED is the foundation of modern American conservatism."

Pigs like Bush and Cheney and Rove may be deeply insecure at base, with their insides full of festering, rotting worms, but when it comes to the beliefs and values that they oppose, I don't think they "fear" them or feel "insecure" about them. They just HATE them, with the dull incomprehension of their brutal, twisted, thuggish souls.

MatthewRMarler: Since he does not believe that the surge worked... he being now agnostic whereas he voted then against the surge because the war was "already lost"

Please. Yes, US casualties are down. However, while Iraqi casualties are down, they're at 2005-2006 levels--which is to say, still intolerable. And that's after elimination of most mixed neighborhoods and walling off urban areas, and huge population displacements, much of which is outside Iraq. Moreover, while the administration suggests 15 of 18 benchmarks have been met, the GAO's and CRS's interpretations are much less flattering.

In short, to say the surge has "worked" requires a very narrow, selective and myopic view. A view that requires you to forget about pre-surge events such as the the Sadr cease fire in the late summer of 2007, the Anbar awakening in the fall of 2007, the ethnic cleansing and displacement--all of which made the time leading up to the surge horrid, but which set the stage for the subsequent reduction in violence, as well as a divided Iraq and unresolved conflict.

The surge hasn't "worked", so much as it has delayed the day of reckoning.

Oh has407,but the surge has worked it's magic. Oil production is up. Press coverage of the ongoing disaster in Iraq (and to the unfortunate foreigners tasked with the occupation), have become blessedly rare. Talking points about McCain's brillant surge tactic, are effective. All other results are just collateral damage, and we've long since learned not to see it.

The slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy is not unrelated to this.

There is no "slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy". There may be a slow collapse of the appearance of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy that has some pretense of being focussed on the general social welfare, but conservatism has, since "liberalism" emerged and a label was needed for what it opposed, simply been the defense of the power of entrenched elites, usually defended with appeals to tradition, religion, and tribal (national/ethnic) identity; that's all the content conservatism has ever had, and it hasn't lost any of it recently.

has407 :The surge hasn't "worked", so much as it has delayed the day of reckoning.

maybe so, but that is not Obama's position either. Obama has said that he can not tell whether the surge has worked better than his previous policy (which was to withdraw regardless of the consequences that ensued); without committing to the idea that the surge has worked, he now favors withdrawing troops only as circumstances permit, while admitting that they may be required for some time now.

He doesn't know whether the U.S. troops did any good, but he does know that they are still needed?

(in the famous "mistranslation" of Nouri al-Maliki's agreement with Obama, it wasn't that there was a mistranslation, but that the phrase "as conditions permit" was omitted from some of the reports. Obama and Maliki have since both clarified that the withdrawal will be conditional on further progress being achieved. Obama has also clarified that he believes that American troops will be required "for some time".)

My guess is that your typical Red State voter doesn't even know what arugula is.

What a bizarre elitist that Obama is--talking about the price of arugula to Iowa argulua farmers! No one in a red state could ever sympathize with that . . .

Oh, ANDREW...we don't need to have a discussion about how the BUSHCO mess will be corrected by St. McShame...we just need to believe in the MAVERICK!!! Don't you hear everyone who talks about him tell you what a GREAT GUY he is...what a war HERO he is...what a straight talker he used to be!????? It's just Obama that "won't tell you how he'll do anything" (easy to believe if you just listen to MSM punditry)...and is there any real concerted effort to INFORM anyone...or shall we just debate the meaningfulness of the celebrity of Obama, Hilton, and Spears?!

Marler keeps pretending that Obama's position has shifted. This is, as expected from the conservatives, a lie. Only idiots think that Obama's position was ever "drop everything and run away."

As for the "success" of the escalation - you, Marler, can't tell us with any specificity, how the troops affected the conditions on the ground. As pointed out above to your lying ass, many of the things attributed to the "surge" predate it. Conditions having nothing to do with the troops like the ethnic cleansing and ethnic separation have changed the dynamics.

And none of this subtlety gets into Old Onion Belt's speeches. His ignorance about Iraq is as far reaching as yours. Obama, on the other hand, seems to have noticed a little thing we in the reality based community call "facts." You might look into them some time.

So Onion Belt McCain, stupid enough to vote to assault the Iraqis, stupid enough to attribute to the "surge" events that happened before the "surge" and stupid enough to attribute to the "surge" things that had nothing to do with it. And this is the candidate you think should take office?

Or maybe he isn't stupid, maybe Onion Belt just doesn't give a fuck and is using jingoism to feed cultural insecurities. Which is why his budget doesn't go to debates on energy policy but rather to childish taunts like the celebrity ad.

I wonder what is preventing the Obama campaign from addressing important policy questions? It seems that they spend too much time admiring themselves in the mirror. What will Obama do about the pressing problem of $4/gallon gasoline? The answer appears to be nothing. McCain wants to drill for more U.S. produced oil.

Sorry Kevin, but we do not elect a list of policies. We elect a man. Character matters.
For the third time in succession you guys have chosen a dud candidate. This matters. Your desperate attempt to deflect the discovery of this into some dry comparison of list-of-policies-A versus list-of-policies-B will not fly. We're entrusting an enormous amount of power (more for bad than for good) into the hands of one individual. It is vital that this be a good individual. Character matters. Examination of character is vital.

Alright, let's examine Gigolo John's character -- and remember, this is what his fellow Republicans say about him:

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me," the senator expounded. -- Senator Thad Cochran, R-MI

"I decided I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger." -- Senator Pete Domenici, R-NM

"There's nothing redeeming about John McCain...he's a hypocrite." -- Former House GOP Whip Tom DeLay

"He is a vicious person. Nearly all the Republican Senators endorsed Bush because they knew McCain from serving with him in the Senate. They so disliked him that they wouldn't support him. They have been on the hard end of his behavior." -- Former Representative Charles LeBoutillier, R-NY

"John was very rough in the sandbox. Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. He hasn't built up a lot of goodwill." -- Former Senator Rick Santorum, R-PA

"No dissent, no opinion to the contrary, however reasonable, will be entertained. Hardheaded is another way to say it. Arrogant is another way to say it. Hubristic is another way to say it. Too proud for his own good is another way to say it. It's a quality about him that disturbs me." -- Larry Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aide.

"His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, that should disqualify him." -- Former Senator Bob Smith, R-NH

"What happens if he gets angry in crisis in the presidency? It's difficult enough to be a negotiator, but it's almost impossible when you're the type of guy who's so angry at anybody who doesn't do what he wants. It's the president's job to negotiate and stay calm. I just don't see that he has that quality." -- Former Arizona GOP Chairman John Hinz

"I think it's his style as much as much as the positions he takes...I think it's his attitude that it's his way or the highway." -- Former Senator Tim Hutchinson, R-AR

"I don't like McCain. I don't like him at all." -- Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO

"What has struck me about McCain is that everybody underestimated the ability of his advisers and him to hypnotize the national media, because most of us in the media in Arizona thought of him as a guy who had a terrible temper, occasionally had a foul mouth, a guy who whined and pouted unless he got his way. McCain has a temper that is bombastic, volatile, and purple-faced. Sometimes he gets out of control. Do you want somebody sitting in the White House with that kind of temper?" -- Pat Murphy, former editor of the Arizona Republic, and a former friend of McCain

I wonder what is keeping Onion Belt McCain from addressing policy issues. It's not like the "allow offshore drilling" "policy" is going to provide a significant amount of oil - hell, we could probably save more oil simply by having all of our cars properly maintained.

To call Onion Belt's moronic giveaways to the oil industry "policy" is to elevate fart-jokes into high art.

Marler: Didn't the arugula offense, so to speak, originate with Sen. Clinton's supporters? It hardly seems appropriate to call it a "conservative" strategy.

Clinton and her supporters ARE conservatives. Get a clue.

If after eight years of Bush fascist-lite government and the Democrats still don't fight back,then we deserve every bad thing coming our way. When will the Dems learn you can hit back. You can even hit HARD! Let people know McCain is only going to continue Bush's policies and sell the country out to the corporate interests.