The following batshit is from Richard Cohen who writes for the Washington Post. Not reading the Post on a regular basis, I assumed that this guy was a regular at Townhall or pj's. Holy F Batman. I'll take the R-G any day of the week.
The wingnut in question wrote this after admitting that McCain has flip-flopped on many, many important issues, but apparently we know that he'll really, really stand up for his core principles, which, so far, are confined to not being a propaganda tool for Communist regimes.[...H]ere is the difference between McCain and Obama -- and Obama had better pay attention. McCain is a known commodity. It's not just that he's been around a long time and staked out positions antithetical to those of his Republican base. It's also -- and more important -- that we know his bottom line. As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over. This -- not just his candor and nonstop verbosity on the Straight Talk Express -- is what commends him to so many journalists.
Obama might have a similar bottom line, core principles for which, in some sense, he is willing to die. If so, we don't know what they are. Nothing so far in his life approaches McCain's decision to refuse repatriation as a POW so as to deny his jailors a propaganda coup. In fact, there is scant evidence the Illinois senator takes positions that challenge his base or otherwise threaten him politically. That's why his reversal on campaign financing and his transparently false justification of it matter more than similar acts by McCain.
A presidential race is only incidentally about issues. It's really about likability and character. Obama is, to paraphrase what he said about Hillary Clinton, more than "likable enough" -- in fact, so much so that he is the most charismatic presidential candidate I've seen since Robert F. Kennedy. But the character question hangs -- not because of any evidence to the contrary and not in any moral sense, either, but because he is still young and lacks the job references McCain picked up in a North Vietnamese prison. McCain has a bottom line. Obama just moved his.
Fuck the election, McCain earned the presidency thirty some-odd years ago in Hanoi! Obama can be president when he serves time as a POW and proves he won't crack.
Seriously though, this is all they have? McCain may be a Bush clone that will kowtow to the far-right, but he won't kowtow to the North Vietnamese? [Insert Zombie Jesus reference here.]
h/t: S,N!
1 comment:
If only our torture policies had made more significant inroads domestically, Obama might have had the opportunity to become ready for the presidency.
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