10/13/08: Conservatives to McCain: Change or Lose

Over the weekend, a number of conservative writers openly agreed that McCain’s erratic and dysfunctional campaign is going nowhere. Even the arch-conservative William Kristol, who to date is the only major newspaper writer safe enough to be blessed with a Palin interview, says it’s time for McCain to fire his campaign

and start afresh. I agree – it’s not merely enough for McCain to have a penitent moment admitting “Obama is a decent family man” – he needs to disavow his negative strategy with a major gesture – say firing Sleazemeister Steve Schmidt or Lobbyist Supremo Rick Davis. Perhaps something like that, in combination with a fresh agenda focusing on specific ways he’d fix the economy or help the middle class (starting with acknowledging that there IS one) might go a long way to recovering some of the ground they’ve lost lately. It’s no guarantee, but it would return this election to a higher moral ground and offer people a real choice based on the issues that matter to them most.

In any case, it’s apparent the current muckracking strategy is going nowhere – last week’s barrage of negative ads and inflammatory rallies with Palin accusing Obama as being a dangerous terrorist had no effect on voters, even according to a FOX News poll released Friday. In fact, the timing of McCain’s penitent moment was interesting, coming as it did right after the poll was released – probably not a coincidence. And other, more mainstream polls showed the same thing – an ABC News poll released yesterday also said that there seems to be an “Attack Blowback”, ie, voters think that McCain is running a negative campaign rather than focusing on issues (59% to 35%), up from 48-45% just 21/2 weeks earlier. Obama, on the other hand, gained a little on his already high favorable rating in this poll (68% to 26%). Check the link for more numbers from this poll.

So will McCain really retool his campaign and put the “Straight Talk Express” back on its tracks? Probably not, but for the sake of his own legacy and to allow this nation to heal the deep divisive wounds wrought by the Rovian politics of the last 8 years, I wish he would. It’s becoming clear that he’s a loser in this election anyway, the only question is how he wants to go, with dignity and honor having fought a good fight, or be tossed out on his ass after a hailstorm of sleaze. From his own words “I’m going to whip the you-know-what in this debate“ (talking about the leading candidate for President of the United States!), sadly it doesn’t look like he’s going to take the first option.