Charles Stricklin

I’ve never hidden the fact that John McCain was never my first choice for GOP nominee. Shoot, he wasn’t my 12th choice. Now that Sen. Obama is president-elect and the Democrats control both the House and the now filibuster-proof Senate, I can share my unvarnished opinions of both the GOP as a whole and the McCain/Palin campaign in particular.

For a post mortem let’s begin with where McCain went wrong:

1. He handcuffed himself with campaign finance reform. - When McCain remained true to his promise to accept public funding when Obama broke that same promise, he doomed himself to capping the finances of his campaign to a fraction of his opponent’s. Television ads are a huge way to turn and mold public opinion and they cost a lot of money. Toward the end, Obama was running as many as six ads to McCain’s one, with an hour-long infomercial on 4 networks during prime time, to boot.
2. He shot himself in the foot at the worst possible moment. - McCain had retaken the lead and seemed well on his way to winning in November when he shocked everybody and announced he’d suspend his campaign, possibly cancel the first debate and fly back to Washington to help with the housing meltdown. I’ll give him an A for guts, but a D for brains. What did he think Obama was going to do?! Suspend his campaign?! Syeah… right! Another thing: No one wanted him there! The Democrats didn’t like it when he tried to steal the spotlight, neither did the Republicans, and when he got there, he messed thing up more than he helped, and all the while, his negatives started going up at that point.
3. He fought too little, too late. - Obama’s lies and judgement stemming from his associations with William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright (no, I will not afford him the title “Reverend”) and Tony Rezko could have gained McCain needed points, but he unilaterally disarmed himself when it came to Wright, he brought up Ayers much too late in the campaign and I never even heard him mention Rezko. McCain must’ve wanted to appear above dirty politics, but I have news for him: All politics is dirty politics.
4. His staff and workers failed him. - At best, his campaign and therefore his campaign managers and staff were unorganized and at best inept and foolish. For staffers to be griping about Sarah Palin being a “diva” and “rogue” is bad form and amateurish.
5. He was shackled with President Bush. - More than anything else, McCain’s association with a vehemently disliked president, even within his own party (myself included) doomed his candidacy from the beginning. The truth is, almost the only thing McCain and President Bush share is a party affiliation. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say President Bush, as disliked as he is, is probably still more popular among Conservatives than John McCain ever was.
6. He shouldn’t have run in the first place. - For a senator whose bread and butter was made by cooperating with and capitulating to the opposition party when it was more appropriate to be partisan, who routinely belittled evangelicals and never shied away from a television camera and a microphone to then expect the very base he discounted to support him when he most needed it is incredulous and infuriating. John McCain was, and remains, a RINO and as such needs to be displaced from the next incarnation of the Grand Old Party, but more on that in my next post, where I’ll try and lay out some guidelines for the restoration of the party…