McCain Implosion Predicted - Happening Now?
Rumors have been circulating for several days now that McCain’s campaign is in the process of collapsing under its own weight of high cost help; lack of cash. But is it collapsing? Following are excerpts from two sources, Townhall.com (Dick Morris) and ABC News (Teddy Davis).
It has been interesting to me that so many people have continued to be interested in a candidate who always seems to be morose at worse and near second stage REM sleep at best. Mr. McCain is a true American patriot no matter how you shake it. And he continues to have a huge stake in America with two sons serving our nation in the military. But I think he is done. I think it may be time to have him take an easy chair and watch from the margins. I do think that Morris is correct about McCain. In this piece he is wrong on Romney as it appears he has not done his research on Romney’s actual positions, legislation he has enacted, and expert endorsements he has received that completely counter Morris’ assertions to the contrary.
Following are excerpts from Dick Morris’ latest pontificating in Townhall.com today:
The John McCain candidacy, launched amid much hope, fanfare, and high expectations, may be dying before our eyes.
Even worse, it may go out with a whimper instead of a bang.
It may not end in an Armageddon style primary defeat, but just dry up from lack of support, money, or interest.
_____What is McCain’s problem?
Why did he go from the most exciting candidate in the race a year ago to the verge of oblivion today?Fundamentally, he failed to heed the Shakespeare’s admonition “to thine own self be true.” The John McCain of the 2000 campaign is nowhere in evidence in 2007.
Instead of challenging the party establishment, he pathetically waits at its door, hoping to be invited. Where he used to challenge the religious right, he now panders to them. Once he led the battle against big tobacco, for corporate governance reform, in favor of campaign financing changes, and in support of action against global warming.
Now he has been identified with two issues, neither popular in the Republican Party: The Iraqi troop surge and amnesty for illegal aliens.
_____Republican strategist and Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins makes an interesting point about McCain: He has switched roles. He has gone from being the McCain of the 2000 race, challenging the party orthodoxy, offering new ideas, and demanding reforms and changes to the Bush of the 2000, toeing the party line and only timidly venturing different ideas if he advances them at all. And this is no way to win the presidency or even the Republican nomination. But where it has counted, on the two core issues that move Republican voters these days — tax cuts and immigration — McCain is badly out of step with the GOP base.
He voted against the Bush tax cuts, the only real success of the administration and the main accomplishment of the president’s first term. On immigration, his bill, cosponsored by Ted Kennedy, permits illegal aliens to become citizens without returning to their native lands and seeking legal entry.
_____He looks small, shrunken, weak, cowed, and timid. He shows all of his 70 years of age including the roughly lived period at the hands of the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese. It is hard to imagine him as a strong leader as he meekly answers questions from the likes of Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos.
Click here for ENTIRE ARTICLE
Following is the entire ABC News article by Teddy Davis about a possible McCain collapse. Donilon says McCain is “the unchange”. Mitt Romney has always been be the man of the hour for innovation and positive change. I have always thought in many ways Romney and McCain are polar opposites within the same party in that Romney is a true statesman and McCain is a true politician; one of many contrasts between them.
Two Washington veterans agreed Wednesday that a “change dynamic” is at work in a 2008 presidential campaign dominated by the war in Iraq. They disagreed, however, about what it means for the presidential aspirations of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
“In a change dynamic, McCain is the un-change,” said Tom Donilon, a former Clinton administration official who has served as senior adviser to Democratic presidents and presidential candidates for 20 years.
Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein disagreed with Donilon on the question of whether McCain’s presidential bid has suffered a “collapse” as a result of embracing President Bush’s plan to increase U.S. troop levels in Iraq by more than 20,000.
Duberstein and Donilon offered their assessments of the 2008 presidential race during the first panel discussion of a joint project between the Brookings Institution and ABC News. The joint project is called “Opportunity ‘08: Independent Ideas for Our Next President.”
Wednesday’s discussion, which was moderated by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, came on the heels of an ABC News/Washington Post poll showing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani holding a two-to-one advantage over McCain among Republican nationally.
During a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Duberstein disagreed with Stephanopoulos when he suggested that Giuliani and former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney have given themselves more flexibility to break from Bush on Iraq in the future by being less vocal than McCain in their support for the president’s proposed troop surge.
“Rudy is very much locked in to the president’s policy,” said Duberstein, adding that Romney, who is at 4 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, has no choice but to support the president’s position, given Duberstein’s prediction that a huge preponderance of Republican primary voters will support Bush’s pursuit of a robust policy in Iraq.
Donilon took issue with Duberstein’s suggestion that Giuliani owes his rise to high name recognition.
“McCain is also well known,” said Donilon.
The key for McCain, Duberstein told ABC News following the forum, is for him to “talk about the future as a change agent.”
Click here to go to the ABC NEWS Posting.
~ Vic Lundquist
