Primed For McCain

by digby

The latest GOP mantra on Iraq sounds incredibly pathetic and it’s probably why they are losing. Here’s Bay Buchanan on CNN yesterday:

BUCHANAN: There’s no question in that people have a legitimate concern.

But I think the issue here is not to debate whether we should have gone or not, but that we have a serious situation. We are at war in Iraq. It is not going well . What do you do now?

Bush expanded on that in an interview with George Stephanopoulos:

BUSH: I have always found that, when a person goes in to vote, they are going to want to know what that person is going to do.

You know, what is the plan for a candidate on Iraq? What do they believe? Frankly, I hear disparate voices all over the place on the Democrats’ side about Iraq. We got some saying, get out.

The argument seems to be, “yes we’ve fucked up, and we’ve fucked up so badly that there are no good choices. Do you want to take a chance that the Democrats will fuck it up too?”

I think people have just come to the reasonable conclusion that they have nothing to lose by letting the Democrats have a crack at it. Certainly, it hardly seems wise to reward these people by validating their policy at the voting booth. The problem, of course, is that the congress has only the nuclear option of cutting off funds, which they will not do. No maqtter how many hearings are held and how much dirt is exposed, Bush would, in my opinion, die before he would withdraw (or even be seen to be withdrawing) from Iraq. That hideous problem will be left to the next president.

Which is where St John McCain comes in.Atrios and Greenwald both discuss his rambling comments about Iraq on Chris Matthews’ show earlier this week. I saw that show and I was particularly struck by this:

MCCAIN: I don‘t think we need to think of the draft again because I don‘t think it makes sense in a whole variety of ways. But I guarantee you, if these young people felt that this nation was in a crisis and we asked them to serve, virtually every one of them would stand up because I have the greatest confidence in the young people of America.

The current problem is that unless we are invaded by martians all the crying wolf the Republicans have done these last five years means that nobody believes Bush’s abstract claims of threat anymore. They went so over the top with their screeching, fearmongering that it’s lost its punch.

McCain could change that. He will be the grown-up reformer who is coming in to fix the mess that the terrible Bushies have made. And his pitch is going to be “sacrifice” wrapped up in all kinds of feel-good symbols of national interest. He will try to persuade the country that the crisis we face(however he defines it) requires that young people cast off their self-centered interests and serve their country. It’s a potent message and it doesn’t really have to make sense.

John McCain is a bigger warmonger than George W. Bush, always has been. The only difference is that he doesn’t believe, as the administration does, that it can be done without a national mobilization. (Like most nationalists he feels that such a mobilization is good for the national character.) The change in policy will involve spending more money and putting more young people in battle, not less.

Bush’s warmaking desires have been restrained by his unwillingness to put the country on a real war footing or create a coherent military strategy. McCain will have no such restraint and may very well be the man who sets this country on a militaristic binge the likes of which we haven’t seen before.

Here’s the opening of his speech to the Republican Convention in 2004:

It’s a big thing, this war.

It’s a fight between a just regard for human dignity and a malevolent force that defiles an honorable religion by disputing God’s love for every soul on earth. It’s a fight between right and wrong, good and evil.

And should our enemies acquire for their arsenal the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they seek, this war will become a much bigger thing.

So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.

And much is expected of us.

We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.

Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture …liberty.

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.

Coming from Bush that talk is just more “blah, blah, blah.” Coming from McCain it is gravitas.

The failure in Iraq is going to cause many Americans to yearn for some sort of restoration of national pride. We really hate losing. If the country can be persuaded that McCain is the competent version of the man with the bullhorn, he could win and he could take the nation down a very scary road. Seven years of relentless rhetoric about a “different kinda war” and “the enemy hates America” has perfectly primed this country for a man on a white horse.

If he can manage to combine America’s tribal pride, its yearning for some sort of spiritual meaning and its fear of the other and put together an inspirational, nationalistic message (along with his pre-fab image as a straight-talking “reformer”) he could be very hard to beat — and very, very dangerous. He’s a warmongering hawk, don’t ever forget it. The only real difference between him and Bush on these matters is that he’s willing to attend the funerals of the dead.

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