things are looking up

[topaz]

U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) slams McCain for picking Sarah Palin for VP: "She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said in an interview published Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything." (AP)

FiveThirtyEight.com reports on the state of the race and asks: Is McCain In Trouble?  (Hint: yes, they think he is.)

"This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.... As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama." --Wick Allison, former publisher of the National Review.

(The fuckin' National Review!)

Comments

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised at all that Wick Allison would say such things. I'm a conservative myself, and I left the G.O.P. in 1980 when Reagan brought in his theocrats, his upside-down Keynesians (hint: subsidizing the top of the economy instead of the bottom is not the opposite), and his utter disregard for the traditionally conservative support for the right to privacy.

So yes, the "neocons" are not conservative at all. And I'm glad that someone with indisputable conservative credentials is saying it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Speaking of foreign policy experience, how did you leave out McCain's Spain gaffe (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1842156,00.html)?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

They're totally gaffing too fast for me to keep up.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm just squeeeing all over meself. This makes my day a lot happier; thanks for posting all of it.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

I wish Buckley were still alive and in full voice. I like to think he'd have a lot to say about recent developments, none of it kind to the GOP.

Andrew Sullivan, gods bless him, just isn't the same.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Silver trends lefty, though, and his sidebar and graphs still point to a McCain victory. I hope his "in trouble" opinion isn't just wishful thinking plus bias.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Sure, his preference would be to go that way, but he's also the first to point out that his model assumes that any change in direction is noise until proved otherwise. In other words, the projections are conservative with respect to fluctuations in the polls.

What he's saying here is that while the numbers don't yet look definitive, he thinks that the tide is turning. And in a way the statistics suggest that he's right: while the overall prediction still favors the Repubs at the moment, note that the tracking graph of McCain's margin appears to be bottoming out.

[ceo]

The electoral vote totals are (obviously) based on state polls, which aren't done nearly as often as national ones, and therefore tend to lag the national polls by a week or so.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Hope these dudes have some influence.