Category Archives: GOP

Cross pollination

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There has been much hand-wringing in the last few days about the latest presidential polls. First we had McCain and Obama in a dead-heat and now we have Gallup, CBS and USA Today tracking polls all giving the Republican a definite edge. Given the latest unemployment figures (at six percent, the highest in five years), the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the American tradition of voters punishing the party in power when the economy goes south, you would think our man would be golden.

A few people have even asked me if these polls aren’t skewed by the media either because a) they need a horse race for the sake of ratings & circulation or b) they’re rooting for the status quo, ie entrenched GOP power. I’m no expert on polling, nor do I play one on TV, but I have heard it said, by people who might actually know whereof they speak, that polling is a crossroads now. After the miserable job they did in the last election, pollsters have still not come to grips with the fact that many younger Americans do not use landlines (which is how polling is almost exclusively conducted) and wouldn’t answer a pollster’s call if they did. 

This could be statistically significant given the Dems gains in registering new voters and, as of this writing, our numerical advantage. According to an AP report that appeared today, there are about 42 million registered Democrats and 31 million Republicans nationwide, and we have posted huge gains in key battleground states. A related piece in the Huffington Post makes a convincing case that Gallup et al are drawing on a GOP-heavy sampling of voters. And Republicans love their new cavemom, Sarah Palin. 

Far more disturbing are the polls that show independents moving to McCain. I like to think that they did not have their dial moved by the addition of Palin; how independent are you if you support a ban on abortion and advocate teaching creationism in schools? Of course, I might just be out of touch with the values of middle America, and one man’s spunky hockey-mom is another man’s Big Nurse. But I like to think that the people whose job is tracking the electorate don’t know what they’re talking about this time. Just like they didn’t the last…

Nothing Is Inevitable

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These were among John McCain’s last words in his acceptance speech last night, and as bumper-sticker mottos go, I think it’s pretty catchy. Of course, it causes you to think of the inevitable exceptions to that maxim — death and taxes (though not, Republicans would posit, the “death tax”). They would also like to add to the list: the short memory of voters. 

As he heads into the battle season, McCain’s playing a complicated game. He has appeased the base with red meat from this year’s Spiro Agnew, Sarah Palin, while reminding even the most casual viewer of what a white party the GOP is. And now he is trying to get those moderates that remain to remember the earlier McCain: the reformer, the iconoclast, the maverick. (Did you hear that word often enough this week? I half expected them to play the theme song from the old TV show of the same name, though McCain may have been the only one on stage who would remember it. Instead they played Heart’s “Barracuda,” which prompted the song’s author, Democrat Nancy Wilson, to tell EW, “I feel completely fucked over.”)

It is going to be interesting to see how, from his position on the prow of the ship that brought us endless war and a tanking economy,  JMC continues to disassociate himself from it. Watching all those red-faced men in blue blazers chanting for change was funny in a Brooks Brothers riot kind of way, but don’t laugh too long. An Obama victory is far from assured;  I believe this election, like many before it, will be settled by the least attentive voters, who are moved by their last impression. If theirs is one of John McCain, Moderate Guy, we could lose.

I’m still counting on the stink bomb set off by the W White House to move people in the other direction. The president’s plummeting approval rating over the last four years was not a blip on the screen but a true case of buyer’s remorse. And those who voted for him in ’04 did not just buy the man, they bought the party and the party line. Maybe those who have been burned will remember this time. Another thing that is inevitable is change.