The marvelously motley GOP crew

I almost feel sorry for Republican voters. Almost. The GOP's presidential line-up ranges from the obscure to the meanspirited to the befuddled to the has-been, and -- happy days -- the base can't be happy.

Their erstwhile front-runner, John McCain, is already hitting on both befuddled and has-been pistons and his formal announcement on Wednesday did nothing to slow his downhill pageantry. In fact, he only seemed to hit the accelerator.

I caught part of it -- enough of it, more aptly -- and what a melancholic performance it was. After detailing each of several intolerable evils going unaddressed by (his pal George's) government, his rhetorical riff was, "That's not good enough for America. And when I'm president, it won't be good enough for me." He delivered it robotically and flatly, as though he neither believed it himself or even cared to fake the necessary sincerity.

Some argue that McCain's initial and more stupendous blunder was in careening to the cultural right to woo primary voters. That tactical shift was, of course, as bungled as Wednesday's speech and it showed just as clearly. But I would disagree that it was the deciding factor in his now-inevitable washout. Catering to social conservatives, no matter how incongruously, has become a staple of Republican politics that requires every one of its candidates with half a brain to careen far rightward at some point, so it was nothing particularly unique or decisive.

McCain's real blunder, rather, was in believing the oft-repeated construct that voters will support a candidate with a plucky hold on his convictions, even when those convictions are incompatible with the voters'. What absolute, rudimentary nonsense. If a war is unpopular, one's own popularity isn't likely to survive in championing that war. It was a naive, rookie mistake on McCain's part to think it would, and such an imposing error simply isn't recoverable in the majors.

Then there is the current front-runner -- he of tediously recycled fear mongering. Giuliani must be borrowing some of McCain's consultants, because he seems oblivious to the scoop that the fear-mongering dog has largely stopped hunting. His would-be White House predecessor has done run that poor animal to exhaustion.

When Hizzoner suggested a couple days ago that a Democratic president would "wave the white flag" and blindly go "on defense," all he really accomplished -- besides showing his unsightly fangs -- was to remind the electorate that the worst terrorist attack in this nation's history came on a defense-addled Republican's watch. Keener pols would learn from such a self-inflicted wound and vow to faithfully go forth and sin no more. But shooting off his impetuous mouth is simply part of who Rudy is, fixed and constant, hence more vein-opening wounds are sure to come.

As for others among the GOP's more realistic hopefuls -- Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich -- here the base merely has a dreadful admixture of, respectively, the perfect coif, the unprobed image, the towering ego. As a hair-sprayed, celebrity-imbued and logorrheic triumvirate, they make quite a team. But separately, for reasons implied, their lasting power is anemic -- which is precisely how Republican voters must be feeling right now.

As I said, it's enough to make one take pity on them. Almost.

Comments

[Zee]

Bravo! Yes, repeat at every opportunity: 9/11 came on Bush's watch.

[Jane Hawes]

Rudy talks about "going on defense" as if that were a bad thing. I'm a Civil-War buff, and anybody who reads anything about that war knows that life is a lot easier on the defensive: You've got the high ground, you've got cover, and the attacker has to do all the hard work and take the heavy casualties. We got hit on 9/11 because we were NOT on the defensive - at least not as much as we should have been, given what the government knew at the time. Rudy is full of it.

[Matthew]

You see whats happening here don't you?These guys have lied so much that they are forgetting the lies they've already told.I firmly believe that the electorate are finally catching on to the dog and pony show thanks to great info that we get from PM and Buzzflash and all the other souls out there that have there heads screwed on straight.