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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

My Haid Is Asploding.

I just saw this ad from John McCain (h/t to RalphB at TalkLeft). In it, he defines America's new purpose: Energy Security. The announcer intones, "For many years, American technology protected us...We didn't go to the moon because it was easy, but because it was hard."

Holy Jumping Jesus.

I've had various conversations with family members and my spousal unit about how the Democrats need to do EXACTLY what John McCain is doing: Redefine the words "national security" to include getting off our dependence on foreign oil, and re-familiarize Americans with the concept of sacrifice and hard work (without the air quotes a la Monsieur Deciderer). And even more unbelievable, McCain is using John F. Kennedy to do it!

If Jimmy Carter had Senator McCain's marketing team in 1976, we would be a whole different country by now. Carter's plan would have had us almost totally independent of foreign oil. We never would have invaded, oh, so many countries. Our world would not be in the grip of catastrophic climate change. Etc. etc. ad infinitum.

I am nearly speechless because of this incontrovertible fact: While Senator Obama chases the mythical creamy center, which to him appears to be located somewhere between the far and extreme right, John McCain is co-opting Democratic frames and using them to move to Obama's left.

Someone please wake me up from this nightmare.

6 comments:

RalphB said...

It's not only that McCain is running to the left of Obama, on energy he clearly is to the left of Obama.

His proposal for removing the high tariff on sugar ethanol, which yields 8 times the energy used to produce it, would increase the supply of cheaper E85 available right away. Then do away with the subsidies for corn ethanol, which yields about 1/3 more energy than it takes to produce it, and we can go forward.

The problem is you'd have to take on the Iowas farmers to get it done. Obama won't. McCain will.

madamab said...

Is McCain seriously proposing that?!

Jesu Christe.

I looked at that ad and my mind translated it to, "Heh-heh. I'm going to keep pushing corn ethanol, nuclear and coal gasification technologies, all the while drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge and other places where the ROI would be minimal but my evil Republican soul would be happy to destroy all that darned nature. You've seen one tree, you've seen 'em all."

Maybe I should take another look at McCain's energy proposals. If we don't have a huge change YESTERDAY, political parties won't matter. Climate change will destroy our entire world.

RalphB said...

On his website :-) , there's a pretty good look at the Lexington Project, which is his energy plan.

While it's not fleshed out to the Hillary level, it looks pretty good. I really don't know what to think about this for sure, but it looks like he's really serious about energy and the environment.

RalphB said...

Well I found this little nugget as well. He's running to the left of Obama on the housing crisis, I think,

John McCain's HOME Plan Will Keep 200,000 To 400,000 Families From Losing Their Homes. "But at the same time, McCain is calling for aggressive federal action to help keep 200,000 to 400,000 families from losing their homes. That plan has many of the elements of a proposal by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., requiring participating lenders to forgive part of the loan principal and then write a new loan that would be backed by the federal government through the Federal Housing Administration." (Tom Raum, "Everyone's Invited: McCain Economic Plan Draws From Both Parties," Tucson Citizen, 4/17/08)

Anonymous said...

I wrote a post a while ago title "Please God I want to wake up"
Scary stuff in our country- up is down, left is right, Dems are using Republican election stealing playbooks. Did the German people feel this way in the run up to Hitler's power grab?

Lee Scoresby said...

McCain isn't serious about any of this stuff. He talks a good game; sometimes he'll work with more liberal democrats. But, at the end of the day, he usually opts for the symbolism over the substance. For all of Obama's cave on FISA, remember that McCain *wrote* the "compromise" that suspended Habeas Corpus, described the recent 5-4 POTUS decision that courts could rule on detainees the "worst decision in history," and is known for lack of much of *any* leadership on the environment in the Senate. He's even backed away from his own wimpy, pro-industry, cap-and-trade proposal.

There's a reason HRC is throwing all her weight behind Obama, as are her surrogates: she understands that McCain will be a disaster.