US President George W. Bush on Wednesday anointed one-time bitter rival John McCain as his preferred successor and heir to the vastly unpopular Iraq war and deepening economic fears.
It was not clear how Bush, whose approval ratings lie at near record-lows with 10 months left in his term, would help the man he defeated for the Republican party's nomination in 2000 as the November 2008 elections draw nigh.
The president was expected to try to rally skeptical Republicans behind McCain, raise some of the millions of dollars that are the lifeblood of US campaigns, and work to help the party recapture the US Congress, aides said.
You get that? The day after McCain clinches the nomination of his party...the titular leader of his party endorses him. Let the hosannas ring across the land.
(OK, so after a few hours sleep, I found something to say about politics after all.)
4 comments:
You have posted in the past about the unpopularity of the Iraq War as if it is a static thing. Well, the latest Pew Poll shows it is not:
In the most in-depth picture of the trend, the Pew report says that about half the public (48%) now says the Iraq war effort is going either very well or fairly well. That compares to a more than 2-1 majority who said it was going badly a year ago. Nearly half (47%) say the U.S. should keep its troops in Iraq until the situation there has stabilized -- roughly the same as those (49%) who favor bringing troops home as soon as possible. A year ago, 53% favored rapid withdrawal versus 42% who favored keeping the troops in Iraq.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB
120468439524812515.html?
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Obviously the war is still very controversial and many people do not support the effort, but it is also obvious that many Americans do support it and want to see us stay until we can leave a winner.
The problem for the Democrats is they cannot seem to separate the questionable reasoning (to some anyway) for going to war in the first place with the what is obvious to me anyway, common-sense reasoning for continuing our effort to destroy the terrorists and help re-build Iraq into a working democracy.
As to Bush's endorsement of McCain - I don't think it hurts or helps him. Bush will do some fundraising on his own and probably won't have many, if any, joint appearances with McCain both because he isn't that popular with some voters who might go for McCain, but also because any candidate wants to be seen on his own. He will also stump for congressional candidates where he is needed as well.
Bush "isn't that popular with *some* voters"?
That's like saying Dan Quayle was no Ronald Reagan (let alone Jack Kennedy).
Fair enough . . . I'm not that fond of him myself mostly for his failure to secure our borders and his failure to hold down spending . . . but I don't hate him like, well, you do :)
You didn't address my larger issue of the support for the war though.
Oh, and I'm no big fan of Jack Kennedy. I wonder had he lived to see his whole term what would the left really think of him now? Vietnam would have been something he would have had to deal with instead of Johnson, for example. And he lowered taxes and used force against Cuba. All things Dems find fault with now to put it mildly.
I don't care that much about Kennedy one way or the other--I was just refering to the 1988 veep debate.
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