Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why did John McCain Lose?

http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/11/pjb-why-did-john-mccain-lose/

"Yet, by Sept. 10, McCain, thanks to Sarah Palin, whose selection had proven a sensation, had come from eight points behind to take the lead, and Joe Biden was wailing that maybe Hillary would have been a better choice for Obama.

Then came the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, McCain�s assertion that the economy was fundamentally sound, and his panicked return to Washington to assist Bush and Hank Paulson push through a wildly unpopular bank bailout � using 700 billion in tax dollars to buy up rubbish paper the idiot bankers had put on their books.

The Establishment�s Man had come to save the Establishment."

he lost because more people voted for hussein.

Half the people who voted for Obama didn't want another 4 years of Bush... and McCain represented Bush for them. The other half were either black or so excited to vote a black man into the White House that they would have voted for anyone who was black.
Obama was a black man in the right place at the right time.

Penny

It's just the old ping pong game getting played.

Nixon *ping*

Carter *pong*

Reagan/Bush 1 *ping*

Clinton *pong*

Bush 2 *ping*

Obama *pong*

Point well taken.

But...I'll say it again, McCain didn't have fire in the belly for the job, Palin did but someone else can't win the game for you.

Women and those under 30 yrs old.

He lost because he doesn't hate to loose. He only likes to win.
He can't comprehend what Vince Lombardi said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

why vote for liberal lite, when you can have the real thing...

Vince Lombardi never said winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. When I get a chance I'll post the actual quote.

The base could hardly stand voting for him themselves, let alone going out and inspiring anybody undecided to vote for him. I sure struggled to sway anybody. It always became "vote for Palin", or "vote against Obama".

Did anyone picture him riding to victory carried by a crowd of people shouting "He sucks less!!!"?

Because nobody was excited to vote for McCain...even those who voted and campaigned for him were excited about it. Lots of people were excited to vote for Obama.

You only get so far by running on the platform of "I'm not the other guy". It didn't work for the democrats in 2000 or 2004, and it didn't work for the republicans in 2008.

He lost because he is not conservative. He was foisted on us by the early crossover vote (liberals) and the McCain/Huckabee screwing that they gave Romney in Virginia.The only excitement on the ticket was brought by Sarah.Anothe factor is that he didn't fight to win. The liberals will always use our civilty against us by pulling crap that they know most Republicans won't.
Obama won because of the reason posted previously and the fact that his campaign had no problem with playing dirty.
Just my humble opinion.

MONEY! He didn't have enough.

til later

Mostly because he campaigned and debated like a pathetic inept old man. Everytime I saw or heard him I was as concerned to have him win, as to have him lose. And yes, I voted for him, but only as a vote against Obama.

McCain really did suck less. That isn't enough to get elected.

The liberal press has been belittling Bush for years. McCain is associated with Bush.

The wars are unpopular. The economy is tanking.

Oprah praised Obama. Hollywood and the Ivy League liked Obama. The liberal media may as well have been on the Obama staff, they were so one sided.

McCain appeared to be a stiff old man trying to keep his temper in check. Would he live out his term? Would Sarah be able to fill in if he didn't?

USA was ready for a change. USA didn't perceive McCain as a big enough change.

I only hope the USA, and the world don't live to regret Obama's change.

In the end, maybe the question should be, "How in the hell did he do as well as he did?"

Yup.

He lost because he didn't deserve to win.

Obama didn't deserve to win either, but unfortunately given our system only one of them could actually lose.

This fine American Thinker piece answers the question.

November 09, 2008

What do the election results mean to conservatives?

By Bruce Walker
The results of the 2008 election mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. What do those results mean to conservatives? The results do not mean conservative candidates lose elections. Obama got a big slice of the conservative vote, largely because he portrayed himself as a post-ideological as well as a post-partisan candidate - and McCain tried to do just the same thing. Ronald Reagan in 1984 was the last man to run as an unabashed conservative, and he won by the last true landslide in an American presidential election.

President Bush, admired for his personal honor and deep faith, was respected by many conservatives, but he was hardly a conservative himself. No man who nominated Harriett Meiers to the Supreme Court could be considered a true conservative. Anyone who could embrace the vision of Ted Kennedy for our national education policy was not a true conservative. Anyone who could create a new entitlement for prescription drugs was not a true conservative.

Bush was simply a decent man who was not a Leftist Democrat. As McCain found out, being a decent man who is not a Leftist Democrat means nothing at all to the Left. Both men, like Bob Dole and like George H. Bush, are good Americans, admirable people, and men blissfully unaware that the Left is not just waging battles on issues like more socialism but are rather waging war on our entire way of life. Bush, Dole, McCain, and Bush Sr. were not wicked failures because they were not conservatives. They were more like Chamberlain at Munich: They did not grasp the true depth and nature of their adversary and, they thought, their adversary might be reasonable.

How far have "conservatives" come from Ronald Reagan's famous maxim "If you can't make them see the light, then let them feel the heat." In other words, conservatives must lead. Or, as Reagan also said "All they can do is hang us from a higher tree." This homey, typical truth trumped all the mush of moderation that brought Republicans in such disrepute over the last ten years or so. Courage is contagious and so is cowardice.

When Republican "leaders" like Trent Lott sabotaged the impeachment trial of a sitting president because they feared political fallout, conservatives cringed. We conservatives, after all, do not involve ourselves in the public arena because of the goodies we might get. That is what Leftists do. We intend to protect the sacred values of the Declaration of Independence, which are utterly nonpartisan (the founding fathers, of course, dreaded political parties) and we do this recalling that the signers of that document risked all in taking their stand for transcendent liberty. Ronald Reagan, a Hollywood star with a starlet wife and lots of money, did not enter politics to get but rather to give. He entered to lead and not to herd. This is what conservatives used to do.

And this is the way conservatives used to talk: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Barry Goldwater defiantly rejected the idea that Leftists could place him on some invented "Far Right." He stood for specific things, which he recorded in books, and which represented an actual platform for conservative ideals. John McCain, the other Republican nominee from Arizona, would never have embraced extremism, even in the defense of liberty. The soft, warm, middle was his true home. The safe, predictable consensus was his real party.

He was in the good company of pleasant and worthwhile citizens like Tom Dewey, Wendel Wilkie, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford. In a world at peace on a planet unscarred by a relentless ideological jihad on our values and our faith, these nice sorts would have made excellent managers of the republic. But war was declared on us long ago, long before September 11.

War was declared on us by militant atheists who sought to deconstruct all our values and to mask their crimes as science. War was declared on us by active, pernicious agents of the Soviet Union who sowed the seeds of racial hatred, gender warfare, and every other discord they could inflame and poison - they were not in the business of calming and healing. War was declared on us by jealous and irreligious Europeans, who view our faith in anything as hopeless naivete which it is their pleasure to debunk. War was declared on us by radical Moslems, who saw the version of God which serious Christians and Jews embrace as too loving and too peaceful.

War was declared on us, and the Left here joined the fight against us. War was declared on us, and notional "conservatives" tried to lead us. But, of course, they could not. While Ronald Reagan embarrassed the establishment by calling the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire," our putative conservative nominee would not even raise the malignancy of Jeremiah Wright. While Barry Goldwater nobly challenged federal grasping in 1964, his Arizonan successor called for Washington "solutions" to a Washingtonian financial disease forty-four years later.

What does this mean to conservatives? It means we must choose leaders who believe, even if their cause seems hopeless. It means that we must recall that liberty was not born in our nation in easy ways but at Valley Forge when Washington saw his men's bloody, frostbitten feet as he contemplated the loss of everything he possessed in life if he were to lose. It means remembering that Goldwater was routed in 1964, but came back to the Senate in 1968 with everyone - liberals included -- respected his courage and dignity. It means going back four years to the Reagan Funeral and seeing the long lines of thankful Americans who waited for hours just to say goodbye to the last true leader they had known.

We have hope now. Obama cannot end democracy in America and he probably cannot impose a melancholy quasi-official censorship. Obama can only assume total responsibility for what happens to us over the next two years. Please, conservatives, resist compromise! Make stands upon principle, like Reagan and Goldwater. Take the heart of Washington, the true leader of all conservatives, in fighting for what we believe even if the outcome is uncertain and the struggle is long. Contemplate Churchill in 1940, when he promised to resist rather than parlay with evil.

If we believe in God, then hope is ever certain. If we hold sure and proven laws of human experience, then we know that failed ideas in practice also fail. If we believe in the spirit of the American people and their nation, then we sense that though change comes in elections, the liberty to which we have become accustomed longer than any people in human history cannot be simply crushed.

We fight -- even today -- for our lives and the lives of our children. If we have not had leaders, we must find them. Victory may seem far off. But we can see it still. As another American wrote almost two hundred years ago: "Oh, say does that Star Spangled Banner still wave? Ore the land of the free, and the home of the brave." Francis Scott Key, like George Washington, were models of what conservative leaders must be. We had these men once, and we shall have them again.

Bruce Walker is the author of Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and the recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/what_do_the_election_results_m.html at November 09, 2008 - 01:51:53 AM EST

Blah.....blah.....blah.

McCain lost because he did this....McCain lost because he didn't do that, yadda....yadda... yadda.

Could it be that the answer to why more people voted for Obama than McCain is no more complicated than the fact that the majority of Americans are simply stupid?

Do you really think most of the dimwits that voted for Obama, (woman, minorities and the under 30 crowd) could make a rational argument in support of their choice?

Of course they can't.

These are the same people who run up their credit cards to unbelevable levels and willingly pay exhorbitant interest rates until they are ultimately forced into bankruptcy.

These are the same people who pay hundreds of dollars to attend rock concerts and sporting events when they can't afford their next months rent payment.

These are the same people who engage in casual sex and then claim it is their "constitutionally guaranteed right" to destroy the innocent human being that is created from it.

These are the same people who protest in the streets against a US military without whose efforts they wouldn't be there in the first place.

These are the same people who rail against large corporations and cheer when it is suggested that they be assessed with higher taxes, but then whimper like children when they lose their jobs because of the resultant cut backs in employment.

These are the same people that applaud the idea of a government run health care system despite the overwhelming evidence of it's failure in other countries around the world.

These are the same people that voted for Obama........and you ask "Why did John McCain Lose?"

Don't take this wrong, but in light of the foregoing, isn't that sort of a stupid question?

Reasons McCain Lost

1. He ran to the right not the center. Despite the nonsense in the article above virtually every one elected to the White House over the past 36 years has run a centrist campaign. Sure they may have actually governed more to the left or right once in office but they ran a campaign for office that appealed to the middle. Reagan appealed so strongly to the center that he actually pulled democrats across the line to vote for him. They still refer to them as Reagan democrats. Most candidates are able to do this confident that their parties far right or left base will understand the centrist move and not bale from the ticket.

McCains problem is that he has never been well liked by the Christian conservatives in the Republican party to start with. He is more moderate on some social issues than they would like. He isn't as rock solid on the 2nd amendment as they like. And he is after all the guy who called people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance". So when he came out of the Republican primaries the victor they were not pleased to say the least. They started telling everyone that if their only choices were McCain or a democrat then they just wouldn't vote at all. Now if true that would certainly have meant that McCain's campaign was D.O.A. He believed them and ran a campaign geared towards winning them back. A move that I believe was unnecessary and which unfortunately alienated the coalition of moderates and independents he needed to win.

I still say (all protests to the contrary) that those far right fundamentalists claiming they wouldn't vote were full of S###. I've lived in Alabama among far right wing Christian conservatives my whole life. They hate democrats and do not miss an opportunity to vote against one. Anyone who thinks they would have sat home Nov 4th while a black liberal democrat cake walked into the White House; took a 60 plus seat filibuster proof majority in the senate and picked up 35 to 40 seats in the house is a moron. They may not love McCain but a grudgingly cast vote counts just as much as an enthusiastically cast vote.

2.Sarah Palin. Her pick as VP was disastrous. I know many here love her but I have never seen so many, think so highly, of someone, based on so little. She's a pretty face and can read a teleprompter. That's fine if you want to be a weather girl on channel 6 but not enough to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. Her stand on social issues were too far right to win over any female Hillary voters and her IQ and lack of worldly knowledge scared the bejesus out of moderates and independents. She even caused moderate Republicans to bale on McCain. The only people who liked her were the hardcore base of the party and as I said before, despite their lies, they were gonna go vote against the Dems anyway. If you doubt me, then run her at the top of the Republican ticket in 2012 like some people are already talking about. You think last Tuesday night wasn't close? Ha, you haven't seen a democratic landslide victory in your lifetime like a Palin 2012 ticket would bring.

3. Last but certainly not least the McCain campaign was just horribly run. They were all over the place on issues. Every day it seemed that tried a new strategy or angle of attack, each worse than the last. They called the economy fundamentally sound 3 days before it imploded. They would call Obama a terrorist one day and then compliment or defend him the next. By the end of it McCain seemed like a doddering old man. Did you see him address the crowd as "my fellow prisoners?" I remember thinking, "oh s###, he's having a Nam flashback." And that Joe the Plumber stuff was just the most painfully embarrassing nonsense involving a political campaign that I have ever seen in my 43 years of life. And it went on and on and on.

That's the way I see it.

....ONE good thing will accrue from this republican melt down. Next time they'll give us a real conservative that the main frame of the party can vote and be enthusiastic about...I pray this isn't wishful thinking!