Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Slim pickings today, I'm afraid, my darlings. But we'll do our best.

A healthy percentage of born-again Christians may be showing some signs of sense, here:

Barna is clearly the leading evangelical polling outlet in the nation, and his latest numbers are striking.

[T]he big news in the faith realm is the sizeable defection from Republican circles of the much larger non-evangelical born again and the notional Christian segments. The non-evangelical born again adults constitute 37% of the likely voters in November, and the notional Christians are expected to be 39% of the likely voters. Among the non-evangelical born again adults, 52% supported President Bush in 2004; yet, only 38% are currently supporting Sen. McCain, while 48% are siding with Sen. Obama.

How can this be? For one thing, McCain’s outreach is half-hearted, in part because he’s afraid of alienating the middle while he pursues the right.

Mr. McCain’s outreach to Christian conservatives has been a quiet courting, reflecting a balancing act: his election hopes rely on drawing in the political middle and Democrats who might be turned off should he woo the religious right too heavily by, for instance, highlighting his anti-abortion position more on the campaign trail.

“If McCain tried Bush’s strategy of just mobilizing the base, he would almost certainly fall short,” said John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life. “Because the Republican brand name is less popular
and the conservative base is restive, McCain has special needs to reach out
to independent and moderate voters, but, of course, he can’t completely
neglect the evangelical and conservative base.”

I think it's a sign of just how far down in the sewer the Republicon party is when they can't even capture the majority of the conservative Christian vote. Wasn't that supposed to be their bulwark? Could it be that even conservative Christians are fed up with the fuckery? I guess we'll see when it comes time to pull the lever.

And this could be part of the reason why Republicons are shaking in their boots:

Bill Kristol noted in his NYT column this morning, “[A]lmost every Republican I’ve talked to is alarmed that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem up to the task of electing John McCain.”

Similarly, Tom Edsall reported in the Huffington Post on the growing sense of dread among Republican insiders.

“I think we’ve got a world of problems,” said one Republican strategist with extensive experience in presidential campaigns. He said this came home to him with a thud when he watched Obama and McCain give speeches last Tuesday, with the Democrat speaking before “20,000 screaming fans, while John McCain looked every bit of his 72 years” in a speech televised from New Orleans. This Republican cited the liberal blogger Atrios’ Attaturk’s description of McCain’s speech with a green backdrop that made McCain “look like the cottage cheese in a lime Jell-O salad.”

For McCain to stand a chance of winning, the operative contended, the campaign, the Republican National Committee, or an independent group will have to finance sustained negative ads developing a broad assault on Obama’s credibility as a national leader at a time of terrorist threat. McCain, however, has gone out of his way to aggressively discourage such activity, the operative pointed out, which, he argued, may kill McCain’s chances.

Another strategist with similar presidential experience said “McCain has not claimed the maverick ground that should be his. He has not seized the mantle of ‘change’ and reform that he could own by going to Washington and saying, ‘you know me. You know I’ve been a reformer all my life. Now, here’s how I am going to change Washington if you elect me president.’ And he has not taken economic
turf. He has not explained how he is going to grow, not Washington, as the
Democrats plan, but this economy to meet the challenges of global competition.”

The glass-half-full take, at least for the GOP, is that this appears to be a Democratic year, and McCain is very close to Obama in national polls. The glass-half-empty approach is that McCain seems to have hit his ceiling of support, and that’s after months of scrutiny-free campaigning.

I think we're seeing the first rumblings of utter disaster for the Republicon party this fall. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of fucktards.