Stupid John McCain?
Posted July 31, 2008 8:34 AM
The Swamp
by Frank James
More evidence that Sen. John McCain is giving fits to many conservatives, like those who comprise The Wall Street Journal's editorial board: they're asking aloud if he's stupid.
What triggered this question? Recent comments by the Republican presidential candidate himself.
Daniel Henninger, the Journal's Wonder Land columnist, points to a few recent examples where McCain said things that were contradictory, that seemed illogical or not helpful to his party's chances:
Here's a snippet:
Is John McCain losing it?
On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't."
This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.
He got back to the subject Tuesday in Reno, Nev. Reporters asked about the Sunday tax comments. Mr. McCain replied, "The worst thing you could do is raise people's payroll taxes, my God!" Then he was asked about working with Democrats to fix Social Security, and he repeated, "everything has to be on the table." But how can . . .? Oh never mind.
Yesterday he was in Aurora, Colo., to wit: "On Social Security, he
wants to raise Social Security taxes. I am opposed to raising taxes on Social Security. I want to fix the system without raising taxes."
What I'm asking is, does John McCain have the mental focus, the intellectual discipline, to avoid being out-slicked by Barack Obama, if he isn't abandoned by his own voters?
The point is obvious: McCain is giving many conservatives the blues.
But more than that, he's actually got some of them worried about the state of his mind. It's remarkable that it isn't the Democratic opposition that's raising these questions but people in the conservative base. We still have months to go before the election and already the despair in conservative ranks is fairly obvious.
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