Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The Democrats took the statement and ran with it.  By the time the smoke cleared, the Republicans had been reduced to their lowest congressional representation since the popularity peak of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.  

Rather than seek to finesse himself away from the comment, the badly wounded Goldwater continued throughout the campaign to appeal basically to the then far right-dominated Republican Party, doing no more than solidifying a base he always had while alienating the vital center that controls American national elections.

For instance, Goldwater lost any hope of capturing Tennessee with a comment that he would sell the Tennessee Valley Authority, even if it brought only "one dollar."  

Johnson's press secretary, George Reedy, advised Johnson ultimately that he was wasting his time campaigning and should go back to the White House since "Your opponent is campaigning for you."

The last eight years under Cheney-Bush has been badly mislabeled by the mainstream media as "conservative" rather than be investigated and concluded to be a right wing extremist kook show that would make the Goldwater campaign at worst appear moderate.

Despite showing one side that was unyielding and fed the party's right wing base with red meat, even Goldwater recognized that it would be best not to further explore a statement he made well before the 1964 campaign that Social Security should be made voluntary.  

Goldwater's vice-presidential running mate, Congressman William Miller of New York, even attempted to run away from the position by falsely claiming that Goldwater had been "misquoted" on the subject.

George W. Bush sought to tie Social Security to the stock market.  Many economists noted, as did savvy political analysts, that the end result would be stripping the program of the funds it would require to sustain it, which was the general idea all along.

George W. Bush sought to tie Social Security to the stock market.  Many economists noted, as did savvy political analysts, that the end result would be stripping the program of the funds it would require to sustain it, which was the general idea all along.

On the topic of comparative extremism, nobody in the Goldwater camp was ever quoted making a comment as narrowly rightist as that of Bush-Cheney adviser and prominent think tank activist Grover Norquist.  

It was Norquist who said that the federal government, excluding defense, naturally, and including all of the safety net protective programs implemented in the New Deal-Fair Deal administrations of FDR and Harry Truman, should be figuratively "drowned" in a bathtub.

Goldwater and his supporters argued that the federal government dangerously imperiled personal freedoms of U.S. citizens.

While liberal and moderate Democrats were on solid ground in proclaiming such a charge as nonsense, it should be noted that the Goldwaterites never went on record supporting preventive detention, searching without probable cause, waterboarding, rendition and substituting signing statements for U.S. laws and ultimately the nation's constitution itself.

While McCain launched his political career as a "maverick" and once opposed so many of the above-referenced blueprints for destroying democracy, in order to outflank his opponents in the Republican primary he adopted the Bush-Cheney program with its emphasis on destruction of liberty and elimination of a citizen's economic safety net.

Just as Goldwater's statement defending extremism was used repeatedly against him in 1964, Democratic strategists could shrewdly use McCain's statement of remaining in Iraq "for 100 years" if necessary to cripple his chances beyond the hard core 25 to 30 % kook fringe that is brainwashed on nut diets of drug addict Rush Limbaugh and full speed ahead segments of Fox News.

Despite a bogus Republican claim that the "100 years" comment is a canard, such is not the case.  The only point where certain Democrats have been mistaken was to assert that McCain said that it would be acceptable to "fight" in Iraq for a century or more.  What he did was to compare Iraq to long term United States presences in countries like South Korea and Japan.

To in any way compare Iraq, where the majority of its citizens as well as post-Saddam Hussein government figures have strongly indicated a desire for the U.S. to leave, a position emphatically echoed throughout the Middle East, to Korea and Japan indicates how truly out of touch John McCain is on the subject of Iraq, the Middle East, and foreign policy in general.

Democrats should spend plenty of money showing McCain making that absurd comment as well as others where he indicates confused ignorance on the Middle East.  

How about a segment on Joe Lieberman whispering in McCain's ear?

Like Goldwater, McCain is checkmated by the political reality of holding his right wing base for fund raising as well as electoral purposes.  

With Democrats employing the correct attack strategy McCain could be successfully checkmated from reaching out to the broad mainstream of voters and isolated with a diminished base of Limbaugh-Fox News extremist Republicans.