The Biggest Loser out of the ’06 elections? Any GOP presidential candidate who has spent the past five years in an accelerating attempt to become the mainstream GOP heir-apparent to President George W. Bush, especially in terms of embracing the Iraq war.

McCain’s clumsiness and lack of political timing now stand exposed as never before: he was an independent, critical, truth-telling outsider in 2000, at a time when the GOP needed a mainstream, establishment candidate. (We’ve since learned that Bush is a crazed millenialist, but he ran then as a moderate who could keep his pants on.) Now, when it is clear that in order to have any chance of retaining the White House in 2008, the GOP will need an independent, critical, truth-telling outsider who is distanced from a profoundly incompetent and increasingly unpopular Republican administration, John McCain is locked into a new, awkward-fitting, mainstream, establishment, heir-apparent candidacy. Not to mention that he is tar-babied to the electorally fatal Iraq war.

If the GOP is stupid enough to nominate McCain in ’08, the commercials write themselves: simple voice-overs of McCain’s thousands of quotes defending and pushing stay-the-course, playing over the grotesque visuals of the awkward hugs between Bush and a toadying, insincere McCain.

The most dangerous possible GOP candidate, and he or she simply does not exist among the front ranks of those reported to be considering a White House run, is an anti-war, anti-Bush strict fiscal and social conservative. (Possible exception on substance: Newt Gingrich, but he is so personally unlikeable and tainted as to be unelectable.)

Posted by Wayne Uff at November 12, 2006 12:52 AM

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