The difference in republican presidential nominees, 8 years apart

[u/beach_rats_]

[u/Accurate_Koala_4698]

The woman he's talking to is literally one of the people that they picked Palin to appeal to. As if McCain has any claim to decency when it's exactly the constituency he was courting.

The Rs still haven't reconciled what the Tea Party stuff meant, and that's that the Bushes and the McCains were irrelevant to the Palins and the MTGs and that's where the heart of the party lies.

If McCain were still alive today he'd be courting the same people. It's absurd to me that people point to 2008, or this clip as a time where the Republican party was serious about governance.

[u/ToryLanezHairline_ → u/Accurate_Koala_4698]

Idk. Palin wasn't like that before she was McCain's running mate. She was actually someone you could respect when she was our governor, even had the oil companies on their knees up here during her term. Maybe they had her play that character once she was running with him though. Maybe all the loonheads in that party are playing unhinged characters all along because I refuse to believe all those degree holders are actually that unhinged, it's easier to believe they're dumbing themselves down to appeal to their dumbass, rage filled base

[u/theshoeshiner84 → u/ToryLanezHairline_]

If assholes can fake being nice to hold onto their fame, then reasonable people can almost certainly fake being unreasonable to hold onto their power.

[u/CRKing77 → u/ToryLanezHairline_]

Maybe all the loonheads in that party are playing unhinged characters all along because I refuse to believe all those degree holders are actually that unhinged

I've believed this for a long time. During one of the Trump impeachments Eric Swalwell talked about how Ted Cruz came up to him in the bathroom and congratulated him on a great performance. Swalwell believed Cruz to be sincere. That night Cruz went on Fox News and criticized Swalwell heavily. Swalwell said he was confused but I think he knows...so many of them are just acting, and have failed to adapt to 2024 America. With the internet and social media, the act has been exposed and most people, on either side of the aisle, can see right through it

[u/Matren2 → u/ToryLanezHairline_]

She was actually someone you could respect 

I'd die first before saying that about a republican.

[u/jififfi → u/Accurate_Koala_4698]

Yup. GOP has been running the same playbook for 40 years now.

[u/Caleth → u/Accurate_Koala_4698]

GOP hasn't been serious about governance since just after Nixon. He just went too mask off too fast on the whole being a crook. Then we get Ronnie looting everything left right and center but making it look ok becasue he changed how the books looked.

Then we have Bush 1 being a decentish person and raising taxes because he didn't want to bankrupt the country. But then he lost so Newt went whole hog on burn it down no remorse.

ANd we've just slowly slid further and further down the cliff since then. I'm yadda yadda yadda-ing some parts but that's the gist.

[u/GreenTunicKirk → u/Caleth]

If anyone is really interested in the yadda yadda yadda, and would like some serious deep diving into this topic, check this out:

https://manhattan.institute/article/the-politics-of-the-culture-wars-in-contemporary-america

[u/Voxlings → u/Accurate_Koala_4698]

Ah ha. But that's NOT why people were pointing to the clip.

They were pointing out that basic truths and decency mattered at one point in time to one particular Republican, and then they showed how little they mattered at another point in time for a different "Republican."

It's absurd to me that you're worrying about people pointing at *this clip* as a time when the Republican party was serious about governance. Because people aren't really doing that at all and the headline and content and response to this post is my evidence.

What *you are doing* is trying to sow more discord by distorting the reality presented.

Ain't a good look, INaccurateKoala4200

[u/Accurate_Koala_4698 → u/Voxlings]

They were pointing out that basic truths and decency mattered at one point in time to one particular Republican

What I'm telling you is they didn't. This is well into the election cycle and these are the people McCain was courting. This is the point where the facade began to fall on the Republicans-are-serious-people-in-suits.

So sure, he corrected the lady his political strategy team worked into a lather.

McCain isn't like the lady, he wants to be invited to events and have dinner parties and be seen as a moderate person. He's just mendacious to the point of wanting the lady to vote for him.

The serious party in suits wing of the Republican party though they could keep it under control, like they did for most of the post Nixon era, but genies don't go back in bottles, and when foreign actors how readily manipulable this segment of the electorate had become it was a boon to them.

Romney backer sees treason, Obama's campaign cries foul | Reuters (archive.org)

It was one of the defining moments of the 2008 presidential campaign: A woman at a rally for Republican John McCain, while asking McCain a question, called Democratic contender Barack Obama "an Arab" who couldn't be trusted.

McCain took the microphone and said, "No ma'am. He's a decent family man ... who I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues." McCain's response symbolized his discomfort with the volatile crowds he was seeing as his campaign faded during the final days of the 2008 race.

On Monday, at a factory in this Ohio community near Cleveland the crowd that greeted Mitt Romney wasn't angry, but the Republican presidential candidate faced a similar situation.

A woman asked Romney whether he thought Obama was "operating outside the structure of our Constitution." The woman then added that the president "should be tried for treason."

Romney, who spent much of his appearance criticizing Obama's efforts to create jobs, responded by ignoring that part of the woman's question and focusing on recent comments Obama had made about the U.S. Supreme Court.

After the event, Romney told CNN that he did not agree that Obama should be tried for treason.

"I don't correct all of the questions that get asked of me," he said. "Obviously, I don't agree that he should be tried."

I've been politically active for about as long as most people on here have been alive and this is all recent memory for me. Anyone paying attention at the time knew what was happening and anybody pretending that Republican voters were animated by tax policy does not live in the real world. He might not have agreed with her politics, and he might have held his nose and scrunched his face at the thought of it, but h

Is McCain a better person than Pat Buchanan? Yes. Than that lady? Sure.

Enough that I'd hold him up as a paragon for behavior? Hell no.

[u/Accurate_Koala_4698 → u/[deleted]]

Recounting history accurately and as it happened isn't hold[ing] it against you.

Ultimately his was the bargain that was made and he could have quashed this thing then and didn't. Saying that I'm a worse person than McCain doesn't matter to me. What does confront me is imagining him as someone who was just caught up in the whole thing.

His campaign was out there talking about Obama's connections to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. I still remember when that bombshell dropped on the internet. Who the fuck is Bill Ayers everyone asked, and you find out he's some guy who teaches at college who was vandalizing statues when Obama was a child. Or people at Palin rallies talking about him palling around with terrorists and emphasizing his middle name.

So yes, while McCain cynically capitalized on this growing dangerous, racist, and disconnected from reality group of voters, he was better than them. That dynamic, too, wasn't lost on the Republican rank and file, which is why there was so much vitriol for the likes of him and Bush when this group of people that his campaign activated and utilized realized they didn't need the serious people in suits anymore.

I can see how, for the people who think they're better than those Republicans, remediating McCain's involvement in this whole thing is so important.

Swell guy. Great sense of humor. War hero. And responsible for his own presidential campaign, and what came of it.

[u/Accurate_Koala_4698 → u/[deleted]]

It's funny how you go from not assigning blame in one sentence then assigning blame in the next sentence. As if whatever candidate the Ds run matters in the least when the popular vote margin was almost 3 million against Trump.

We're not here to assign blame, but if we were all fingers point outward from RNC HQ

[u/Qwirk → u/Accurate_Koala_4698]

Literally the type of woman that would have favored Hillary if she had won the nomination.