Ambers asks a great question:
I've tried to understand, from the perspective of the McCain campaign, what yesterday was all about.
McCain spent the week putting distance between himself and President Bush.
On the day McCain gives a speech that breaks with many traditions and habits of the Bush Administration; On the day McCain preaches post-partisanship,
He ties himself very tightly to the President on a central and disputed element of Bush's foreign policy vision;
He allows -- or his campaign allowed -- the White House to step on his message.
Did the White House coordinate this day with the McCain campaign? Everyone would assume that they did. Did they?
Here is the situation, I think. Republicans, from the White House on down, are pretending that this election will be business as usual for them: rally around the nominee, bash the opposition as being weak on national security, ride out a tough election night and live to fight another day.
That's not what's happening, though. The Mississippi special election shocked and terrified every single Republican trying to get elected or re-elected this fall. As it should have: if we can lose that seat, the thinking goes, nobody is safe.
The Republican leadership is talking about losing 50 seats in the House this November. And I have no doubt that if they're saying 50 publicly, they're thinking 75 privately.
Consider this: each elected Republican is in the fight of his or her political life, right now, today, and they all know it. Message discipline is going to be non-existent. Party unity is going to be non-existent. There has been so much public hand-wringing lately over the Democratic Party being divided that most people are overlooking the historical, titanic crack-up that is taking place across the aisle. No matter; it will be clear soon enough.
There are huge arguments happening behind closed doors right now, and they're not going to settle anything. Some Republicans obviously believe that allowing John McCain to reshape the party in his own image is the only way to survive the November storm. Others believe the opposite: McCain is a sure loser, and on November 5, will be as irrelevant as Bob Dole. What's more, McCain is barely tolerated by many elected Republicans, and plenty of them would sooner gay-marry Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a ceremony officiated by Reverend Jeremiah Wright than toe the McCain line on issues like climate change. Many believe, rightly or wrongly, that Republicans can only achieve long-term success again if they return to their conservative roots, and this includes throwing George Bush over the side as well. And in other quarters you have the Bush loyalists, whose constituents are Bush loyalists, and are very nervous about McCain at the top of the ticket. Other Republicans in more moderate or liberal districts and states are stuck trying to win among voters who are very likely to go for Barack Obama.
So what we're going to see in the coming months, as each Republican struggles to save his or her own ass, is not one or even two or three competing Republican brands and messages; it might be as many as ten. Ten is not an arbitrary number; it's the number of "regional campaigns" that the McCain team will be running. In light of the coming crack-up, this strategy actually makes a bit more sense. Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon can't run too hard against Obama; he needs some of Obama's voters. On the other side of the spectrum is someone like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is likely to run on a far more conservative and pro-Bush platform than the national ticket. I'm sure Senators Smith and Cornyn both respect John McCain, but they're going to be distancing themselves from him, from the right and the left, before this race is done. It's every Republican for himself this year.
On the other side, you will see Democrats united under Obama's "Change" banner, buttressed by millions of new voters and Obama's unparalleled fundraising machine.
So, to get back to Marc's question. It may have been coordinated, it may not have been. But in a larger sense, George W. Bush doesn't care about John McCain's future all that much. His own legacy is another matter. He's not going to sit back and let Obama cruise to the White House by bad-mouthing everything Bush has done for the past eight years. Now, two days ago, John McCain gave his "2013" speech, publicly dissing George W. Bush on almost every domestic issue. Bush is feeling it from both sides. He may not be much when it comes to governing, but he (somewhat rightly) believes he's pretty good at winning political fights. And I'm sure Bush thinks McCain is a lousy politician, and won't really do the job right. In short, he's got no real love for, or loyalty to, McCain. And the truth is, neither does any other Republican this year. Bush is running his own '08 campaign. Before long, every other Republican will be doing the same.
Peggy Noonan has some harsh words for her own party in today's Wall Street Journal:
Big picture, May 2008:
The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.
The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.
November is going to be a bloodbath. Everyone knows it. They've staved this one off for a long, long time. It's every Republican for himself.
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