WI: McCain in 2008 "Goes There"

What cost McCain the election, as much as anything else, is how much he LISTENED to the GOP. If he had run as the candidate from 2000 he would have been a far stronger choice.

As was, between his lurch to the Right (somewhere he was never really comfortable, as demonstrated by his unwillingness to start throwing idiotic Birther crap around) and his disastrous choice of Palin as VP running mate, he didn't have a prayer.

The funny thing is that when he selected Palin I was worried that she would really help him with the GOP base and allow him to play to his real strength in the center. Instead she turned into the biggest VP millstone since Eagleton.

This is spot on. If McCain had been true to himself and not sold out to Rove and co, he stood some chance and at least if he had lost he would have known he had been true to himself. McCain the Maverick had made a career out of beating or nearly beating the odds. My father, who knows absolutely zero about American politics, saw the Al Smith Dinner with the two of them and I told him a bit about both candidates. His response was: McCain's been tortured for his country; if people had listened to him in 2000 we'd have been spared 8 years of Bush; and he's a damn sight funnier than Obama (which is what really swung it).

McCain being McCain is unpredictable and exciting. I suspect he would still have lost but at least a McCain/Lieberman ticket would have been true to himself...
 
If it was of a big state (like New York, Texas, or California) AND if they were already famous for some time due to some political wheeling and dealing, (example: A republican in California that managed to get tax and budget cuts thru a Democratic Legislature) it would be possible, but still unlikely.


The state legislature political figure that comes to mind for me is Willie Brown, the former speaker of the California State Assembly who later became mayor of San Francisco.

http://www.biography.com/print/profile/willie-brown-40059

(Now there's a "Governor Brown" TL waiting to happen ;) )
 
Last edited:
Young, female, and super-conservative are a tricky combination other than Palin in 2008. The youngest female Republican Senator is Murkowski, who would definitely not fire up the reactionaries. Most others were fairly old, except for Susan Collins, who would outrage the right almost as much as Lieberman.

As for Republican female governors, Jodi Rell and Linda Lingle are the only alternatives to Palin, and they both seem too moderate. McCain would probably have to turn to the US House to find another young, conservative woman to replace Palin.
 
This is spot on. If McCain had been true to himself and not sold out to Rove and co, he stood some chance and at least if he had lost he would have known he had been true to himself. McCain the Maverick had made a career out of beating or nearly beating the odds. My father, who knows absolutely zero about American politics, saw the Al Smith Dinner with the two of them and I told him a bit about both candidates. His response was: McCain's been tortured for his country; if people had listened to him in 2000 we'd have been spared 8 years of Bush; and he's a damn sight funnier than Obama (which is what really swung it).

McCain being McCain is unpredictable and exciting. I suspect he would still have lost but at least a McCain/Lieberman ticket would have been true to himself...

Beating the odds? McCain was, as I recall, a four star Admiral's son who went into naval aviation, crashed aircraft four times and had the bad luck to go down over North Vietnam. I'll grant that he spent a lot of years in captivity, suffered and was subject to torture, all of which is a terrible thing. But upon release, he kicks the wife who had waited dutifully for him all those years to the curb... this is a woman horrifically scarred and injured in a car accident, proceeds to marry into money, and then uses his wife's family money to subsidize a political career.

I'll grant that McCain has a lot of charisma, thinks on his feet and is fairly good with a quip. On the other hand, people who knew him, or studied his policies noted that he was as lazy as Bush, knew nothing about economics and cared less, had no particular skills as a diplomat (his approach to anything was to say he'd get people into a room and talk tough - tell them to cut that shit out). Most distressingly there was his famously incendiary and uncontrollable temper, escalating into tantrums, and tightly managed by his handlers.

So I suppose the question is, why would America want a lazy, callous, self absorbed, spoiled superficial playboy from the elite with major daddy issues and poor emotional control... We already had that with Bush.
 
A ticket of McCain-Giuliani would have been quite interesting.
I'm sure that would have helped Bob Barr or Ron Paul get more votes. (Perhaps Alan Keyes too, on the Religious Right side.)

I do have an idea for a female Republican, but I won't use her until I get my TL. (Like Palin, she has a scandal. Unlike Palin, it was before her nomination.)
 
The state legislature political figure that comes to mind for me is Willie Brown, the former speaker of the California State Assembly who later became mayor of San Francisco.

http://www.biography.com/print/profile/willie-brown-40059

(Now there's a "Governor Brown" TL waiting to happen ;) )

I've mulled making California's LBJ a VP. Willie Brown wanted to run for Senate, but he was too unpopular. Californians enacted term limits because that's the only way Republicans could beat him. If he had lost the struggle to become Speaker, I could see him running for Congress (like Berman did) and ending up Speaker of the House of Representatives.
 
In my time of lurking on this forum I've heard a fair bit of enthusiasm for Elizabeth Dole, is there any remotely plausible POD that would make her inclined to try for president herself again?
And if there is such a POD would a Dole/Rice ticket be a possibility?
 
In my time of lurking on this forum I've heard a fair bit of enthusiasm for Elizabeth Dole, is there any remotely plausible POD that would make her inclined to try for president herself again?
And if there is such a POD would a Dole/Rice ticket be a possibility?

Elizabeth Dole did run for the 2000 nomination. sShe dropped out inOctober 1999. sShe had fundraising problems. cCondolezza Rice's views on abortion mean that a Republican Convention would not nominate her and any Republican nominee who tried to choose her would be in deep trouble
 
Condolezza Rice's views on abortion mean that a Republican Convention would not nominate her and any Republican nominee who tried to choose her would be in deep trouble

Really, in 2008? I know 2012 had the whole war-on-women thing, but I think there was more leeway in 2008 - the party had re-nominated Bush just four years earlier after all, and Rice's position was the same as his. Iraq is a much bigger problem with Rice, though I think it's one that could have been overcome.
 
Really, in 2008? I know 2012 had the whole war-on-women thing, but I think there was more leeway in 2008 - the party had re-nominated Bush just four years earlier after all, and Rice's position was the same as his. Iraq is a much bigger problem with Rice, though I think it's one that could have been overcome.

She wanted the Federal Government out of abortion completely, removing Taxpayer Funding but also limiting the advance at Partial-Birth abortion. To many conservatives this was simply to far out of line with their views, and there was not some sort of foil for her that could have effectively counter-acted that (Colin Powell for example had his military-background, which brought appeal even when his abortion views were, I think, even further left than Condi's)
 
She wanted the Federal Government out of abortion completely, removing Taxpayer Funding but also limiting the advance at Partial-Birth abortion. To many conservatives this was simply to far out of line with their views, and there was not some sort of foil for her that could have effectively counter-acted that (Colin Powell for example had his military-background, which brought appeal even when his abortion views were, I think, even further left than Condi's)

She took the same line as Bush, and I struggle to believe that that line suddenly became untenable between 2004 and 2008. But getting the federal government out of it would surely actually have massive appeal for American conservatives - many, at least rhetorically, want to overturn Roe-v-Wade and make it a state matter. Obviously underneath that many would like a federal ban, but just getting it thrown to the states would satisfy almost as a start.

(Powell is much harder to sell, though. Rice at least has some base in the 2008 GOP - with the neocons, and their very big money. Powell had absolutely no constituent in the GOP by 2008.)
 
What about picking somebody from outside of government, any possibilities there?

My first thought was Ebay CEO and 2010 California Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman, she would be about 50 in 2008, and supported Mitt Romneys run in 2008, which might not endeer her to McCain, might not be enough to kill her chances. Considering he said this


Thoughts?
 
Really, in 2008? I know 2012 had the whole war-on-women thing, but I think there was more leeway in 2008 - the party had re-nominated Bush just four years earlier after all, and Rice's position was the same as his. Iraq is a much bigger problem with Rice, though I think it's one that could have been overcome.

Yes social conservatives had that kind of power iin 2008.
 
Top