Sunday, April 27, 2008
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A Formidable Opponent
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Posted by:
Carol Platt Liebau at
12:39 PM
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Amanda has posted excerpts of Barack Obama's interview on Fox News Sunday immediately below.
Make no mistake. If Barack is the nominee, he will be a formidable opponent. Not because of his policies -- if anything, they are his weak point. But he comes across as good humored, reasonable, likable. He is able to express pretty left wing ideas in ways that go far in making them sound sensible.
Some on the FNS panel pointed out, correctly, that a lot of Barack's answers had been light on substance. The problem is that, while that may matter to the inside the beltway crowd who care about the nuances of public policy, the great majority of those who will be voting in November will make their decisions based primarily on their sense of who the candidate is as a person -- and whether they like and trust him to deal with all the public policy they're too busy (or too bored with) to pay attention to.
In a Townhall column I wrote last year praising some of Barack's genuinely good qualities, I noted:
[U]nlike many of his left-wing compatriots, he treated his ideological adversaries with respect on a personal level. Indeed, he always offered the small conservative contingent on the Review a hearing, even though his decision-making consistently showed that he hadn’t ultimately been influenced by their arguments.
The challenge for Republicans will be finding a way to make sure that the American people look past the "willingness to listen" (i.e. Barack's genuinely likable demeanor) and understand that he subscribes to the kind of doctrinaire left-wing liberalism that guarantees that, after the "listening" is over, the decisions will be uniformly left-wing.
Barack is beatable. But anyone on the right who's giddy about the GOP's electoral prospects (after the Wright and "bitter" debacles) should rethink any notion that it's going to be easy.
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"..a lot of Barack's answers had been light on substance. The problem is that, while that may matter to the inside the beltway crowd who care about the nuances of public policy, the great majority of those who will be voting in November will make their decisions based primarily on their sense of who the candidate is as a person.."
Isn't that part of how we got Shoeless John in the first place? Obama is young, dynamic, tall and charismatic. Contrast that against the old, short, ashen, stiff and dull Shoeless Joe. It's an ugly picture and worse, they will probably end doing the same thing whomever is elected. Like Mayor Bloomberg said earlier this week, "there are no winners here". |
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Pasadena Phil,
Despite all this stuff I still favor Obama to beat Mccain. The mood of this nation is to bad for a republican to win. I still think Mccain loses by only single digits. I think there is alot of built in oppostion to Obama. I say Mccain gets 45-46%. I think Obama will get about 48%. I still think other parties will better than people think. In 1968,1980 and 1992 we had angry voters just like this year. The third party vote in 68 was 14%, in 1980 8% and 1992 it was 20%. I say this years third parties will be about 5-10 percent of the total vote this year. |
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Mccain should do what Bob Dole did in 1996 retire from the senate. The people of Arizona have only one senator now. Kyl is much better than Mccain. Mccain got only 47% in the Arizona primary. Many republicans there hate Mccain! The governor is a democrat. However state law demands that somebody from the senator's same party be picked. I want Trent Franks to be Senator. He would be a big upgrade from Mccain. What does everybody think? |
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