A prediction about the Republican Convention

[kennetha]

Choosing a Washington outsider will give the Republican Convention a chance to mount a new line of attack and to blunt one of the main lines of attacks that Obama/Biden has settled upon. I'm betting that McCain/Palin will attack Washington itself -- the whole corrupt establishment of both parties. Not only will they attack the democratic ticket, they will also attack the democratic house and senate. They will take some audacious jabs at both their own party and their own president -- though they will probably do this more in sorrow than in anger. They might even allow that the Republicans deserved to lose the 2006 Congressional elections. I expect them to say something to the effect that "we lost that election because we lost our way. "This and other recurrent memes will be meant to decisively answer the charge that John McCain is running for the third term of George Bush.

I'm predicting that McCain/Palin will both call out and call to their party. They will call out the party for its past failures -- again more in sorrow than in anger. And they will call to the party to be better --- to joint them in a great crusade to remake the party, to remake the government, and to remake America. At the same time, they will remind the audience in and out of the hall of the highlights of Republican ascendency. This is where we will get the standard Republican boilerplate stuff. The Republicans will be represented as the party that stood steadfast throughout the cold war and presided over the ultimate victory. They will talk about Repugs as the party that will win the war on terror, etc, that tame the tax code and on an on. They will say that they are the party that will reshape the American economy for the 21st century or some such thing and lead us to energy independence. (Drill! Drill! Drill!)

They will or course make an explicit and strong appeal to democrats of good will. McCain will highlight the times when he has stood up to his own party and reached across the aisle. Palin will echo this message. We will learn a helluva lot more about how she took on the Republican establishment in Alaska -- a lot more. We will hear about how she too reaches across the aisle.

Although the Republicans are the party of loonie Christian evangelicals, the social issues that make their hearts palpitate will be handle lightly. I think they will be more subtext than text. They will be presented mostly through the telling of the personal narrative of Palin. Somewhere we will hear about her decision not to abort her down syndrome child.

Despite the fact that the selection of Palin seems to many to undermine the readiness argument, I doubt that the Republicans will surrender that argument entirely. We will still hear the relentless attacks on both the readiness and the emptiness of Obama. Obama and Biden will be present as men of many words and few actions. Obama will be savaged as a man that has led no great fights, won no great battles. We will learn a lot more about his habit of voting present in the Illinois legislature. Somebody will call him an absentee senator, who after 18 months in office decided to spend his time in office on the campaign trail.

This will be audaciously contrasted with Sarah Palin, of all people. Again, the comparison may be laughable to us. But they will, I predict, make it without blinking. She will be presented as a reformer, a woman of bold, decisive, courageous action.

I suspect that McCain may even do something completely out of the box. He may name at least part of his national security team. And at least one democrat -- almost certainly the traitor Joe Leiberman -- will be a member of that team.

Perhaps -- though I'm less confident in this prediction -- they will paint a scary vision of what a unified democratic government would be like. It would leave the democrats unchecked with untrammeled power. A McCain administration would be dedicated to working with the democratic congress when possible, but it would also have the backbone to put a stop to it when necessary. But this will be more subtext than text because I doubt McCain wants to be seen as entirely giving up on the idea that the Republicans might possibly recapture one or both Houses (although there is exactly zero chance of that happening and everybody knows it.)

A big play will be made for women voters, obviously. But this will again be done through the personal narrative and character of Sarah Palin. On this score, I'd be utterly astounded if they hit hard on divisive social issues. They've given the base its bone in the person of Sarah Palin. They seem not to need to do much else.


If they pull this all off, it will be game on. And we will be in a tough fight. The one thing that's to their advantage is that they will dominate the spotlight and can roll out Palin and their new narrative of the campaign in a relatively uncontested manner.

But the biggest thing they have going against them is possibly Palin herself. She has to perform extremely well. She has never ever been on a stage like this. It's like bringing up an untested AA pitcher to be your starter for Game Seven of the World Series. High chance of failure. Plus we all know that McCain is no orator.

So I don't look for his acceptance speech to be anything to write home about.

And of course, a LOT of this stuff is BS and has an easy rebuttal by our side. But I'm not thinking at the moment about the strength of their case. I'm just trying to suss out what case they are going to make and what frame they are trying to sell.

Who knows if I'm right about all this. But time will soon tell, won't it? (though I doubt I'll watch anything except McCain and Palin.)

[noel711]

1. Nah, you're setting the bar too high...

You're giving them far too much credit,
and assume that they honor the intelligence of the population..

I think it'll be an Evangelical camp meeting,
complete with 'come to Jesus' moment...

A boy-scout, salute the flag pep rally...

that morphs into a "Miss Vice-President America" contest..
complete with swim-suit competition, talent portion,
with a new rifle shooting contest...
and coronation..

Or maybe not. I'm just getting very cynical.
Is this all a bad dream..?

[kennetha]

2. Ha! Ha!

I hope you are right and that I am wrong. But I'm still sticking by my own prediction for now.

[DB1]

3. I predict they will lie.

[kennetha]

4. No doubt about that

[qazplm]

5. primetime will be about stories

about McCain as POW and maverick, about Palin as Hockey mom and maverick, about the Downs baby she has, about putting country first.

Sure there will be red meat against Obama, but the other half will be gauzy videos and statements about the above.

That's all it will be, no need to attack the republican party because you aren't going for the issues when you pick a palin, you are going for the gut as colbert would say.

[Danger Mouse]

6. They won't attack their own party. Not in such strong terms.

McCain won't risk betraying the 30%ers. He needs them to win.

[kennetha]

8. I take your point

But remember he REALLY wanted to appoint our traitor former VP nominee as his VP. He backed down when he was told there would be rebellion if he did so. But I think he still was contemplating doing it up until the last minute. It would have been an extremely bold move. But it could have provided him with a "Sister Souljah moment." in which he demonstrated a certain cred to independents and dems as a different kind of republican. I think McCain is itching to establish himself as a different kind of republican. He wants the votes of the 30%'ers as you call them. But he doesn't want their brand. Since he didn't separate himself from the brand by choosing the traitor over the cries of his own party, he still needs to do some separating. What better way than to call out the party on its own past failures and to say, more in sorrow than in anger, that the party must find a new way forward? After all, the 30%'ers might not believe it. But everybody else in America does. And I think McCain knows that his ONLY hope of winning the election is rebranding himself and his party.

Anyway, that was the thinking behind that prediction. I admit I could be way, way off.

[Danger Mouse]

9. He can try, but remember that McCain is a terrible speaker.

He's better off-the-cuff, but his speeches are usually lousy.
And he has Bush and Cheney both speaking at his convention.
It just won't work.

[kennetha]

10. Cheney and Bush Speaking are Definitely Big Problems for Him

No doubt about it. Is either of them in prime time? If I were in McCain's shoes, I put them on in the least desirable time slot possible. Also, I think McCain has a task of difficulty level 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. But he is really stuck. If he doesn't even attempt to rebrand himself, then I think we have trumping argument against him. NO ONE except a few dead-enders wants a third Bush/Cheney term. If he runs as Bush/Cheney's third act. then all we have to do is get Obama/Biden over the threshold of acceptability as C in C and we win. Hands down. Given the power of our convention, McCain has GOT to try to shift the dynamic. Hard task, admittedly, but if he doesn't even attempt that hard task, he loses. He is of course unlikely to pull it off and for just the reasons your suggesting -- he needs to pull the dead enders along with them. But that's why I think the antiabortion Palin stuff will be confined to narratives and subtext. Because the dead-enders seem to need nothing more than that at the moment and anything more than that would turn off lots of those shiftable women voters Palin is supposed to help him reel in.

[Danger Mouse]

11. He has to try...but he's not clever enough to pull it off.

And he wouldn't be stupid enough to insult Darth Cheney.

[billyoc]

7. They're BAD losers...

[Tutonic]

12. Hey Kennetha: Try this one.

Its like grabbing that guy that's selling peanuts from the stands and placing him on second base.

Heard much from Lieberman or Graham regarding this pick? That tells you everything that you will ever need to know. The old man has drifted out to sea without an oar. Bye bye Johnie.

[Ron Paul- voting BO]

13. I agree

I agree they will hit on the fact of being outsiders and will showcase mayor 9/11 to beef up their argument of reform minded. This will be easy to rebut with Obama showing McCain voting 90% of the time with Bush. I also agree they will not push social issues because Sara Palin is there God send and they know that the purpose of this convention is to attract independents.

[kennetha]

14. ha! ha!