Wedneday Morning Quarterback for McCain

Well the '08 presidential race is finally over and Obama his our new president. Congratulations, and I do hope that he does well and doesn't try to do too much right off the bat (i.e. Finish Iraq right, don't just pull out, and don't raise taxes). Anyway after watching this political season unfold and seeing the end result I would say there are several things that cost McCain and the Republican party a shot and the presidency. The first thing is McCain. Really he probably shouldn't have won the primary if the Republicans wanted a shot at the presidency. He has a great story of service, but he is also plagued by his past. How he left his first wife and the resulting fall out, and his overall age. It is difficult to elect someone who would be the oldest president ever elected to his first term. The party needs to redo their primary contest, not in the manor of the democrats though, they need to make so that if someone gets more than 50% of the votes in a state then they get all the delegates, if the total is less than 50% then everyone gets their equivalent share of delegates. Do away with the Caucus. Caucusing is outdated and if they don't get ride of it then delegates need to be awarded according to percentages. It doesn't make any sense that Romney can win Utah 95% to 5% and get all the delegates for that state and then McCain can win South Caroling 34% to 30% (Romney) to 27% (Huckabee) and McCain can win all the delegates for South Carolina. If that didn't happen I think the primaries end up completely different.

What cost McCain is several factors. First I think Palin ended up being a net negative. At first she really energized the republican base and maybe even some of the female voters that followed Hillary and were disappointed that she wasn't the democrat nominee for V.P. In the end though, McCain strongest point was his experience and he several undermined that with Palin. She still did better than Ferraro. I also think the economy became a huge issue that was completely unexpected. I thought McCain did well it putting the campaign on hold in order to help address the issue. In the end though, the economy was just not that strong of an issue for McCain. His strong suit was foreign affairs and leadership, which weren't that high of a priority because Iraq had become a non-issue due to the positive way things were going over there. Which is a credit to the people working on the ground over there, like Stevie and Sapper. I'm not saying that he would won if he had Romney, but I think it would have helped more. Hard to really say that though. Also I think he spent to much time in Pa. Republicans should just leave that place alone. If you can have someone say that they are bitter and cling to their guns and religion and elect him and then have a congressman call his own constituents Racists and Rednecks and they re-elect him, there is just absolutely no hope for that area. Those people are definitely the dumbest voting block in the country, congratulations. If he would have spent the same time in Michigan maybe he could have gotten it to go red, but that wouldn't have been enough after losing Florida, Ohio, Indiana and Virginia. It is easy to nit pick now, but even up to the final day I think you had to think he had a chance because you just couldn't be certain how things were going to fall. Also the media didn't do him any favors, which is unfortunate, because that stuff should be unbiased. Only blogs and talk radio are biased. Ha Ha..