Forever the maverick, John McCain is mixing President George W. Bush’s politics of fear with his own creation: the politics of facetiousness.
The presumptive Republican party nominee fears that al-Qaida might try to influence the November general election here with increasing attacks on our troops in Iraq. He worries about it, McCain said during a town hall meeting Friday in Springfield, Pennsylvania, because “I know they pay attention, because of the intercepts we have of their communications."
What, he worry?
A stepped up war in Iraq or a terrorist attack on America soil could be a godsend to the Arizona Senator, a bonafide war hero. Lest we forget, he’ll be running against either Sen. Barack Obama, whose national security experience boils down to a gutsy, well-thought out anti-war speech, or Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy credentials are visits to 80 countries as First Lady in alternating capacities as Ambassador of Good Will or USO-style appearances.
For your everyday American voter, right now it’s the economy stupid–something no one is counting on McCain to master. But a serious flare-up abroad will put the Iraqi war back on the front burner and put millions of American voters back on red alert.
Of course, a major Iraq attack against our troops will increase the volume on calls to end the occupation but it will stampede the red-state bloc into wagon-circling-and-bunkering-down mode. When the going gets rough, we’ll need a tough guy as the Commander-in-Chief.
Who ya gonna call? The Iraqi buster! McCain will argue that only he knows what to do to put those evildoers down once and forever–even if it takes 100 years. The same lot of voters who believed Bush’s war to be a necessary evil will believe McCain too.
In fact, should there be a major attack in Iraq–say the last week in September–I’m going to call an expert Crime Scene Investigator. Karl Rove’s fingerprints are bound to be somewhere.
Stumble It!
