Ed Rollins, who led Republican Ronald Reagan to a 49-state re-election win in 1984, says the race is over for John McCain and predicts Barack Obama will win in a landslide.
On CNN, Rollins told Anderson Cooper the GOP’s fear and smear campaign against Obama isn’t working and that it’s too late for McCain to make up lost ground on the economy, the issue most people except the rabid Republican base want to hear about. Obama “has met the threshhold,” of leadership he said, recalling 1980 when Americans wanted to get rid of Jimmy Carter and did, once Reagan met that threshhold.
Rollins also sees the potential for enormous Republican losses in Congress, especially in the Senate, predicting the possibility of losing enough seats to give Democrats a filibuster-proof majority. He said McCain has to give his party something to run on, needs to think about his legacy.
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My mother and I were saying exactly the same thing the other night, before the debate, “landslide.”
I agree with Rollins about McCain taking the party down with him–he wasn’t a strong “party” candidate to begin with, and has done nothing politically to prop anyone up.
You can’t bolster your ranks by simply engaging in ad hoc fear and smear, especially this election season. Going to the fringe right wing nutbags and inciting racism and hatred is no way to win an election. Some of us thought we’d seen an awful lot with Bush and Co., but McCain has outdone the Texas gang this season.
Thanks for posting this link.
Word Bandit’s last blog post..Happy Birthday, John
Thanks for your comments. There’s certainly no evidence the fear and smear is working with undecideds and might be turning them off. I must say I was not at all impressed by McCain yesterday correcting those two people at his rally who had disparaging things to say about Obama. After all, what else could he do with cameras in his face and with the conduct of his campaign an issue? Too little, far too late.
But the base eats it up. The day McCain said the fundamentals of the economy are strong, I was waiting in a long line behind a New Hampshire bubba. (yes, world, there is such a thing) We started chatting and I said if the economy really tanks, Obama would have a landslide. And he snorted and said, “Not with that middle name.”