Bears Repeating

Athenae over at First Draft worries

The 60's Are Back

Am I the only one who thinks McCain is actually being electorally smart about this? Not foreign-policy smart, of course, not real-world smart, not the kind of smart that would actually do anything, but the kind of smart that would get him votes?

“Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin must understand the severe, long-term negative consequences that their government’s actions will have for Russia’s relationship with the U.S. and Europe,” McCain said. More...

And, describing the Russian assaults that have gone beyond the disputed territory and into sovereign Georgia as “Moscow’s path of violent aggression,” the GOP nominee suggested that Putin’s aim may be to overthrow the pro-U.S. government in Georgia.

“This should be unacceptable to all the democratic countries of the world, and should draw us together in universal condemnation of Russian aggression,” McCain said.

He's giving people a familiar enemy, one that we've been told over the past couple decades it's okay to kind of trust now, to like, to visit, to look into the soul of, but one that probably a lot of people remember from their childhoods as The Big Bad, the one that was gonna infiltrate and spy on and undermine and eventually nuke us all to shit. I mean, it's got a ready-made script for hating on, Russia does, all the jokes are still there, they might need freshening up a bit but they're there. Hell, the TV shows are probably still on re-runs on Sunday mornings. Fire up the Red Menace machine again, after you've dusted it off.

But the more I see of this the less I'm worried: Sure, that's the strategy. Bring on the commie/czarist menace. But the time for that kind of cold war mongering isn't in the middle of two hot wars with the islamofascist menace. Even though people have been temporarily lulled into kinda thinking the Iraq war is over--all this debating about timelines simply leaves the rubes with the notion that the whole thing is more or less over whoever gets into the white house in January--still people are aware that we already have troops out there, stretched to the max, on two fronts.

Plus the georgia thing reads somewhat differently. I'm sure that very few people grasp that South Ossetia started everything by seceding, and I'm sure that there are people who hear McCain tub thumping about war, by jingo, and hear "georgia? they invaded south of the mason dixon?" but a hell of a lot of other people, indpendents, money makers, big money republicans know for a fact we can't go to war again. McCain is appealing to the know nothing base but I wouldn't be surprised if he doensn't lose the remaining technological and market based right wing money. He'll never lose the ahmandsons and the other rich nutcases but he 'll lose the stockbrokers and maybe even some of the network/media money that has been backing him. Rupert murdoch, for one, is no fool and he is not going to be charmed to be working with a loose cannon like McCain. He knows, or suspects, that democrats, in the end, will be just as easily bought as republicans and at least they aren't threatening to blow up the world every five seconds.

aimai

argh, edited to catch the first of many spelling errors. Thanks Trevor!