As many of you know, I have been very critical of John McCain. He does not represent my idea of what a Republican presidential candidate should be based on many positions he’s taken during the last 10 years. Often it seems like he’s more concerned with making friends with the media and the Democrats than with his fellow Republicans.
I have lamented the fact that the McCain electability myth is based on adoration he receives from the media for bucking his own party and predicted that once McCain were to have to nomination sewn up that his friends in the media would be become former friends in a jiffy.
With 30 years in Washington D.C., McCain is sure to have more skeletons in his closet than Jeffrey Dahlmer. Of course, people who follow politics closely know about McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal back in the 1980s. But soon most Americans will be bombarded details of it. The assault on McCain has already begun with a New York Times article about a relationship that McCain had with a lobbyist that may have been “inappropriate”.
Now, I’m not saying that the media would treat any other Republican candidate differently. In fact, I’m saying the exact opposite. Republicans are the enemy of the media and thus the media will attack Republicans relentlessly. Hell, it took Bob Geldof to point out that George W. Bush has done more for Africa than any other U.S. President EVER and that the media has given him ZERO credit for it.
My point was and is that McCain can’t count on the media’s cheerleading that got him this far, that is to say to national prominence and the GOP nomination, to continue into the general election where he will be a facing a Democrat opponent. You see between a liberal Republican and a conservative Republican the media will back a liberal Republican every time. But between a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat, the media will back the liberal Democrat every time.
In attacking Barack Obama on his stance with regards to Cuba, McCain is certainly going to raise the hackles of the news media. You see Cuba is a sacred cow for the them. There are probably few issues that the mainstream media are as unanimous about as the embargo and U.S./Cuba relations. McCain should batten down the hatches now that he’s taken a position contrary to his erstwhile buddies in the media.
Here’s what McCain’s campaign had to say about Obama’s positions on Cuba:
Not so along go Senator Obama favored complete normalization of relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Last night, he said that as president he’d meet with the imprisoned island’s new leader ‘without preconditions.’ So Raul Castro gets an audience with an American president, and all the prestige such a meeting confers, without having to release political prisoners, allow free media, political parties, and labor unions, or schedule internationally monitored free elections.
“Instead, Senator Obama says he would meet Cuba’s dictator without any such steps in the hope that talk will make things better for Cuba’s oppressed people. Meet, talk, and hope may be a sound approach in a state legislature, but it is dangerously naive in international diplomacy where the oppressed look to America for hope and adversaries wish us ill.
Of course I agree with McCain and applaud this statement because it’s the truth but he shouldn’t expect to get any sympathy from the castro-lovers in the media, that’s for sure