McCain's Meaty Biography

Redstate: Too funny. These guys really do want President Palin, yet their best (and only) defense of her is the fact that she's not running for that position. There just seems to be this unstated assumption that McCain will live long enough to tutor her properly, though at least one commenter there stated their desire that McCain resigns early so he can hand the reins over to her, allowing Palin to have a full 10 year administration.

And so for as much as they were revved up by Palin's speech, it's obvious from reading RedState that even they were struggling to find some way of salvaging McCain's speech. To RedState's head-honcho Erick Erickson, McCain "had to" go for a lifeless "nuts and bolts" speech because he couldn't compete with Obama's acceptance speech, which was both "angry rhetoric" and "flowery prose and poetry." Perhaps Erickson is referring to the famous Anger Flower, which lulls insects to their doom with beautiful rants against nature.

I suspect that if they had their way, McCain's speech last night would have gotten the Geico treatment, with Palin standing next to McCain to spice up his speech with a special conservative-only translation. And isn't it sad that McCain's such a bore that they'd have to use the regular person in order to make the celebrity's story sound more interesting?

The Meat of the Speech

And it's obvious that these people are entirely clueless as to what they're even supposed to be doing right now. Much of the reality-based criticism of McCain's speech last night was that he was too light on substance and never actually explained what he was going to do for people and exactly how his policies would differ from Bush's. As Carpetbagger said, "Once the speech was over, it occurred to me that I still don't know what McCain wants to do as president, or even why he's running for president. Apparently, it has something to do with McCain's sense that he's earned it, he's entitled to it, and it's his turn, gosh darn it."

And what's funny is that, to the dopes at RedState, that was the good part of the speech. Here's RedState's Hunter Baker on the upside of the speech: "The good news is that there was meat. McCain got through the faux SOTU and began talking about what really matters -- who he is, what his life has been like, why he is ready to lead. When he talked about that, the tingle started to develop. You could feel it."

That's right. To conservatives, McCain's bio was the "meat" of the speech, which is what really matters. And these people dare accuse us of being in a personality cult. Hunter doesn't care what McCain is planning to do and was annoyed with all the feelgood pandering to people who are suffering. He only cares about who McCain is, and because McCain has a longer resume than Obama's, he imagines this somehow serves as a slamdunk. Sure, people are losing their jobs and homes, but dammit, McCain's a fricking hero, and that makes everything better.

And that's fine by me. These people are losing touch with reality more each day and it shows. Americans are worried about their own fate, yet the biggest concern for Republicans is that people know what a hero their candidate is. Sure, McCain is on the wrong side of every issue, both politically and policy-wise, but...P.O.W. That's what this election is about for these people. It's all about tearing down Obama and building up McCain.

From a good man comes good deeds. Sure, even they now agree that they screwed up with the whole Bush thing (though they never say so explicitly), but Bush wasn't a POW. McCain is. And that makes all the difference...even if they hated McCain until not too long ago and certainly preferred the success-challenged Bush over POW McCain in 2000. But hey, pragmatism: It works.