John McCain has pleased his base now for about three weeks and then he goes and does something like his ridiculous response to the ridiculous slavery question by Whoopi Goldberg on “The View”:
In response to Goldberg’s ridiculous question, McCain says that she made an “excellent point.” Why did he say that?
And at last night’s liberal-dominated forum on national service, he pledged to sign the absurd legislation sponsored by Ted Kennedy. The bill seems designed to recapture the good old days of the Civilian Conservation Corps and other programs that nurtured left-wing activists in its collectivist bosom.
And finally, he’s gone back to his “immigration reform” message that, to most of the base, translates into amnesty for illegal aliens. For a campaign that’s had a consistent message for a few weeks, and has benefited handsomely in the polls, this flirting with lefty positions is strange.
MORE: Related to the above, Ross Douthat fears the McCain staff will ruin Palin:
Now I’m worried about one of the GOP’s most interesting talents being absorbed, and formed as a national politician, by a McCain campaign that’s been deeply unimaginative on every front except the wars to win the weekly news cycle – and that seems happy, after the brief burst of risk-taking and creativity that produced the Palin pick and McCain’s strikingly post-partisan acceptance speech (and gave them a big bounce in the polls, not coincidentally), to slip back into a cynical and deeply unimaginative style.
They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?
