What would Bill do?
Not Bill Cunningham, but Bill Buckley, whom we sadly just lost, a departure for one of conservatism's most erudite and tempered mouthpieces, that little dust-up he had with Gore Vidal nonwithstanding.
Cunningham is the right-wing Cincinnati radio show host who opened for a John McCain rally on Tuesday, repeatedly referring to Sen. Barack Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama" and calling him a political "hack." McCain didn't personally invite Cunningham and didn't hear the actual comments. But he got the crux from his staff and declared, according to CNN: "I absolutely repudiate such comments, and again I will take responsibility -- it will never happen again. It will never happen again." Cunningham is enjoying a hissy fit, saying he got thrown under the McCain bus for giving the crowd "red meat" like the GOP locals requested.
Let's back that bus up a moment. Anybody who has been paying attention to John McCain knows he doesn't play red-meat politics... at least in the end he doesn't. Last November, he laughed at first when a voter referred to Sen. Hillary Clinton as the b-word before eventually saying he respected her. Now he's doing the same thing with Cunningham minus the giggle.
Cincy Republicans probably thought they were doing the Arizona senator a favor by sending in a conservative hothead. Instead, he burned his base. On the other hand, one of my newsroom colleagues says he's more likely to vote for McCain now that he's cheesed off the right wing again. So now his campaign staffers have to cross radio boilers off the list for future events and hope they can still find somebody with partisan charisma. Good luck. Maybe he can hire a Obama lookalike and flip him to the GOP.
Despite McCain's delayed repudiations, is civility not too much to ask for in a presidential campaign? Obama's people thrive on it. And the late William F. Buckley, sharp-tounged as he was, certainly knew where to draw the line.
No comments:
Post a Comment