Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Ann Coulter, Andrew Sullivan, Sean Wilentz, David Horowitz, Joe Conason and Fran Lebowitz on George W. Bush's disaster in New Hampshire.
Feb 2, 2000 | Ann Coulter, columnist for George magazine: Look, John McCain's my favorite Democrat, that's why I just can't figure out what he's doing in the Republican primaries. I've seen some the surveys of why people are voting for McCain, and they're siding with him on liberal issues, which tells me that it's the liberal independents who gave McCain his success. They're never going to end up voting for a Republican anyway.
Oddly, I think McCain really helps Bush because all the other candidates are to the right of him. With McCain there, Bush can always say, "I'm the conservative in this race." And conservatives, you know, they do go out and vote when its raining outside. What's more amazing is really the media's orgasm over McCain. He's the New York Times' candidate. He's Geraldo's candidate. He's Chris Matthews' candidate. I think that they just decided that, after eight years of Clinton, the next president is going to be a Republican president, so they want it to be their Republican. The smart Democrats want Bradley, but he can't win. So they went for McCain, and now his real constituency is the editors of the New York Times. And, for the most part, he's won them over.
Fran Lebowitz, essayist and humorist: Anything that will upset George Bush is OK with me. Though I do -- like, I think, millions of others -- feel personally attracted to him, I think McCain's voting record is just too far right. But George Bush -- what, we're supposed to know him by his middle initial? -- I find him loathsome. Didn't we fight that little war with England so that we don't have to deal with little princes? I don't get it. And everyone now seems to just love George Bush -- the real one, not the little one. When did that happen? The one thing about Bill Clinton I like, or I should say, the idea about Bill Clinton that I like, is that you're supposed to be able to come out of nowhere and be president.
I'm the single best voter in America. I vote in every primary, in every school board election, everything. If you don't vote, you cannot make any other comment about politics. I vote so I can complain. But I've never voted with any enthusiasm for a candidate. Among those running now, I guess I would say Bradley. I prefer him to Gore. I remember as a child how enthusiastic my parents were for Stevenson. Now the candidates are getting worse. Then again, everything has, the novelists, the movie stars ...
But to complain about the candidates and not vote is just giving up. Living in a democracy means you have to be interested in politics. You have no choice. Younger people take enormous pride in never having voted, in not having any interest. But that's an ersatz irony; the truth is there are some things that are more important. It's not entertainment and it shouldn't be treated that way. That's why I think politicians should not go on Letterman. There should be a difference between Johnny Depp and Hillary Clinton.
Sean Wilentz, Dayton-Stockton professor of history at Princeton University and a contributing editor to the New Republic: George W. Bush is the big loser tonight. If I were him, I would shake up my campaign right away -- because this does not portend well for the long haul. The Republican Party will nominate Bush, I have no doubt about that. But the primaries are a way to preview how a candidate is going to perform in the general election. If I were Bush, I would be concerned about that.
If McCain can keep up a steady barrage and come close in these primaries, then the Bush campaign should be very, very concerned. New Hampshire's not enough to do that, but it is a blow. McCain's 16-point margin was huge, a whopper. [The final margin, announced Wednesday morning, was 18 points.] Bush spent a lot of time in New Hampshire and he spent a lot of money putting on a show. I'm sure that right now , somewhere in Concord, N.H., or Austin, there's a meeting going on saying, Well, what do we do, guys? As a student of American politics, I would love to be at that meeting.
Bush's is the Republican establishment's candidacy, but New Hampshire voters are not well disposed to the party establishment. I remember in 1964 they voted for Henry Cabot, who was in Vietnam at the time. McCain basically ran to Bush's left -- and what it shows me is that, even among Republican voters, the Reagan-Bush era is dead. Bill Clinton killed it, and what we're now seeing is a shakeout. And the fact that Gore won, even if narrowly, proves that there's no such thing as "Clinton fatigue," which has been made up by the press.
For Bradley's part, he was really building momentum up until the debate in Iowa, and then everything seemed to flop. But there's still a long way to go, he's got a lot of money and he's a strong candidate. But a close loss does not do for him what it did for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 -- where a close loss was enough to practically unseat a president. But the Bradley candidacy is still alive -- it's been hurt and it comes out of this weakened, but I think he can go on.
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