Senior McCain aide (Schmidt): The GOP is a 'shrinking entity'

[jefferson_dem]

Senior McCain aide: The GOP is a 'shrinking entity'
Posted: 08:43 PM ET

From CNN's Rebecca Sinderbrand

McCain's campaign was doomed long before Election Day, his former top strategist said Thursday.

(CNN) — John McCain’s general election campaign began as “the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards” – and was doomed weeks before Election Day, his former chief strategist said Thursday.

“We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican Party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault, but were John McCain’s problem in this race,” Schmidt told an audience at the University of Delaware, according to Politico. “When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right away that … from an electoral strategy perspective, the campaign was finished.”

Schmidt and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe — who both attended, but did not graduate from Delaware — shared the stage and looked back at the 2008 campaign.

Schmidt praised Obama's political skills. “This was, in my view, the unfinished Bobby Kennedy campaign — the idealism, the passion, the inspiration he gave to people, it was organic and it was real and it wasn’t manufactured at a tactical level in the campaign,” he said.

The Republican strategist said Sen. John McCain passed over his first choice for vice president — Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Lieberman — in favor of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to avoid an all-out GOP civil war.

“It was communicated back to us very clearly from within the party that not only was Senator Lieberman not acceptable, but any pro-choice nominee was not acceptable, it would lead to a floor fight at the convention with an alternate nominee for vice president put into play.

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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/23/senior-mccain-aide-the-gop-is-a-shrinking-entity/

[Arkana]

1. Why is Steve Schmidt doing this?

First gay marriage and now this--what's his angle? Is he one of the few who realizes that the party is completely demented by pain and rage and is devouring itself bit by bit?

[Cha]

3. I was thinking he was one of those

who wanted to do his bit to start with a cleaner slate than building on 8 years of cheney bush failures.

[Cha]

2. Whine Whine..mccain enabled bush so

yeah, it was his fault..he had a big share in it.

[opihimoimoi]

4. Wow, trapped by their own lolo ideology....no wiggle room, no flex, no victory

Trapped!! I Tell Ya

They got it Wrong......This is Not the Time to be Rigid......This is a time to be Flexible....Bend like the Willow rather than Broken Oak Branches ....but then,.....these are Pubs.....what can I say?

[burning rain]

5. Lot of clueless self-pity there.

If someone had told me that Republicans in 2008 would field a presidential candidate who was a bigger warmonger than Bush, I'd have told them they were nuts, but John McCain ("Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran!") was that -- even though public opinion had visibly and decisively turned against the Iraq War by the 2006 elections. And he was completely out of tough on the economy, bitching about demon socialism over Obama's proposal for a modest tax increase on the wealthy. He didn't even try to offer ordinary Americans anything to help them on pocketbook issues other than empty, long discredited supply side twaddle about wanting everyone to be rich, and faux the plumber populism. And of course, he trashed the "modern Republican" image he went with in 2000 with the Palin nomination and embrace of the social right.