The Republican Convention: John McCain shows his hand ... by gimleteye

John McCain is running fast from the most unpopular president in modern US history and, at the same time, toward a conservative base that is being swept along with the rest of America by the collapse of housing markets, personal wealth, and confidence in the US economy. It would be interesting to poll delegates of the Republican National Convention: are you economically more or less secure than you were eight years ago?

For a few days, Sarah Palin will be a distraction from the main event: the economy. McCain hurriedly grasped Palin from a crowd of VP aspirants to mollify the alarm of key Republicans that his first choice for VP, Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, would spell disaster to the conservative base.

On this blog, we have chronicled the political origins of the housing crash in Florida, that were woven with the aspirations of land speculators, Wall Street greed, and a Growth Machine that has commandeered the levers of local legislatures and, in Florida, the state legislature too. All, mostly Republican. Do you imagine for a second that it is just the 'angry left' swept up in the wave of foreclosures, financial insecurity, and sharp cutbacks in municipal and state services?

This election cycle, what people care about is that the Republican wrecking crew has made America poorer.

There is, of course, September 11th. That is the theme that the Bush people thought, in 2006, would propel Rudy Giuliani to the presidency and, last night, President Bush still wielded 9/11 like a threatening cudgel. "Oh yes, we screwed up in 1000 ways but we were only trying to help you." Just like letting 10,000 suburbs bloom was an economic policy-- the ownership society-- that was going to help you.

This election cycle, Americans aren't buying magic ampulets; we're too busy trying to save our homes, or keep our jobs, or worrying about whether our bank accounts are safe or if the financial institutions that hold them will make good on our deposits, or, if we are being force-fed inflation in order to bail-out the perpetrators.

If the McCain people believed the substitution of video for a personal appearance could put distance between John McCain and George W. Bush, a president who commands the respect of one of three Americans, they were wrong.

There is plenty to be angry about in the squandering of American treasure and missed opportunities in the war against terror. McCain's surrogates like Thompson and Bush are trying to blame the "angry left" for their own blasted incompetence.

The attendees of the Republican Convention were all atwitter when Karl Rove made an appearance-- highly paid pundit that he now is-- and they are still hoping that the Rove's politics of polarization will win the day.

But social and fiscal conservatives too are apoplectic about the abandonment of fiduciary responsibility in governance, the betrayal of conservative economic management to protect taxpayers, the reliance on lies and fabrication in the guidance of foreign relations. John McCain, who doesn't know how many houses he owns, who professes not to understand the economy, and Sarah Palin who wondered before a TV camera just a short while ago, what exactly does a VP do: enough, already. Enough.