"McCain losing time to push security credentials" by Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | September 2, 2008
ST. PAUL - As delegates to the Republican National Convention were riveted to TV shots of water lapping over levees yesterday, they expressed hope that a potential disaster had been averted on the Gulf Coast and that their own convention could proceed with only the loss of speeches by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
That may not be much of a loss at all, given the president's very low favorability ratings - just 28 percent, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll - and the fact that Hurricane Gustav gave John McCain a chance to show that he takes natural disasters very seriously.
But the cancellation of Day One of the Republican convention may have a deeper political cost. Day One wasn't going to look at the Bush-Cheney record in total, but rather at the administration's one big talking point: its record of protecting the country from another major terrorist attack.
In praising Bush and Cheney, the Republicans hoped to paint Obama as dangerously naive: too eager to negotiate with hostile regimes, too willing to put excessive concerns about civil liberties ahead of tracking terrorists, and too quick to pull out of Iraq.
The speeches by Bush and Cheney would certainly have rekindled memories of Sept. 11, 2001, and the fears of another attack by Islamic extremists. As in 2004, Bush and Cheney would have argued that continuing the war in Iraq is a way of fighting back against extremists - of never surrendering.
But now the Republicans won't be able to sound those notes nearly as loudly. That would leave McCain himself to sound the baleful warnings of another 9/11. But McCain has a lot of other items to cover in his acceptance speech, hoping to present himself as capable of rebuilding the economy, fighting a war, and securing home mortgages as well as national safety.
For McCain to win, the nation needs to be focused on overseas threats. Right now, it's not. And the convention, which promised to serve as a reminder of those dangers, has lost its best opportunity to do so.
So when does the Zionist false-flag get rolled out, Pete?
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