Tag: McCain

This is from Truthdig, which links to a story from the New York Post:

Rush Limbaugh’s said it, and now Charles Hurt from Rupert Murdoch’s Big Apple tabloid, the New York Post, is joining in the chorus of conservatives who worry that Sen. John McCain would betray the GOP’s core right-wing base if he inches any closer to the White House.

The Post story — more of an analysis column — raises echoes of the 1972 election, when the Democratic establishment decided that it would be better to fracture the party than turn it over to McGovern and the antiwar crowd. That decision — at a time when the party already was losing steam and the conservative movement was beginning its ascendance, has proven to have a longterm impact as the right continued to grow in strength.

Now, the conservative establishment is in decline and its leaders — and media mouthpieces — are taking aim at McCain, an apostate conservative in their eyes (never mind that most of his positions are indistinguishable from those held by President George W. Bush).

Hurt quotes Limbaugh:

If the Republican Party expands “because we have a candidate who’s going out trying to attract liberals by being like them, then the party’s going to be around but you won’t recognize it,” thundered radio king Rush Limbaugh.

The Republican Party will “be over as it exists now,” he warns.

Hurt then makes the McGovern comparison more explicit (though he doesn’t acknowledge it):

Still, McCain has so radicalized key conservatives that some have vowed to turn themselves into suicide voters next November by pulling the lever for Hillary Rodham Clinton over him.

This last-minute blitz against McCain by Limbaugh and others, however, comes far too late.

But if those conservatives sit out the general election, they will help Democrats make history by electing either the first black president or the first female president next November.

I doubt we will see a full-out assault on the presumptive Republican nominee, as we did in 1972 when the Democratic establishment pulled out the stops in an effort to nominate anybody buy McGovern, a campaign that sucked the wind from McGovern’s sails (he had faced a steep uphill climb against a sitting president with decent approval ratings already) — and fractured the party at a time when it already had become dangerously fragile.

What followed was the moderately paced erosion of the Democratic Party, both institutionally and philosophically. The Clinton presidency, in some ways, was a blip caused by the first George Bush’s disastrous handling of a recession, a blip that obscured the fact that the 1990s ended with Republican control of the House of Representatives, the election of George W. Bush and the further movement of our national government to the right.

The conditions on the right and in the Republican Party are similar, to some degree, to those faced in 1972 by the Democrats. Perhaps, Limbaugh is right (yes, I did just write that). Perhaps, McCain will lead the national GOP into the wilderness, after all, which would not be such a bad thing for the future of the country.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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All five of the remaining six candidates in this year’s presidential race who ran in their home-state primaries yesterday managed to win and win big.

But two of the Republican nominees — John McCain and Mitt Romney — failed to win as big as some might have expected.

Consider the numbers: Both Democrats managed to tally huge victories at home, with Barack Obama taking nearly two thirds of the vote in Illinois and Hillary Clinton winning 57 percent. In addition, Mike Huckabee took 60 percent in Arkansas. But Mitt Romney pulled in just 51 percent in Massachussets, with John McCain nabbing 40 percent, while McCain garnered an unimpressive 47 percent in Arizona (Romney finished with 34 percent).

In each case, the favorite-son/daughter candidate managed a double-digit win. But in considering McCain’s win in Arizona, I have to wonder why more isn’t being made of the fact that more people voted against McCain than actually voted for him.

This story, in the Arizona Republic on Saturday, speculates on whether a McCain nomination would carry coattails, potentially swinging down-ballot races to the GOP. The assumption is that McCain carries Arizona, which seems likely, though I think the Arizona primary results at least raise some doubts.

Those doubts are made clearer by this on exit polling from The Arizona Daily Star:

Still, exit polls in Arizona Tuesday night illustrated McCain still has work to do in shoring up support from conservatives. Though McCain won the state, Romney had strong support from Republicans who described themselves as conservative and those who believe illegal immigrants should be deported. Romney had 47 percent ofthe vote from those who describe themselves as conservatives, compared to McCain’s 36 percent, according to CNN.

What helped McCain was overwhelming support from Republicans who called themselves liberals, and he was also favored by moderates.

Whether this weakness among conservatives will hurt him in the general election remains an open question, as is whether his current strength among liberals and moderates will carry over when he has to face a more liberal Democrat.

The Los Angeles Times also alludes to the same questions, well down in a Page 1 analysis story:

The Republicans’ divide was ideological — and familiar. It was the same division between moderates, most of whom favor McCain, and conservatives, most of whom don’t, that marked the results in earlier primaries from New Hampshire to South Carolina.

Across the nation, McCain led among Republicans who identified themselves as moderates or liberals, but Romney led among the larger group who called themselves conservatives, according to exit poll results published by the Associated Press.

In California, McCain won only a third of the vote among conservatives, who made up most of the Republican electorate; Romney won a plurality of conservatives’ votes. That result was repeated in most other states; even in Arizona, where McCain won overall, he lost among conservatives.

That suggested that the Arizona senator has not yet won over substantial numbers of his party’s most loyal supporters, despite weeks of effort on his part to show that he is as conservative as his rivals.

“McCain wanted to use Super Tuesday to silence his critics and become the consensus nominee, but he fell a little short,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. “McCain moved the ball forward, but he didn’t score a touchdown. It’s not a bad showing, but it’s not especially strong.”

How these questions play out as we move toward November will depend on the final lineup — not only the presidential candidates, but the vice presidential candidates — and could be influenced by any number of circumstances. McCain’s win in Arizona shows some cracks that could keep him from bringing his party togethe, which is the only hope he has come November.

Then again, I would never rule him out.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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The press likes to paint Sen. John McCain as a maverick, an independent, a moderate. But McCain, by his own admission, is really none of these things. He is a died-in-the-wool conservative who has taken some positions — campaign finance reform, the Bush tax cuts — that have angered the base, but he remains far to the right of the mainstream of American voters.

The question, as Joe Conason points out, is whether the press will do its job and raise these points. (EJ Dionne Jr. speculates on McCain signalling the fracturing of the conservative coalition, which would be good news for the country.)

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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