John McCain and the "Transcendent" War

John McCain, during the recent Republican debate, says:

I also firmly believe that the challenge of the 21st century is the struggle against radical Islamic extremism. It is a transcendent issue. It is hydra-headed. It will be with us for the rest of the century.

Josh Marshall, who is skilled at doing this sort of thing, lucidly analyzes the absurdity of the remark:

Now, think about that. That's ninety-three years. My old graduate school advisor Gordon Wood used to say that humans have a very hard time seeing more than fifty years into the future. Of course, even a year into the future is difficult. But more than a few decades and we haven't the slightest idea what the world is going to look like ...

But John McCain states it as a matter of fact that the war against militant Islam will still be the defining national security threat for this country in 2099 and for years after.

I know we customarily give a rather wide berth to rhetorical excess in the theater of politics. But what on earth is McCain talking about? Not long ago it was enough to sate the historical vanity of the War on Terror mongers to dub it a 'long war' or 'generational struggle', which it may well be. But apparently even that is now insufficient. Only an entire century will do. It is almost as if as the concept in the real-world present looks more and more ill-judged and foolhardy its credentials must be buffed up by giving it more and more ridiculous lifespans ranging off into the unknowable future.

The Carpetbagger Report expands on this:

We’re engaged in an undefined, open-ended war against an undetermined enemy that spans several continents and is unaffiliated with any specific nation-state. I’m rather surprised McCain was willing to limit his vision to just the 21st century.

Indeed, as long as we’re looking at this in a big-picture kind of way, a McCain-like vision of a “war on terror” can’t end until we’ve “won.” I’m curious how those who share McCain’s ideology would define “victory” in this context.

When the Middle East is dominated by democracies? That won’t do it; people can vote for terrorists. When al Qaeda is destroyed? There are other networks that can and would take its place. When religious extremists are no longer motivated by their faith to commit acts of violence? That might, um, take a while.

The two writers note other aspects of the "transcendence" of this struggle: for one thing, as Marshall points out, it puts McCain, Bush, and their ideological fellow-travellers beyond the realm of mere evidence -- and ultimately beyond judgment and consequences altogether: "the future is the only territory where empirical evidence or -- more plainly put -- reality can't be brought up to contradict you." I've suggested before that "victory" in Iraq, as it is postponed ad infinitum into the future by its neoconservative devotees -- always just around a corner or two -- is a similarly unassailable concept. Lest we forget, our travails in Iraq are, in the minds of the neocons, bound up conceptually into the general "long war" McCain was describing during the debate; indeed, there's no particular reason to believe that, given the unity and "transcendence" of the war as described by McCain, we should expect "victory" in Iraq to arrive at any point during the front end of that 93-year struggle. If Iraq is the front line in the war on terror, and the war on terror is expected to last a century, well...

Of course, the front line may shift. To where? It hardly matters. That's the fun of transcendent war -- it has little to do with actual circumstances or actual decisions or actual people with actual lives to be lived and lost.

From what has this war transcended? And to where? It has transcended, I think, from being a collection of actual issues, often only tangentally related to one another, and subject to management by competent people using empirically-tested methods, to being a holy cause, given rhetorical unity and subject first and foremost to the demands of faith (and political advantage). The claims to competence of the actual experts are degraded, and the experts themselves frequently become convenient and amusing subjects of abuse at the hands of the initiate. And for the nonbelievers, there's a lake of political fire.

Why does it seem so important for American conservatives to have a transcendent war to wage?

Perhaps because American conservatism -- that peculiar strain of hyper-aggressive, bowdlerized right-liberalism punctuated by bouts of Burke-inspired self-loathing -- has accomplished some things, but as a whole and on its own, it lacks a convincing internal logic (even though it believes strongly in the importance of such a logic) and is uninspired by the duties and challenges of actually governing. It seems to me that Democrats -- right back to the days of Andrew Jackson -- have generally been the party of the incoherent, non-ideological, pragmatic majority. Seekers of transcendence, on the other hand, have tended to be much more attracted to the Republican party. This has given us abolition, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and progressivism, but it has also given us Prohibition, "the Evil Empire," and the Moral Majority. It's difficult for the right to get by, politically speaking, without a transcendent cause to which it can attach. If the details of the cause -- the actual people, the actual circumstances, the fact that it can't really be described as a "cause" at all -- get in the way, said details should be rubbished and ignored. This is the mindset of the faithful.

What's the cash value of these ruminations? I don't know. But Prohibition and the Moral Majority went away sooner than many people thought they would. I imagine that neo-Reaganism will, as well. Transcendence feels great when you first inhale it, but the high never lasts as long as it should, and the real world comes rushing back hard.

Labels: Iraq, John McCain, Neoconservatives, War on Terror

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:05 PM 1 comments

  GOP to McCain: Look What You Make Us Do

At NRO, Jim Geraghty picks up on the McCain deathwatch story, and wonders about the role of the immigration issue in his campaign's downward spiral. In an article fueled by quotes from anonymous strategists in opposing Republican camps, Geraghty reveals how McCain's sponsorship of the immigration bill is causing problems not just for the Arizona Senator himself, but for the rest of the Republican field. While rival Republican candidates can use the issue to flog McCain, at least some of their advisors are smart enough to wish the whole issue would just go away:

"I don’t know how much shelf-life this issue has for Republicans," the rival strategist says. "This was Karl Rove’s brilliant idea to permanently cement the Hispanic vote to the Republican base. Well, so far, all we’ve seen it do is aggravate Hispanics and divide our base. The longer we’re talking about this issue, the deeper we’re digging this hole. And where the hell is McCain? He threw our party into this briar patch. He makes the deal with Kennedy, creating this mess, and then he’s out on the campaign trail raising money."

The thing is, it's a briar patch of the right's own making. Geraghty cites an anti-Hispanic "comedy" bit on a recent edition of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, but Linda Chavez's recent complaints tell the story more graphically -- the more that Republicans talk about immigration, the more nastiness they bring out in their own base. And that's not going to be good for them in the long run. Geraghty's source understands the ramifications:

"Symbolism of this bill may be more important than substance," says the rival strategist. He laments that the debate on the Republican side is turning into who can most vehemently denounce illegal immigrants, and to Hispanic ears, it may sound hostile to all immigrants, regardless of their legal status. "Sometimes it’s not the words that people hear, but the theme music in the background."

Immigration may be the most natural issue for McCain's GOP rivals to use against him -- since it's the area in which he is most clearly at odds with the party's base -- but using it that way is ultimately self-destructive for Republicans. No wonder they're all so eager to see John McCain disappear.

Cross-posted at The Right's Field.

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Presidential election, Republicans

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:09 AM 2 comments

  Novakula Speaks

A couple of interesting tidbits from Robert Novak, who may or may not have been a willing dupe in an effort to out a CIA agent as part of a political smear job:

If, as previously discussed, McCain's breakup with his BFFs in the MSM is likely to improve his standing among the SOBs who vote GOP, things are going swimmingly. McCain is loudly complaining that the liberal media are in love with Romney and Giuliani:

Sen. John McCain, who was the darling of the political press corps during the 2000 election cycle, complains to friends that he is getting much rougher treatment from the news media than his competitors for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

McCain feels that his support for President Bush's Iraq policy has soured his erstwhile reporter friends. Although Giuliani and Romney also have been criticized by the media, McCain privately expresses the view that they have gotten off easy.

In this analysis, the objective for McCain isn't to get better coverage, it's to point out that his opponents are the ones in bed with representatives from the reality-based world (this, remember, is supposed to be a bad thing). It's like a game of Old Maid, and the Senator has just passed on the deadly card.

Also, Novak provides some numbers to back up David Brooks's warning that Republicans are cruising for a bruising in 2008:

Private House Democratic polls of the 50 most competitive congressional districts project a gain of 9 to 11 seats in the 2008 elections that would be an unprecedented further surge by the party after its 2006 gain of 30 seats to win control of the House.

All previous major surges of House seats have been followed by losses in the next election. The 54-seat Republican gain in 1994 that produced GOP House control was followed by an eight-seat loss in 1996. However, the current Republican political slump, fueled by President Bush's unpopularity, would reverse that pattern if the election were held today, according to the Democratic polls.

Yeah, these are Democratic polls, and it's way too early to take them very seriously. But they do suggest that, five months after the midterms, Republicans continue to have a pretty serious brand problem.

Labels: 2008, John McCain, polls, Presidential election, Republicans, Robert Novak

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:11 PM 0 comments

  With You Shortly

So, Blogger seems to be crapping it up, again. We'll attempt to stay the course nonetheless. I'll be back later this afternoon with the long-awaited (by me, anyway) third part of the Republican Futures Past series, reporting from that brief time when we all thought the George W. Bush presidency wouldn't amount to much either way.

Meanwhile, as an amuse bouche, here's a taste of what our conservative friends are up to today:

This week's Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn award goes to the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter, whose op-ed in the New York Sun blames the various problem's of today's black youth - sexism, jaywalking, and the "stop snitching" thing - on LBJ and John Stewart. McWhorter argues that, back when they were oppressed, black folks were more upstanding. Truly, the past isn't what it used to be. Nor, apparently, is the present.

The editors of the National Review make a very good point about John McCain's apparently floundering campaign: there's an excellent chance he'll rebound thanks to the very reason he appears to be in trouble. How's that? Remember when we talked about conservative activists' perverse resentment of McCain's good relationship with the national media? Now that the media are saying he's in trouble, conservative primary voters are more likely to embrace the ex-"maverick":

The rest of McCain’s campaign — which he officially launched in New Hampshire yesterday — is likely to be characterized by a dissonance: Whatever turns off the press and prompts it to write about how much he is hurting himself will probably only help him among Republican voters.

McCain's "embittered ex-lovers" in the media may end up driving conservative voters into his arms.

Also at the National Review, Jim Geraghty brings us a trio of posts (the last of which is an interview) about Law & Order's Sam Waterson speaking about Fred Thompson and the 2008 election. Waterson's main subject is actually Unity 08, the group, with whom he is involved, seeking to draft a bipartisan independent ticket for the presidential election. I like Waterson, and I've always dug Jack McCoy, hard case though he is (did you know he's a fan of The Clash?), but man, that is one dumb idea.

And meanwhile, lurking in a distinctly candidate-like non-candidate-y way, Newt Gingrich flogs his "Green Conservatism" at the Australian (?) and the AEI website.

Right then. See you this afternoon.

Labels: 2008, John McCain, National review, New York Sun, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:35 AM 0 comments

  McCain's Got Some Spinning to Do

Senator Shopper's Q1 fundraising total: $12.5 million. That puts him behind Rudy and Romney, and his campaign is forced to acknowledge its disappointment:

Campaign Manager Terry Nelson said, "Although we are pleased with the organization we’ve built and polls show us strongly positioned in key primary states, we had hoped to do better in first quarter fundraising. We are already in the process of taking the necessary steps to ensure fundraising success moving forward."

The campaign is emphasizing that the money came from 60,000 individual donors, which is impressive in its own way, but hardly makes up for the dismal total.

Hotline breaks it down a little more. Their take:

The media will treat this as a grevious, potentially fatal wound. It's not, but it's not outpatient surgery either.

Rival campaigns are publicly delighted, and McCain is planning a "major speech" to "re-launch" his own campaign.

Hotline also asks, "Why isn't McCain getting more money from institutional donors?" Good question. Has the Republican establishment already begun to abandon the idea that the Arizona Senator is the party's heir-apparent?

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:33 PM 0 comments

  Money: Mitt Leads, Rudy Gaining, McCain Shopping

So, yes, the Q1 fundraising numbers are coming out. Mitt Romney continues to be the candidate of solid early organization, topping the field so far with $23 million. Rudy Giuliani apparently rasied $10 million in March alone, for a total of $15 million - not bad.

Even better for GOP fundraising efforts should be the fact that Hillary raised almost as much money as Romney and Giuliani combined. It's an arms race, and the boogeywoman's winning.

John McCain has yet to report his numbers - evidently he's too busy shopping in Baghdad. I hope he remembered to pick up something nice for the five helicopter crews and company of soldiers who had to escort him.

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:37 PM 0 comments

  All Your Reality Base Are Belong to Us

Good piece by Jonathan Chait at the LA Times yesterday: "Why the Right Goes Nuclear over Global Warming." It's a quick look at the dynamics behind the perverse fact that, as evidence for global warming goes stronger, Republican politicians are actually getting more skeptical. As Chait points out, it's a process largely driven by a small number of hard-core denialist ideologues (the very same ones we cover regularly at this blog):

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.

Emphsis mine. Once again, culture war trumps all.

Chait notes that several Republican Congressmen who do take global warming seriously - Reps. Wayne Gilchrest, Roscoe Bartlett, and Vernon Ehlers - were recently turned down by the Republican leadership for seats on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Bartlett and Ehlers are research scientists. Observes Chait, "Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification."

So on a critical issue - and at a criticial juncture - we find, once again, Republicans failing in their duty to provide constructive leadership because of the overriding conservative refusal to believe in the utility of science or activist government. The qualified members of their own party are undermined by the ideologues. John Boehner knows which side his freedom toast is buttered on - that's why he turned up at the conservative summit to grovel before the very same "intellectuals" who insist that climate change is a liberal fairy tale. They're driving the movement, and the movement is driving the party.

Still, if you understand conservative dynamics and know how to manipulate them, you can use them to your advantage. Thus, Chait points out, John McCain's efforts to address climate change center on his advocacy of nuclear power. Whatever you think of nuclear plants, you have to admire the political insight here:

In reality, nuclear plants may be a small part of the answer, but you couldn't build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh listeners, let's fight global warming and stick it to those hippies!

It's not exactly reverse psychology. Call it perverse psychology.

Labels: conservatives, global warming, John McCain, Jonathan Chait

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:21 AM 0 comments

  Another Bad Week for McCain

You never really know. John Kerry was famously in last place not too long before Iowa last time. So it might not mean anything, but the news is still bad for John McCain.

Here he is missing his fundraising targeet (and getting schooled by Romney!).

And here he is bleeding support to Giuliani in his own home state.

By the way, here's a somewhat strange poll. "Democratic insiders" were asked who would be the strongest Republican candidate in the general election, and "Republican insiders" were asked to gauge the Democratic field. I have no idea who these "insiders" were, and I'm not sure their collective judgment is all that sharp.

But I guess that's why I'm not an insider.

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:32 AM 0 comments

  The Rise of the Conservative Essenes

As the conventional wisdom begins to shift toward an understanding that John McCain's campaign is in serious trouble, the Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti turns up in the op-ed pages of the New York Times to explain it to us civilians. Continetti reviews how McCain has gone from GOP heir-apparent to the right's favorite punching bag. Some of it is that mixed bag of issues (campaign finance reform, global warming, etc.) and old personal grudges (Falwell fallout). As Continetti summarizes:

While Mr. McCain and the conservative activists who compose the Republican grassroots share many positions — pro-war, pro-life, against waste in government and for low taxes — a significant portion of those grassroots just ... doesn’t ... like him.

And the most interesting reason Continetti cites for this mistrust is not ideological or personal, but cultural:

For years conservatives have cast a suspicious eye on Senator McCain because non-conservatives find him appealing. They distrust the institutions of liberal culture — the news media in particular — to such a degree that a politician those institutions embrace must be suspect. They grow furious when they hear Senator McCain on Don Imus’s radio show but not Rush Limbaugh’s. The politics of polarization militate against a McCain candidacy. The man transcends the partisan divide — but what partisans want above all is a fellow partisan.

[...]

Call it poetic justice, tragedy or farce: Senator McCain’s quest to become the establishment candidate has jeopardized his candidacy and exposed deep fissures within the conservative movement.

Take a moment to consider how remarkable this is - how self-defeating. The conservative movement has reached the point where it refuses to tolerate the notion of its candidates even talking to mainstream America. This is a movement, a party, in the process of committing political suicide.

Again, this is not just a disagreement about ideas. That sort of thing is common enough in political coalitions, and it can be handled with deft horse trading. What's happening on the right, at this point, is a kind of cultural secessionism. The conservative sense of persecution and self-righteousness has resulted in a deepening retrenchment behind culture war assumptions - regardless of the fact that most of America lies outside the perimeter.

If the right won't even let its candidates join the national conversation, if the code words aren't enough anymore, if the entire Republican party is to be sealed within the airless chamber of the conservative movement, locked in the room with CPAC and the National Review and Focus on the Family and nobody else - does this mean that the most powerful movement in modern American politics will, under its own potent momentum, end up driving itself into oblivion?

At this point, it's a hyperbolic question. But given the dynamic Continetti points out, it may, before long, become a reasonable one.

Labels: conservatives, John McCain, Matthew Continetti

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:38 AM 3 comments

  Blowback from McCain's CPAC Snub

As you may recall, John McCain was conspicuous by his absence at this year's CPAC. The American Conservative Union, which sponsored the conference, today features an article (reprinted from The Hill) by ACU chairman David Keene, who scolds McCain for the snub. He also mentions - which I hadn't been aware of - that, consistent with McCain's flip-floppy record, the Senator's aides did try at the last minute to work something out, but they were snubbed in return. The whole thing was a blown opportunity:

McCain’s people reacted to questions about how [skipping CPAC] fit into his strategy of courting conservative support with blank stares and finally began claiming that CPAC was not representative of anything, as it is attended mostly by “Washington insiders.” What was apparent to reporters and others, however, was that the 6,300 conservative activists streaming in from outside Washington were, in fact, from everywhere but Washington. As it turned out, they had come from all 50 states and were crowding the halls of the Shoreham and a couple of neighboring hotels that had been booked solid weeks in advance.

When the senator’s people realized this wouldn’t fly they tried to go around the organizers to get a room to host a separate reception for attendees, but were told quite accurately that every function room and suite in the host hotel were sold out. They satisfied themselves in the end by telling reporters that the senator would have come but for scheduling difficulties.

In fact, had McCain attended, he would have been well received. He finished fourth anyway in the straw poll won by Mitt Romney, but was booed every time his name was mentioned for the way he and his ham-handed managers handled the whole thing. There is much about his record that conservatives don’t like, but a good bit they admire as well. That is something that can be said of the other wannabes as well … and all of them were well received.

I'm not one of those liberals with a soft spot for John McCain; he's an unprincipled war hawk with a much more conservative record than many would like to admit. Still, I was counting it as a plus for him that he skipped out on this year's Coulterized hate fest. But it should come as no surprise that he in fact made a rather pathetic attempt to get on board at the last minute.

One thing that does sound odd to me is the assertion, from both sides, that McCain simply didn't know how big a deal CPAC would be. It's the major event on the conservative calendar. It's a big deal every year. McCain wasn't avoiding it because he was misinformed; he was avoiding it, most likely, because he knew what a cesspool of right-wing fanaticism it can be. And yet he still flip-flopped and tried to get in under the wire.

As it stands, McCain's relationship with the conservative base has taken a blow, not just for missing CPAC, but for making its organizers feel bad:

The loser, of course, was John McCain—not because he wasn’t there, but because of the essentially mean-spirited manner in which he and his staff dismissed the very people whose support he claims he is seeking.

And that just seems to be the line on McCain generally: nobody actually likes him very much.

Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, John McCain, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:04 PM 0 comments

  It Ain't Getting Any Prettier

So I go out on a limb and describe Mitt Romney as the Republican "frontrunner in waiting." Then Erick Erickson at Red State turns around and publicly renounces his support for "Multiple Choice Mitt." Says Erick, "I'm tired of the explanations and I'm tired of the dodges."

You know the drill: the flip-flopping on abortion, gay-hating, Paul Tsongas, etc. Erick's had enough:

I'm tired of running into these stories. I'm tired of the hedges. I'm tired of the dodges. And I'm tired of the caveated nuance. So let me put this straight and bluntly. I'm more than happy to support my man Mitt if he is the Republican nominee. But, like Hillary Clinton, he is a political opportunist who I increasingly see as someone without principle, only a weather vane.

Multiple Choice Mitt had me at hello. He lost me on the flip.

Da-yum.

In another blow to my theory, Hunter Baker asks, "Are We Basically Down to Two Candidates for the GOP?" Baker argues that GOP primary voters, when there is no Republican incumbent, essentially always pick the best-known candidate (with the notable exception of 1964). And if this is the case, then the prospects for most of the field have been dim from the get-go:

If this basic dynamic of "the biggest Republican" running continues to hold, then it would surprising in the extreme to see anybody other than McCain or Giuliani get the nod. Nobody else in the field is even in the same universe from a name recognition standpoint (save Newt, whom I love, but isn't even a serious candidate).

Clearly, people think there is an opening because neither McCain nor Giuliani has rock solid conservative credentials, but the voters aren't as sensitive as we net-denizens might believe and McCain is beginning to claim the pro-life slot as against Rudy. So, I'm not sure the opening is really there.

Of course, the sample size is pretty small, which makes it hard to control for contingent factors. But here's my bigger question: since 1980, when have the Republicans nominated a non-incumbent candidate who was actively loathed by the conservative movement? (I'm counting G.W. Bush as an incumbent, by the way.) The only possibility would be Dole - was he discussed with the same vitriol conservatives reserve for McCain? I honestly don't know.

The point being: McCain is actively hated by conservatives. Giuliani should be, but his powers of mythmaking have thus far kept him in the running. Romney apparently is, too - but he's been trying signficantly harder than either of the other two to win conservative support.

Maybe all Mitt's hard work won't pay off, and the conservatives will be faced with a choice between a man they hate and Rudy "House of Cards" Giuliani. If that's the case, maybe conservatives will be all the more desperate to suspend their disbelief, to buy into Giuliani's fairy tales and ignore the various scurrying men behind the curtain.

I certainly don't envy them the exercise.

Update: read the comments to Baker's post. Some pretty strong pro-Giuliani sentiment.

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, Redstate, Rudy Giuliani

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:45 PM 0 comments

  McCain Among the Copperheads

If you want to find people who really dislike a particular presidential candidate, go to the candidate's home state. The New York Times takes a trip to Arizona today, and finds raging antipathy towards John McCain - from the Senator's own party:

The chairman of the local Republican Party here in the most populous county in Arizona has in his possession a bright yellow button with a black line slashed through the name McCain.

“I don’t wear it out very often,” said the chairman, Lyle Tuttle of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, in a slightly sheepish coda to a 20-minute vituperation about the state’s senior senator, served up from his living room chair.

[...]

Meanwhile, disgusted with Mr. McCain’s position on proposed changes to immigration laws (he advocates legalization that would not require illegal immigrants to leave the country), with what some see as wavering on the issue of gay marriage (he lent his name to a state ballot initiative to ban it but did not support a constitutional amendment), and with the campaign finance act that bears his name, some Arizona Republicans are making trouble for Mr. McCain.

They have elected local party leaders whom he opposes, criticized his policy positions and thrown early support to other potential primary candidates — all in the hope of tripping up Mr. McCain on his own doorstep.

“They can make trouble for him,” said Bruce D. Merrill, an Arizona State University political scientist and polling expert. “It is too early in terms of voting to tell, but it certainly could potentially affect people’s decision to give him money.”

The article cites a poll showing that only 54 percent of Arizona's Republican voters say they'd support McCain in the primary. However, as McCain's own camp points out, independents are also eligible to vote in the GOP primary, and that's a group McCain should win easily. Still, it's bad publicity for a candidate seeking conservative support in other states.

The Times provides a couple more interesting background notes:

In some ways, Mr. McCain’s troubles here reflect a fracas within the state party that has pit its more centrist members, long the stronghold of its leadership, against its most hard-line factions who call Mr. McCain “elitist.”

For several years, various critics have complained that he has been aloof, that he has a brittle temper and that he has made missteps on key conservative issues.

So on the one hand, the issue relates to what seems to be an increasingly common split within various state Republican parties: between hardline and moderate factions, each independently organized (at least to a degree), and neither willing to back down from confrontation with the other. On the other hand, the dispute further illustrates a persistent problem for John McCain: on a personal level, people just don't like him very much.

Of course, the larger political lesson here is that no place is a greater liability for a candidate than his own home state.

Labels: 2008, Arizona, John McCain, Presidential election, Republicans

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:41 AM 0 comments

  More on McCain and the Sociocons

From the AP: McCain Courting Religious Conservatives. More of what you've probably already heard about why the religious right doesn't like the Senator from Arizona. Repeat of the Dobson quote, which keeps coming up and must be doing a good amount of damage:

"I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," Dobson said last month on KCBI, a Dallas Christian radio station. "I pray that we won't get stuck with him."

And the latest formulation of the list of grievances:

[Conservative fundamentalists] are dubious about his opposition to a federal amendment to ban gay marriage. McCain opposes same-sex marriage, but says it should be regulated by the states.

_They still resent passages in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which Christian broadcasters say limit what they can tell voters before elections.

_And they question the sincerity of his overtures. McCain condemned evangelist leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" during his 2000 run.

Hmm. Maybe the Senator should try flip-flopping more vigorously.

Oh, by the way, the article quotes our conservative-of-the-day Paul Weyrich on the second point:

McCain-Feingold "is a big stumbling block for all of us," Weyrich said.

What Weyrich is upset about, of course, is the limitation on his crowd's ability to run vicious, slandering, third-party attack ads during the final days of a campaign.

This, apparently, is one of the major political priorities of a group of people calling themselves "Christians."

Labels: 2008, fundamentalists, John McCain, Paul Weyrich, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 6:24 PM 0 comments

  "Electability": Now Fashionable on the Right

This Washington Post piece discusses the trials and tribulations of John McCain and Mitt Romney as they court social conservative support - and the trials and tribulations of the social conservatives being courted. The fact is, none of the front-runners look good from the sociocon perspective. But other considerations may have to win out:

"Winability is a bigger issue in this campaign because of the Darth Vader-like specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency," according to the Rev. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's policy arm. Evangelicals "want the most socially conservative candidate they can find, who can win," he added.

Hillary Clinton: somewhere between Communism and Islamofascism on the right-wing enemies list. And nothing unites the right better than its enemies.

Read the whole article: it's a gold mine of information on the current state of play in the Republican candidates' hunt for sociocon support. For instance, who the candidates have been hiring:

McCain and Romney have also done significant spadework to recruit well-regarded social conservative operatives to their cause. McCain has inked Marlene Elwell, who oversaw Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign in Michigan, and Judy Haynes, a former senior official in the Christian Coalition. Romney's team includes Gary Marx, a former head of the Virginia Christian Coalition who was the day-to-day coordinator of evangelical support for President Bush's reelection campaign.

And it paints a picture of the social conservatives' own struggles to reconcile their principles with the field of front-runners - while holding back from supporting second-tier candidates like Huckabee or Brownback, who would otherwise be much more their cup of tea.

Oh, and there's this funny statement by Jay Sekulow, director of the American Center for Law and Justice - in defense of Massachusetts flip-flopper Mitt Romney:

"Some say this is flip-flopping. It's not. He just flipped."

Brilliant. Wait, he was defending Romney?

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:18 PM 0 comments

  Days of Our Republican Lives

Two stories via TPM Cafe's Election Central:

The Politico's Jonathan Martin reports that Jerry Falwell has invited John McCain to attend - but not speak at - a reception during the National Religious Broadcasters Convention [Here's a very interesting Harper's article about a previous NRB Convention] next week in Orlando. Mitt Romney will also be there, but of course it's the McCain invite that's more notable. Falwell himself, however, is taking pains not to imply an endorsement:

Falwell's office at Liberty University, however, sought to downplay the event, saying that the pastor may not even show. "This is not Dr. Falwell's showing support for [McCain's presidential bid] at all," said Jessica Tucker, a spokeswoman for the pastor. "This is really just a name on the invitation. He was asked to be listed and he said yes."

Asked why Falwell wouldn't attend a reception on which he is listed as one of six co-hosts, Tucker pointed to the impending winter weather.

When further pressed, Tucker added that Falwell was also planning to wash his hair that night.

Meanwhile, Hotline reports that Mike Huckabee has picked up a couple of key endorsements in an early primary state: former South Carolina First Lady Iris Campbell and her son Mike, of the clan known as the "First Family of South Carolina Presidential Politics," have signed on; Iris will serve as Honorary State Chair of Huckabee's exploratory committee, while Mike will serve the campaign as a "Senior National Advisor."

The Hotline piece points out that "Since [1980], no Republican has won the nomination or the presidency without first winning in South Carolina and having Campbell family’s support."

Labels: 2008, Jerry Falwell, John McCain, Mike Campbell, Mike Huckabee, National Religious Broadcasters, Presidential election

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:18 PM 0 comments

  McCain's Fancy Dance

Via Greg Sargent at TPM Cafe, Roll Call reports that John McCain has ignored an invitation to address the House conservatives of the Republican Study Committee at their upcoming retreat. Rudy Giuliani declined to attend, citing a scheduling conflict, but McCain didn't respond at all.

As Sargent points out:

Making McCain's snub all the more inexplicable is the fact that McCain has been desperate to prove to conservatives that he wouldn't betray them as President. Endorsements from prominent House conservatives would do much to allay such suspicions. And yet, as Election Central reported recently, Romney has been far more aggressive than McCain in reaching out to conservative members of the House.

This comes at the same time as McCain's endorsement by moderate GOP Senators Snowe and Collins, both anti-escalators from Maine.

Sargent's right about Romney, who is basing his early candidacy around a bid to win conservative Republicans. He, for instance, was at the Summit this weekend - about which more later, though let me tell you, he's no Reagan. McCain was conspicuous by his absence.

Labels: 2008, Greg Sargent, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, TPM Cafe

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:55 AM 0 comments

  "McCain Got a Little Too Tricky"

Via the Corner, Fred Barnes on Special Report with Brit Hume last night:

BARNES: I think McCain got a little too tricky [on the gay marriage issue], by saying well, "I think it's a state issue and not a federal issue" and he voted against the federal marriage amendment. This is a very important amendment to social conservatives and the truth is, I think McCain, while he has broadened his contacts with [Christian Conservatives], I think he's being completely outstripped by Mitt Romney in appealing to these social conservatives. Romney's for that amendment and it makes a big difference.

BARNES: I think he's in a tough spot [on the federal marriage amendment], but it helps him with social conservatives if he changed his position. It's as simple as that.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, but it would hurt him among moderate general election voters . . .


BARNES: He's got to win the nomination first.

Labels: 2008, Fred Barnes, gay marriage, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, Republicans

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:13 AM 0 comments

  "McCain Tangled in Troop Surge"

John Fortier of AEI, writing at the Hotline Blog: if Bush forces a "surge," McCain may be damned if it does succeed, and damned if it doesn't.

Labels: George Bush, Hotline, Iraq, John Fortier, John McCain

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:02 PM 0 comments