John McCain
January 30, 2008
John McCain usually does better than any other Republican in head-to-head match-ups against both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The polls have shown this repeatedly for many months, but I still have a hard time believing it. Is McCain really the GOP’s strongest general election candidate? To me he looks like the next Bob Dole, albeit with a devoted media cult determined to beatify him at every opportunity.
He’s a poor speaker whose greatest strength is his reputation for straight talk. He’s old and grumpy. He’s disliked by the base of his own party because of esoteric disagreements with conservative doctrine, but they are disagreements that don’t obviously appeal to independent voters, either (constitutionally dubious campaign finance reform is not among the great issues of the day). He has nothing at all to say about health care or the economy. His campaign consists of only one idea, namely that the war in Iraq is a great idea, and that the solution to its obvious pointlessness is to make it an even bigger war.
Romney, on the other hand, is a moderate, pragmatic businessman, who in a general election can credibly claim the heritage of respectable, sober, Midwestern Republicanism, while distancing himself from the craziness of Bush and the congressional GOP. He’s trapped in a time warp from a generation in which the GOP was comprised of doctors and small businessmen from Michigan and New York, who often had good relationships with organized labor, who believed in environmental protection, and whose support came from socially moderate folks in the middle and upper-middle class (George Bush has done his best to turn these voters into Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents).
All in all, a Romney candidacy would give the GOP an opportunity to avoid transforming themselves into a minority party whose support comes almost exclusively from really rich people and the far right. He would still lose the general election, I think, but he would lose in a way that offered a potential path out of the political wilderness into which George Bush and Newt Gingrich have led them.
Unfortunately for him, he misjudged his opening in the primary, and decided to run as a hard-right conservative with the zeal of someone who pretends to be converted. So now we get to see if the cult of Saint John McCain can withstand the scrutiny of an election campaign in which the senator actually has to do things, instead of just waiting for the other candidates to self-destruct one by one.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
John McCain has a set of values and beliefs that is as much a part of the man, as his arms and legs. He does not need to recreate his image, or rearrange his policy views to fit a campaign strategy. While others seeking the GOP nomination, like Mitt Romney, have flip-flopped for votes, McCain has been a steady voice seeking support from the voters.
John McCain’s certainty of who he is, and what he believes in, is an essential part of his bid to win the GOP nomination. While Mitt Romney is trying out his latest new version of himself, we all know where McCain stands. Like it or not, we know John McCain is solid and comfortable with himself. The fact that voters continue to reject Mitt Romney is in large part due to the fact they do not like his “do anything to win the White House” value system
January 30th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
That’s how he likes to present himself, but I don’t think it’s accurate.
He’s certainly had a steady voice when it comes to foreign policy, but it’s a voice that is steady primarily because it’s always talking about the most belligerent response to any scenario — Panama, Kuwait, Gulf War 1, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Iraq, Iran. His proposed solution is always militarism (although he wasn’t above accusing President Clinton of invading countries to distract from media coverage of his sex life).
But when it comes to domestic policy, he’s been all over the map. Against tax cuts for the rich. For tax cuts for the rich. Against overturning Roe. For overturning Roe. For regulating carbon emissions. Against regulating carbon emissions. For amnesty for illegal immigrants. Against amnesty for illegal immigrants. Etc.
The John McCain of 2002, when he was acting like a moderate Democrat as a way of attracting media attention and furthering the political career of John McCain, is completely different from the John McCain of 2008, when he is acting like a right-wing Republican as a way of attracting votes from right-wing Republicans and furthering the political career of John McCain.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
To elaborate a bit: I don’t think McCain is abnormally dishonest or disingenuous. He’s a politician, and that means having to adapt to what the voters want. I think he’s an honorable guy with a core of integrity.
But his reputation as a straight-talker, and the weird, fawning adoration he gets from the media, is built on a pretty flimsy edifice. I can’t imagine that, given a wrecking ball from a moderately competent Democratic campaign, it won’t come crashing down at some point during the election cycle.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Ben you are right about that I think the only reason the Media Fawns over him is he is the one Republican they want because of what will happen my party if he does get the Nomination. I don’t think that when the General Election comes the MSM will have anything good to say about him they will never endorse him over Billary or Obama.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Jason, can I ask how you think the GOP base will respond to a McCain nomination? And do you have a preferred candidate at this point?
February 1st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
1. I think John McCain’s familiarity with the GOP base, for better or worse, has advanced along the “any publicity is good publicity” trajectory. He’s a known quantity - the quirky uncle. The longstanding contradictions of someone you’ve known a long time are more tolerable than the person you’ve never met who appears to be almost too perfect - and, the record keeps showing inconveniently, underwent a late conversion of convenience.
2. McCain’s rarely tried to paint himself as consistent on many issues, so throwing out the contradictions as flip-flops argument isn’t going to sway voters who’ve been supporting him in primaries thus far. They, in all likelihood, knew about his maverick nature already. If Obama would actually have voted on significant issues, we might have seen contradictions.
3. There is a mass of voters out there who will not vote for Democrats - particularly Obama or Clinton - who were nonetheless alienated something fierce by Bush’s tenure. McCain represents a way to break up the Bush/establishment conservative grip on power, which has pushed many ideas beyond their breaking point and redefined conservatism for the worse. It’s a backlash of the moderates, in part, against the excesses of talk radio, the religious right, and all-or-nothing partisanship.
In that vein, I think your view of him is colored too much by your opposition to the Iraq War and McCain’s stance on it. As the hosts on MSNBC pointed out after Florida the other night, many of the exit polls showed that the voters supporting McCain oppose the war. It’s just that McCain, in sum, breaks the logjam and allows the GOP to grow with the times by not requiring such a rigid, doctrinaire set of requirements as the bar for party affiliation or candidacy.
4. I think McCain is genuinely more fiscally responsible - and has the record to prove it - than Mitt Romney (either pre-campaign Mitt or present Mitt). A deficit hawk appeals across many other issues to the uniting conservative blanket principle of fiscal soundness.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I do know for a fact that alot of the Base doesn’t like McCain for various reasons, Alot of it has to do with his opposition to the Bush Tax Cuts for class warfare reasons, and several of the Bills he’s authored over the years. I for one might not vote Republican if he is nominated. Now that doesn’t mean I am going to vote democratice either. I might look hard at 3rd or 4th party nominee’s Just so you know I was a Libertarian when I was younger. I came to think that alot of their veiws where Unrealistic and somewhat kooky. I do believe though that if he does get the nomination that it will split the Party but we will see what happens.
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 am
Brad, I think you’re largely right. It’s interesting, though, to see McCain as the champion of moderate Republicans (and Jason, you seem to agree as well). It seems odd to me, since both McCain and Romney are running as solid conservatives, and while both were moderates in the past, Romney was much closer to the center (or even the left), and also not associated with Bush or the late and unlamented (in these quarters, anyways) GOP Congress.
I agree that McCain is a true deficit hawk, and while that might help in a primary, it won’t help in a general election. Not only is the issue not that salient among voters at large, but an attempt by a McCain campaign to run on the issue would make it preposterously easy for the Democrats to tar him with his votes in the run-amok Congresses of 2001-2006, when McCain voted for all but one of Bush’s budgets, including several that passed 51-49 with defections from actual moderate Republicans.