There is no shortage of comments like that here on FR. But the data show otherwise. The following is from a recent Pew poll. (All numbers in the boxes are percentages.)
Posted on 02/01/2008 7:31:58 PM PST by Richard Kimball
Please understand that this is not about what should be. It's my observation about what is happening.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and James Dobson have all come out not so much for Mitt Romney, but against John McCain. They’re placing a huge bet, and it will affect the Republican Party and conservatism for the next generation. I believe this is a watershed moment in party history, at least as important as the emergence of Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan realigned the political parties. He managed to create a coalition of the existing left/moderate Republican hierarchy (the country club Republicans) while forming a new coalition of voters who had previously been unaligned or registered as Democrats. This coalition was comprised of religious and social conservatives, economic conservatives and small government libertarians. As much as anything else, his brilliance was about the fact that he was able to keep this coalition together. In the twenty years since Reagan left office, the coalition has cracked sometimes, but now it is rent asunder.
John McCain is not the choice of the party’s conservative wing. However, he has continued to win primaries. Some of these victories are because of crossover votes from independents and Democrats. One line of thought is that these people are simply crossing over to give McCain primary victories while planning to vote for Hillary or Obama in the general election. I do not believe this is true. In a tightly contested Democratic primary, why would committed Democrats cross over? It would make sense if the Democratic primary were settled, but not in this situation. There is little difference in the candidate platforms between Obama and Hillary. Both are socialists. The Democratic race has become about identity politics and personalities. Many weak Democrats and independents are, I believe, uncomfortable with this situation, and are really considering changing parties.
Karl Rove once said about disgruntled conservatives, “Where are they going to go?” In 2006 they went nowhere. They stayed home and the Republicans got creamed. 2008 presents a much bigger risk to conservatives, and that’s why I think the four conservatives who have bet against McCain are betting not only their influence, but the influence of their constituencies in the future of the Republican party. In 1992, Pat Buchanan shattered the Reagan coalition. He had a lot of help from the first President Bush, and Ross Perot finished the job, but Buchanan was the initial architect. It wasn’t so much that Buchanan ran against a sitting president as the way he did it. Ronald Reagan ran against Gerald Ford in 1976 without damaging the party as a whole. Buchanan took discontent with Bush’s moderation and fanned it into an ugly party war. He attracted supporters, but alienated far more people than he attracted. When Buchanan left the party, most Republicans breathed a sigh of relief. As a whole, the party decided that it was better to have Buchanan outside the house throwing rocks, than inside. Buchanan went to Ross Perot’s old Reform Party, which immediately collapsed, because he did the same thing there that he did in the Republican Party. He alienated more people than he attracted. He lost all political influence, and became totally irrelevant. His supporters had no place to go. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats believed that Pat and his supporters were worth the problems.
Today, the situation may be similar, but with a larger part of the Republican base. There is one difference, and that is that in 1992, Buchanan was the leader. This time, there is no leader. Limbaugh, Coulter, Dobson and Hannity are pundits and persuaders, not politicians. This time it is a more broad based discontent that is expressing itself without a prominent political figure to lead the charge or give voice to it. This base has essentially placed two bets. The first is a bad bet. They’re betting that their influence can knock McCain out in the primaries. I believe Florida turned the momentum to McCain, and that Romney is on the ropes. The other candidates are now only window dressing. The second bet is that McCain cannot win the general election without conservative support. This bet is for all the marbles, and conservatives are hoping McCain loses. If McCain loses and the Republicans lose seats in the House and Senate, the party will have to mend fences with conservatives. This means making concessions and more conservative candidates.
McCain is making a pitch to the conservatives by talking about military strength, constructionist Supreme Court Judges, limiting spending and reducing the size of government. If conservatives come back, even grudgingly, the showdown will be avoided. If these voters continue to reject McCain and sit home or write in third party candidates and McCain still wins, the disaffected voters are in big trouble.
Most of the party hierarchy is moderate to liberal. They have tolerated the conservatives because they need them to win. If McCain proves that the Republicans can win by turning independents into Republicans and getting disaffected Democrats, the Republicans may decide the conservatives aren’t worth it.
Thanks.
I wouldn’t fault you for voting for McCain in the general election. But my prediction, based on all the policy positions McCain has been espousing antithetical to free-market conservative principles, showing deference to liberals when drafting legislation, is of a disastrous administration. I’d rather the inevitable disaster be pinned on a Democrat. If it’s McCain it will be pinned on all Republicans in general. THAT will be the destruction of the party for years to come.
I'm pondering that myself. Rationalization though it may be, my thought is that I would vote against Hillery or Obama and not for McCain.
Many conservatives have tried to avoid criticism of Bush because he was at least nominally Republican. They have been polite. If elected, I doubt that McCain will receive such consideration. Both the right and the left will be after him from day one.
This time I'm voting McCain, no matter what - I can't take another 8 years ...
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I know the coalition can't continue to hold together much longer when the ONLY reason we have to vote for Republicans is that the Democrats are so much worse.
That's my sense of all this too. They think they've figured out how to win without us. We'll see.
“This time, there is no leader”
On Wednesday night, at the debate, I saw in Mitt Romney a man who can lead. This may not be his year, but he has a future.
Mark Levin is another with leader potential. Not as a politician, but as an inspiring force.
Rush’s mission seems to have shifted from conservative leader to media warrior.
Just some thoughts. Thanks for the ping.
I will be one of them. I will do everything I can to elect a republican conservative opposition to obstruct this mentally unbalanced angry man
Regards
“That’s my sense of all this too. They think they’ve figured out how to win without us.”
They are hedging their bets that security moms like me will hold their noses and vote McCain in November. They are correct.
I was a fan of Pat Buchanan’s for a few months. But it gradually became more and more evident that he was a nut case. In fact, I first began getting the clue when I had lunch with an associate editor of First Things around the time of the New Hampshire primary. I learned that they had looked at Pat. They were troubled by the accusations of antisemitism and went to their Jewish connections, who are not ADL types but sensible conservatives who work with Catholics and Protestants toward restoring religion in the public square. Not one of them was willing to support Pat, and it turned out that they were right.
I don’t think that can be said of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and James Dobson in their comments about McCain. They are NOT nut cases, although occasionally they can go astray (but Rush does so very seldom). What they have said about McCain, however, happens to be true.
If anyone is a nutcase here on the order of Pat Buchanan, it is McCain.
I liked a lot of the culture war speech, and didn’t think that was what hurt him. Over time, the racial overtones and the meanness just bled through. For a guy that has spent as much of his life on camera as Buchanan, he seemed to have no idea how to present himself in media to win people over. He did one photo op that didn’t get as much play, but in my opinion was as bad as the Dukakis tank moment. Someone had given him a rifle, and he put on some hat that looked like the one Walter Brennan wore in the old westerns. He always wore his pants too high, and he looked like a bootlegger from the Andy Griffith show.
On the plus side, if McCain is the candidate, win or lose, we've got an open field in 2012. McCain would be 76 by then, and he is NOT in the same shape that Reagan was at his age.
My first clue about Buchanan's anti-semitism was when he started talking about the middle East. Although he couched his arguments in terms of isolationism, it was obvious there were unstated reasons, and those reasons turned out to be problems with Israel, and that the problems went beyond politics.
Thanks for pinging my post to your list.
There is no shortage of comments like that here on FR. But the data show otherwise. The following is from a recent Pew poll. (All numbers in the boxes are percentages.)
This is factually incorrect. Turnout for conservatives was fairly high.
If voting were mandatory and John McCain were the only candidate on the ballot, I still wouldn’t vote for him.
Big deal...November is a long time away. I will never vote for McCain and neither will many other conservatives. They don’t need us, well let’s see how well they do without us.
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