Posted on 09/19/2005 2:19:08 PM PDT by gobucks
U.S. Sen. John McCain knows why he wants to be president.
He isn't running for the job - officially. That won't happen, if it happens at all, until after next year's midterm elections.
McCain, who turns 69 on Monday, said "there's no point" in formally announcing his candidacy until after the 2006 congressional elections.
But the Arizona Republican didn't skip a beat Tuesday when asked why he would want to run for the White House in 2008.
"Because we live in a time of great challenges," McCain said in an interview with Arizona Daily Star editors and reporters.
Chief among them is the war on terror, a "transcendent issue" likely to last for years, he said. But there is "a broad variety of domestic challenges" as well.
Sounding much like a candidate ticking off the priorities of his platform, McCain said they include immigration, Social Security, global warming, rising health-care costs and the "obscene" spending practices of Washington.
"My ego is sufficient to say that I think I have the background and experience to take on these challenges," he said.
Asked about possible opposition to his candidacy from conservatives, McCain cited polls that show he and ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are "the two most popular" members of the Republican Party.
That, he indicated, is a crucial factor in deciding whether he'll seek the presidency.
"As long as I have strong approval and support from most of the Republican Party, then running is a viable option," he said.
A recent poll by the Gallup Organization found that McCain's favorable ratings have consistently hovered above 50 percent since 2002, two years after he ran for the Republican nomination for president against George W. Bush.
But while the four-term senator is thought of highly across party and ideological lines, Gallup found a potential weak spot among conservatives - a key constituency to prevailing in Republican primaries.
The problem McCain could face with conservatives became evident earlier this month when the Arizona Republican Assembly, a conservative Mesa-based group, voted to censure him for what it called "dereliction of his duties and responsibilities as a representative of the citizens of Arizona."
The group unanimously passed a resolution critical of, among other things, the guest-worker legislation he's sponsoring with the man they called "his Democrat soulmate, Senator Ted Kennedy."
McCain didn't comment on the resolution but vowed to continue speaking his mind.
As the Gallup Poll noted, McCain has a generally consistent conservative voting record but forged a national reputation after a series of notable breaks with fellow Republicans.
On Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.
McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.
The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.
At a breakfast meeting Tuesday with the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, McCain said Sheehan is probably being used by organizations opposed to the U.S. mission in Iraq. But, he added, she is "a symptom, not a cause" of growing public discontent with the war.
I noticed that 50 percent number they threw into that 'approval' number didn't say what kind of people are doing the approving. He must be a little desperate, however, to jump onto the Intel Design band wagon ... it is a good sign, but he kind of nullifies it w/ his almost tepid endorsement of Cindy Sheehan and Global Warming. Tsk. Tsk. Oh yes, one other thing...
I had no idea he believed he was more populuar than the President, G. W. Bush. He really does have a good-sized 'ego'....
No to McCain,no to Rudy,No to ANYONE not to the right of president Bush.Yes to the next Reagan,MIKE PENCE!
If Mccain and Guliani ran as a single ticket (take yer pick who runs as Pres and who runs as VEEP) that would be something.
Most popular by Don Imus maybe, but then again, WTF is Don Imus?
Most popular with folks on the other side of the aisle, that is.
Ditto, Ditto, Ditto and a big final DITTO.
"Because we live in a time of great challenges,"
//
(made all the more so by your ridiculous CFR legislation)..
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"My ego is sufficient to say that I think I have the background and experience to take on these challenges,"
//
(and so does Hitlary and thousands more who call themselves politicians but are really nothing more than street walkers and hucksters)..
In other words, real Republicans hate him. LOL! He can imagine anything he likes, but that's just the way it is. His ego on the matter will be his downfall.
he & rudy?
A RINO and a rockefeller republican? A double whammy from the democrat party!
Translation: The MSM's liberals love him, while the base, which decides candidates through primaries, avoids him like the plague.
If, perchance, McCain should win, he'll be the only Republican President with Democrat Party majority votes and GOP minority votes.
McCain is delusional.
McCain is the Senator from the New York Times.
Wouldn't you rather have him than Hilary Clinton(When did the media get into the habit of only referring to her by her first name ?)
I guess I have to be honest and say that while support in the primaries is one thing, if one of these guys gets the nomination, that is a whole 'nother can of worms.
I would hold my nose and vote for Rudy, but I don't think I could make my legs walk in the polling place to cast a vote for McCain. McCain is a Nixon, Clinton demogogue if I ever saw one.
I'd be OK with McCain or Rudy being on the ticket, as long as it was the DNC ticket.
McCain and Rudy are the most popular Republicans among the Media and the Democrats.
NO to McCAIN '08!!
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