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.
Isn't he the leading candidate, even among Republicans? It's either McCain or Guiliani, I know that.
Republicans like marquee names, and both of these guys have wide name recognition. That's what it's going to take to beat Hillary Clinton, not some unknown from Congress.
I think McCain has mental problems.
No, seriously.
Are they polling Dems re: Gop candidates ?
I don't trust MCLAME.
Would I rather have intercourse with a 400 pound woman with Herpes than get gang raped by a biker gang?
Yea! But I do not plan on either happening!
My very liberal brother-in-law told me that if McCain ran, that it would be the first time he would consider voting for a conservative.
I've never laughed in anyone's face before...
I will never under any circumstances vote FOR McCain, ever, no way no how.
And I don't mean I would hold my nose, I mean I would vote dor whoever, and I mean whoever is running against him, even if it were Hitlery, and I hate her guts, but I loath McCain, and consider him the lowest of the low, a spineless jellyfish of a person.
I can live with McCain, but only as a last resort.
McCain would insure a Clinton victory.
George Allen or Haley Barbour are my choices. If they decide to go with a "moderate" I'd support Romney.
McCain is right that he is the most popular republican...his problem is that he is not popular with REPULICANS...He is the most popular republican with DEMOCRATS...McCain cannot survive a republican primary.
It is hard for my to figure on what issue that Romney is to the left of Allen.
Hate to say this but the RINOS have all the name recognition right now. All the conservative names that are thrown around just disappear into thin air when they are mentioned.
Romney has been squishy on the abortion and gun issues, but will develop more backbone during the primary season. He hasn't been a fire breathing gun grabber like Giuliani was and is.
The only committed conservatives I see mentioned ever are Pence and Tancredo.Name ID will rise with time.
I for one will work for any Republican campaigning against McCain.
McCain cited polls that show he and ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are "the two most popular" members of the Republican Party.
Does that mean he shouts Rudy's name when he has sex instead of his own?
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