McCain Holds the Cards

It is always difficult to handicap the next presidential election before the midterm elections. So I will not go through the litany of the half-dozen Democrats, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who may contest for the nomination. The views range from "Hillary has got it in the bag" to "Hillary won't run."

Democratic Party sentiment is said to range from "ready for another Clinton Era" to "fear of another Clinton Era"; from "the Party wants a familiar face" (Hillary) to "the Party seeks a totally new face" (former Governor Mark R. Warner of Virginia).

Hillary is a polarizing figure, no doubt. In the end, however, the nomination seems almost certain to be hers if she pursues it. If she is the nominee, Republicans either are scared to death of her and don't know to how to run against her or they can't wait for the chance to take her on, pointing to the considerable political baggage she has inherited. One clearly hears both views.

On the Republican side there are no fewer than thirteen candidates who think they have a chance. These include sitting and retiring governors, sitting and retiring senators and maybe even a general. The Democrats have a general, too. He is Wesley Clark, but he went nowhere in 2004.

Some of these candidates, such as Governor Michael Huckabee, of Hope, Arkansas, in fact may be running for vice president without saying so. In fact, I only recall one candidate who openly ran and campaigned for the vice presidency. He was an obscure Alaska Democratic senator who got absolutely nowhere with his effort to win the vice presidency.

While Democrats have an obvious front-runner with Hillary, Republicans have none. Florida Governor Jeb Bush would be the front-runner if he had not all but absolutely ruled out running. No senator or governor is a hot ticket right now, except for one, John S. McCain III.

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McCain is consolidating his position in a way reminiscent of Richard M. Nixon in 1968. He is collecting due bills. He campaigned for all sorts of congressmen and senators in 2002 and 2004. He is letting them know that now is the time to express their gratitude.

Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's strategist, who is pushing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for president, had an on-the-air colloquy with Sean Hannity the other day that most of the audience didn't understand. Morris was telling Hannity that he knew of a certain senator who was very close to endorsing McCain. Hannity asked Morris if it was the senator he had in mind. Morris said it was. Hannity said he didn't believe it.

The colloquy was about former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. Lott, who is a values-oriented conservative, is about ready to support McCain as the one senator who can defeat Hillary in the South. He is not sure any other candidates can do so.

Some of that may be personal. Senator Lott was ousted as majority leader by Senator William H. ("Bill") Frist, M.D., R-Tenn., after the media blew way out of proportion a silly remark Lott made about Senator Strom Thurmond on the occasion of Thurmond's 100th birthday party. Senator George Allen, R-Va., also was involved in the coup, which could be why Lott finds neither Frist nor Allen viable in the South.

Whatever the reason, friends of Lott from the South say he is determined to support a candidate who can defeat Hillary in that region of the country. McCain is saleable, Lott is telling friends.

The real shocker is that McCain is close to picking up support from former Senator Daniel R. Coats, R-Ind. Coats, who took Senator James Danforth ("Dan") Quayle's place in the Senate after Quayle was elected vice president with President George Herbert Walker Bush, did not run for re-election after 10 years in that body. He subsequently became U.S. ambassador to Germany when George W. Bush was elected and more recently guided Supreme Court Justice Samuel J. Alito Jr. through the confirmation process in the Senate.

When he was in the Senate, Coats was especially close to the Religious Right. One of his longtime staffers is Timothy Goeglein, a key White House operative. Coats was thought to be supporting Senator Sam D. Brownback, R-Kan., the only overtly Religious Right candidate of the lot. That McCain may well pick up Coats is a measure of how far McCain has come.

McCain is seen as the one Republican candidate who scores well with independents and Democrats. He is a darling of the media. Instead of the usual hostility a Republican gets from the media, he is seen as someone who would play ball with the old media and thus could be elected. McCain has kept his right-to-life credentials, for the most part. He has been loyal to the president regarding the Iraq War, for the most part.

With Hillary looming large in the background and with almost any Democrat seen as capable of defeating any Republican, McCain – in typical conservative Republican circles – is seen as the savior of the GOP.

That is a long way for McCain to have come since the bitter primary with President George W. Bush in 2000. He patched things up with Bush and campaigned for him in the autumn of 2000. But it was never a happy relationship. Bush and McCain have tangled over a whole raft of issues, ranging from spending (McCain is a sort of deficit hawk) to the conduct of the Iraqi War but these disputes have been more intense behind the scenes than seen in public.

The one group McCain does not have in his camp is the social-issue conservative group. They view McCain as wanting to revert to a GOP before 1980, when Ronald W. Reagan successfully grafted social conservatives onto the other pillars of conservatism – namely, limited government, free enterprise and a strong national defense. Reagan, at the urging of the Religious Right, which had emerged politically beginning in 1977, added traditional moral values to those other pillars of conservatism.

Republicans, who composed a clearly minority party after 1930 even when they held the presidency, then began to elect senators and congressmen, governors and state legislatures, and have been electing them ever since.

McCain does not believe that the Republican Party should be advocating traditional moral values. He hopes to so co-opt mainline conservatism, while also gaining acceptance from liberals in the party – such as former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Governor George E. Pataki and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman – that he can afford to lose the Religious Right. Besides, the McCain camp reasons that if Hillary is indeed the Democratic nominee, social conservatives would be so alarmed about her becoming president that they likely would vote for McCain anyway.

It is a bold strategy, yet given the fact that the values voters do not have a candidate around whom they have thus far rallied, McCain's view of the world may indeed prevail. Social conservatives presently enjoy unprecedented influence in the White House and most especially on Capitol Hill, where the leadership in both the House and the Senate is very sympathetic to them and their issues. A McCain presidency likely would change all that.

Shortly before he died in 1998 and after he left the Senate in 1986, Barry M. Goldwater, the father of modern conservatism, denounced social conservatives, saying they had no business trying, as he put it, to make the Republican Party into a church. McCain took the Goldwater seat. He is out of the same mold. Goldwater all but broke with his party, mainly over moral issues.

Perhaps at last, through John McCain, the party will be remade in Goldwater's image. It is happening and happening fast. McCain now holds all the cards.

His fellow POW's respect him. They have camapigned for him.

Some have, but many have not.

My problem with him, like you, is his perfomance as a senator, but if he is going to throw in in the "but I was a POW" card, I think people should hear about his POW record.

I do not prefer to believe the worst about him. I only know what I know about him, and most of these experiences are first hand. I am not alone in these experiences. Any other AZ Freepers onboard to give their 2 cents worth?

Most POW's do not involve themselves in campaigns, but a fellow POW (Paul Galanti) served as his national campaign manager in 2000.

My husband has known him for 50 years. They were classmates at the US Naval Academy.

McCain now holds all the cards.

I don't care much for John McCain (D) Arizona, and I've written so many times here at F.R.

I so fear Hillary Rodham, however, that if McCain got the GOP nod, I will not only vote for the fungus, I'll send him some money. (My fear of Hillary and what she would do to this country and my family is that deep.)

Withholding a presidential vote from any Republican (McCain, Rudy, and so on) would be voting for Hillary and her Marxism.

Don't forget the BIG LESSON of Ross Perot!

No need to send McCain money if he wins the GOP nod. By that time, it's all taxpayer funded until November 2008. I think his biggest advantage is simply name ID, which he did not fully have in 2000.

Theo, excellent point. I'll be contributing to whatever source produces the best Hillary expose ads.

(Actually, I'd like to write the copy for some Hillary expose commercials!)

My wife says I have to get off of the computer so she can get some work done. It has been fun discussing McCain but I have to go. I am sure we will meet again, the primaries are still 2 years away. Good luck but I still hope your man loses. I still have not found my candidate yet, but I do know, it is not John McCain.

Oh I think he was pretty well known. He had been in high profile primary battles and the media LOVED him because he was willing to go against the Republican Party and be vocal about it. They were the major force behind his candidacy; I never saw any voter groundswell for him.

I understand the loathing many here have for McCain. Much of it he has brought upon himself. But two points:

-He will not win without throwing some red meat to social conservatives. He supports state amendments banning same-sex marriage even though he opposes the federal one. And in most years he gets close to a 100% rating from pro-life and other conservative groups for his voting record.

-Why do so many think Rudy is okay and McCain not? It's RUDY that is pro-abortion and so very supportive of homosexuality. (McCain is pro-life on most votes and mixed on homosexuality.)

Support Frist or Huckabee or Brownback or whomever in the primary, and then whoever is our eventual nominee, support him in the fall. What's so complicated about that?

Don't the looney blame America liberals hate the mention of the "Battan Death March" if you asked Kerry/Gore to comment on it they would run out of the room. They love to talk about the "Iraqi Criminal" with the Ladies Underwear on his head though. Americans were the victims so the liberals want nothing to do with it.

... or don't trust a guy who calls himself "Straight talk" and can't answer a question frankly ...or, don't trust a guy who concocts campaign reform law with democrats that opens the door to wider spread corruption AND at the same time limits speech ...or, don't trust a politician who adores being called a 'Maverick' ...or ----

or don't trust a guy who supports "Roe vs. Wade" ... or don't trust a guy blocks his own president's judicial nominees just because his panties are in wad, or ....

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