Posted on 02/26/2006 1:00:12 PM PST by Theodore R.
McCain Holds the Cards Paul Weyrich Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006
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.
Paul M. Weyrich is the Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
Here's a big NO on McCain. If he's the nominee I will vote Libertarian. Even if it means electing Hillary. We lived through four years of Carter, this great country will survive four years of another Clinton.
A President needs to be a leader. While everyone running for President both Dem and Repub was running like wild to be anti port he hasnt and was in fact on the morning shows in support of it. Again on the morning shows when asked about the Dakota Abortion bill be reaffirmed his prolife stance. He has been steady on Iraq. He is a Veteran. Sounds like a Leader to me. His has gotten my respect the last 2 years.
As much as you claim to dispise him, you will vote for McCain. As stated elsewhere, a non-vote for McLame is a vote for the Cankled One.
That's what he's got going for him at this early stage. No conservatives like him, but given the alternative, we'll vote for him. It makes me sick just to type that!
2000 and 2004 were both very close elections not because the dem candidate was so good, but because the Republican candidate was so weak. If the RNC can put a strong, articulate leader up, the 2008 election will be a landslide...kinda like...Reagan in '84. A great leader, a great communicator.
From where I sit, the RNC's job looks so easy. I see Allen and Pences' names thrown around, but I don't know anything about them. It's not too early to get some info out on these guys. Everytime Allen is on the radio and is asked about running in '08, he just acts all coy about it. Let's get some cards on the table!
We all know the Cankled One will run. We need to find another Reagan to put us out of our Klintoon misery.
Back on topic: Even the most conservative of us would vote for McLame if 'she-who-shall-not-be-named' is the alternative. (If you think McLame has a temper, the Cankled One can match him cuss for cuss!)
You and I know that he has a bad temper, but the people do not know this, are not likely to be told as such, and would not believe it if they were told.
"He may be a kook, but he can fool the majority of his party voters and probably the electorate as a whole. People think he is a hero, and nothing will change their mind about that."
McCain is a wildcard. He has a penchant for being "unpredictable." Remember his recent spat with Obama? He will be 72 in 2008. All it will take is a couple "abnormal" remarks and the MSM will have him diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and Hillary will be in the White House.
Warren Harding:1920; John Kennedy:1960
I dunno. "Nobody" heard of many presidents before they became presidents.
I'm not sure who I would despise more in a McLame/Hitlery contest.
"He has been steady on Iraq. He is a Veteran. Sounds like a Leader to me. His has gotten my respect the last 2 years.
He has gotten your respect because you are bayourant. That should give anyone pause.
"You and I know that he has a bad temper, but the people do not know this, are not likely to be told as such, and would not believe it if they were told."
But the truth will come out with 24/7 media coverage. I just don't think he has the temperment for the Presidency. Neither does Hillary, of course. But why risk with McCain, when a mainstream conservative like George Allen could beat Hillary without any risk of his candidacy imploding?
And what's with this nonsense about Hillary doing well in the South? Last I heard, the Clintons weren't too popular in much of the South.
McCain will do what he can to accomodate conservatives and shore up his base. This means he will not seek to re-write the party platform, and he will probably name a youngish conservative to be his running mate, perhaps SC Governor Mark Sanford. Even so, I think there will be a Pat Buchanan-type in the mix, who may get a quarter to a half percent of the vote, perhaps finishing ahead of the Libertarian and the Green candidates.
McCain's strong showings in opinion polls - where's he's nearly 20 points ahead of Hillary - make him a very attractive candidate for Republicans, given the tough shape we're in, in the generic Congressional ballot, and in battleground states such as Ohio. We are not so far back, and continued economic growth and some withdrawals of troops from Iraq, will strengthen our numbers. But, we can't take victory in 2008 for granted.
If McCain is the nominee count me in the Libertarian column for '08. Yes, even if it elects Hillary. We can get through four years of her. We made it though four years of Carter, we can do anything.
"I believe the Dems would successfully portray McCain as a dangerous loose cannon, same as Goldwater. I think it would be an easy general election victory for any of the main Democrat contenders."
And you better believe that the Clintons also have his FBI files, and his release papers from the military (including any psychiatric evaluations.) Hope there's nothing in there, but we'll know soon enough if he's nominated.
McCain isn't Reagan. He is Gerald Ford. And I didn't vote for him either.
lol what does that mean
If McCain is nominated, he will have my full support. This is especially true since hearing him defend the port deal on This Week this morning. That took guts.
exactly plus Mcain also restating his pro life stance again. I am liable to support him at this stage
I truly dont understand that view point with the strong probality there will be 2 Supreme Court nominations up next time.
And I suspect that most of the McCain bashers here will eventually decide to vote for him. I've been in that place where I'll say "never" then swallow my words later on.
Like when he called for Rumsfeld's removal from DOD. Hillary can only dream of restricting the rights of the people with as much success as McCain has already had. I will never vote for McCain. Nor contribute funds, nor attend rallies, nor go door to door. All of which I did for President Bush.
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