McCain Faces Fight on the Right (Dobson Will Not Support McCain 'Under any Circumstances')

McCain faces fight for the right David Reinhard Portland Oregonian February 12, 2007

When successful Republican presidential candidates talk about their base, they're usually talking about the GOP's social conservatives. When Arizona Sen. John McCain talks about his base, he's referring to the mainstream media.

Which helps explain two things. One, why McCain was not a successful Republican presidential candidate eight years ago. Two, why he's taken steps over the last few years to get right with the religious right.

Will it work? As Democrats cogitate over Barack Obama's challenge to front-runner Hillary Clinton, will the new McCain complicate matters for the old McCain and threaten his front-runner status among Republicans?

For most successful candidates, politics is about addition, not subtraction. This presidential campaign, however, McCain is involved in something of a zero-sum game. Securing a traditional GOP base could come at the expense of losing his old media base.

In 2000, his admirers in the mainstream media loved the tough-talking war hero of "Straight Talk Express." The Arizona maverick opposed George Bush and famously railed against "agents of intolerance" like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other conservative religious leaders. Since then, he's been a conquering hero of Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show," a Republican worthy of puff-ball questioning. But McCain has committed two unpardonable sins in the eyes of the media clerisy. He has backed Bush's Iraq war to the hilt and gone out of his way to make up with Falwell and religious conservatives. Sacre bleu!

McCain's wooing of GOP social conservatives has not been pretty to watch. And, if recent developments are any guide, the effort might prove unproductive.

Recently, perhaps the most influential Christian conservative gave McCain a stiff-bristled brushoff. "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," said Focus on the Family's James Dobson in a radio interview. "He is not in favor of traditional marriage, and I pray that we will not get stuck with him."

McCain's alleged opposition to traditional marriage would probably astonish the most determined McCain watcher. Didn't he, after all, favor a traditional marriage measure that was on the Arizona ballot last November? Why, yes, he did. But right before Dobson let loose, his radio-show host had run a clip of McCain telling "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, "I think, uh ... I think that gay marriage should be allowed if there's a ceremony kind of thing, if you wanna call it that. ... I don't have any problem with that."

McCain had, indeed, uttered the same words before an Iowa State University crowd last fall, but – well, isn't there always a but? A quotation yanked out of context or something said in humor is treated seriously. In this case, "but" only highlights McCain's problem courting the GOP's traditional-values base.

In the same sentence that Dobson's radio interviewer found so damning, McCain had appended his own but: "But I do believe in preserving the sanctity of the union between man and woman." Yes, it made for an illogical sentence, and McCain and his handler realized they had a damage-control problem. After the next break, a student asked about a farm issue and McCain answered it. But before moving to the next question he said, "Could I just mention one other thing? On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe if people want to have private ceremonies, that's fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal."

Romney with either Hunter or someone from the South with good credentials would be an electable ticket.

Actually, the reverse, Hunter/Romney is a ticked I could vote for.

Romney as the head of any ticket is a loser. He's too much like John Kerry. The press will eat him alive.

Okay. It is your assignment to herd all of the conservatives to share the same view.

While that would be nice, it is not that important to me. I'd rather support Mitt, Duncan, or Newt (these names!), but I will support McCain or Rudy if I have to. It's the Hunter/Tancredo wing that seem pretty entrenched and may end up with someone far more liberal than they want.

Here is what fascinates me:
You would think that what I posted would get a flurry of responses. It doesn't.
I posted the same thing a couple of days ago on a busy thread. Zip. Nadda. Stunned silence.
Truth be told, the religious right were latecomers to conservatism. They used to be democrats, until Republicans became competitive in the South.

Conservatism was a product of people like Milton Friedman. And Goldwater and Reagan. Social libertarians, by today's standards.

Your point, I guess, is that your insight is so powerful as to render those who would disagree speechless. Maybe.

Or...it may be that many (like me) are used to the invective and revisionism that's aimed at social conservatives. I see no logic in your epistle to refute, much like something I would find in the local rag or on MSNBC.

They have discovered, as have I, that trying to reason with fools will make one insane. We don't bother anymore.

The coalition worked for Reagan because the social conservatives, or "Reagan Democrats" as they are often called, were brand new to the party, and the rest of the GOP hadn't really had time to digest this new wing of the party.

I think the replacement of Dick Armey with Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader was an EXTREMELY defining moment in the future of the party, even if few people realize it. Dick Armey was a true conservative, who always put principle first. Tom DeLay, on the other hand, to me is the epitome of everything wrong with the GOP today. Between twisting arms to get GOP Congressmen to vote for Bush's huge Medicare expansion and the whole Terri Schiavo debacle, it's clear where his priorities were, and they weren't with conservatism.

Mitt is an intelligent man who has been successful in life. Kerry is neither of those things. Mitt has been a CEO in the private sector and was a governor. Hunter has been a Congressman and they simply don't have the experience as executives. Don't get me wrong, I am more in agreement with Hunter than Romney on issues but Mitt will have more staying power in a national race than Hunter.

It doesn't get any responses from social "conservatives" because that would require confronting the fact that they hijacked the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

In the spirit of fairness, I can hardly claim to have been there from the beginning, since I wasn't alive yet. I'm a Gen Xer, meaning I grew up with Reagan as President, but I wasn't really politically aware until I got to college. I studied economics, and became a conservative largely because of people like Milton Friedman. At the time, I didn't see any logical connection between political conservatism and social conservatism, and to date I still don't.

Does he really think that media and the "friendly" dems won't turn on him in a heartbeat and destroy him viciously if he ever did get the nod?

He can believe it if he wants, it's a free country. Myself, I give it 10 minutes at the outside from the time McCain got the nomination sewed up (Heaven forefend) 'till Big Journalism forgets everything they know about John McCain except the Keating Five scandal and the fact that he has been divorced.

So if I don't vote for Hillary Clinton, is that the same as a vote for Rudy?

I don't like McStain, don't want to vote for him. Same for Romney. But I could vote for them if they sound the traditional conservative themes convincingly enough.

With Giuliani, no way in hell. If Hitlery's running mate was Satan himself, still no way.

Except Mitt is just as unelectable because of the Mormon thing.

I've thought about this a lot. If you aren't going to apply the same standard to all the loopy and apostate liberal churches, then why only to Mormons? Their theology is wacky but Utah is a clean state that has the most conservative legislature in the country. More defiant of the feds than almost anyone.

I'm as tough a Calvinistic Baptist as you'd find. But I'm not voting for pope. And from the standpoint of most evangelicals, Baptist and Protestant conservatives, Giuliani's liberal flavor of Catholicism is at least as distant and alien.

I'd probably be a little more comfortable with someone with an orthodox Christian background. But that won't decide my vote. I don't like Giuliani's liberal flavor of Catholicism either but that isn't why I will refuse to vote for him.

ME: "Voting for Hillary might be the only way to bring a lot of this to a head."

YOU: Why, to punish the "two party cartel"? You people were telling us to vote for Algore in 2000 - half of the three-man team that brought us the conditions perfect for 9/11/01 to occur, and then wanted us to vote Hanoi Johnnie Boy in 2004, just because it "might bring things to a head."

I first heard that here in 2000 and thought it was wacky too. It doesn't seem so wacky to me now. Bush has outspent Clinton! With R's in both houses. As a fiscal conservative he is a failure.

I think we are getting boiled like the proverbial frog.

In the end I'll probably do what I've done in every election in memory: hold my nose, and pull the Elephant lever. But it's getting harder and harder to do that, and if faced with Rudy it would be damn hard.

Working to get the better candidates in the R slot now is a great idea, obviously.

"The democrats are licking their jowls over the hope that Rudy, Romney or McCain will be the MSM and RNC choice for the republican nominee."

Yep. They keep all their people, split the Independents, and watch scads of our people stay home. They win either way.

We have to find somebody acceptable to both our liberal wing and our conservatives. The libs wanting to ram these three dreks down our throats just makes people like me want to opt out of the process. No more lesser of two evils. Evil is evil.

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