Posted on 02/06/2008 11:51:10 PM PST by calcowgirl
Presidential candidate John McCain's sweeping victories on Super Tuesday revealed what could be a post-partisanship era in politics.
Republican voters across the country turned away from the party's more conservative candidates and selected the Arizona senator again and again in primary contests from New York to California.
The ultraconservative radio talk show hosts, bloggers and newspaper columnists simply didn't resonate with the party's majority members - the soccer moms and NASCAR dads who never attend precinct meetings, but showed up on election day. Whether those high-profile opinion givers like it or not, McCain is their man.
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., traveling with McCain from Phoenix to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, was asked whether McCain's success illustrated the Republican Party is far more mainstream than it has appeared during the past seven years.
"Perhaps. I hesitate to call it 'mainstream,' but yeah, that's probably right," Flake told the Tribune. "It certainly is more diverse than some people want to admit."
Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., also traveling with McCain, said McCain's single-day achievement indicated the GOP is a centrist party.
"It tells you that folks from the hard right kind of make their living by whipping things up," he said.
"And it also tells you that Republicans are pragmatic. They understand that there is kind of a core Republican philosophy. They want to see candidates with that philosophy win. They don't want to get behind some extreme candidate and lose the seat," Shadegg said.
McCain will have the opportunity to spell out his Republican philosophy today at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, as he continues his quest to lock up his party's nomination for November's general election.
(Excerpt) Read more at eastvalleytribune.com ...
"the GOP is a centrist party"
Oh, Joy.
Time for a Federalist party, it seems.
What a load of BS, the majority of conservatives voted for the fiscal conservative (Romney) or the social conservative (Huckabee). McCain got about 1/3 of the "moderate" GOP and a whole lot of crossover independents and Democrats.
As I recall, McCain was winning without the Conservative Base, which split between Romney and Huckabee. He will never win in November without that essential Republican group.
WTF is “main-stream” GOP?
The GOP, a party of RINOs. Who’d a thought.
It is interesting that McCain won Super Tuesday with 66% of Republicans voting for someone else.
McCain’s big “surge” and whopping win in California was based on only 18% of registered Republican voters,
or 6% of total registered voters in the state.
Somehow I don’t think his “mainstream” “post-partisanship” will have a whole lot of staying power.
82% of registered Republicans in California did NOT vote for him.
The guy sure can motivate the base (to reject him!).
I disagree, it will because the MSM will keep telling us this over and over again.
Human Events mag had Romney #8 on their "TOP 10 RINOS" list just 2 years ago and yet we have all of these super smart people running around calling him a "conservative" all of a sudden because he has good hair and $400 neck ties.
Huckabee is more conservative than MYTH but McCain would be a better POTUS, he has an ACU rating of 83%.
Has he made mistakes and written some bad legislation and made some bad votes, certainly.
Either vote for him or not, there are plenty of Democrats that will be voting for him over the 2 Marxists anyway.
That is post of the year material right there.
In other words, the people who don't pay any attention to politics. The people who just let the MSM feed them sound bytes and don't do any research.
That would be all the liberal/moderate/independent/democrats that vote for McInsane
Really.
Exactly...and then there were the Republicans who were suddenly informed they were non-partisan who couldn’t vote at all in a heavily pro-Romney region. What was up with that?
Go to bed.
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