John McCain Makes The Break
It sounds as if John McCain is making a calculated risk that he’s willing to lose some voters who supported him because he was an unpredicatable independent-thinking Republican and replace them with GOP primary voters and social conservatives who want more predictable positions:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party’s conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.
This is about as definitive a break as he can make. MORE:
“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.
Usually candidates have danced around directly calling for it being overturned. McCain is making it clear there will be a choice in 2008 (on both sides) if he runs.
McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who “strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench.”
In past posts, I argued that McCain was walking a perilous political tightrope. But now it sounds as if he has decided to quickly leap off the rope to get to one side. How will independent voters react to it? It isn’t so much him suggesting he doesn’t like it, it’s that he is now taking the strong position that he wants to over turn it. There is a difference — and McCain is now coming across as just one more political panderer, just like you see in either party. He is becoming highly predictable.
The Straight Talk Express seems to have been replaced by The Lockstep Shuttle.
12 Responses to “John McCain Makes The Break”
We’ll see where this will take him.
One thing is, indeed, very clear. He believes that he has to move to the right in order to win the Republican nomination. He doesn’t just believe that, however, he is willing to act accordingly…
A sad thing, really. The two Republican front-runners could have been two reasonably ‘moderate’ people (as in not too conservative).
John McCain Makes The Break…
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Giuliani must be thrilled. If McCain really stands by the strictly pro-life position, he’ll gain the base, but I’m betting he’ll lose plenty of independents, who will interpret this as McCain deciding to give the wheel to religious social conservatives AGAIN. He’s strongly pro-Iraq war, which already pits him against a majority of Americans, and he’s mostly lost his “maverick” rep. Mind you, I think it’s great that a politician takes a position, a real one, on a subject. I think it’s the wrong decision, but at least he’s spelled in out clearly.
At this rate Giuliani is going to be on the GOP ticket, which means that I won’t have to be terrified of who’ll be president in ’08. The worst that could happen is that McCain panders so much to the GOP base that social conservatives give him the nomination. But too much pandering would make him un-electable in the national elections, giving the presidency to the democrats, which also works fine for me.
As a independent who voted for McCain and has waited eagerly for his 2008 campaign to start up, I have to say with regret that after this announcement that I am SO over him. Rudy is starting to look better and better to me………..
McCain is toast, but Lynx- ask New Yorkers of Giuliani’s fascist tendencies. He’ll make Bush look like a schoolboy!
McCain is losing me. Instead of leading and educating, he is pandering.
I would prefer he took the position that there is a lot we can all do together to reduce the number of abortions and facilitate the process of adoption.
I believe that most of us prefer that abortion be a last choice and that that choice be made by the mother.
[...] Joe Gandelman also incorrectly classifies McCain’s position on Roe v. Wade as “making a break” – break from what, exactly? A position he’s always had? My liberal friend Michael J.W. Stickings thinks stances like being in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade equate to McCain taking ‘extremist positions.’ Wha? I guess that would make me an ‘extremist’, eh, Michael? [...]
[...] Other Opinions: RealClearPolitics (roundup); Oliver Willis; The Moderate Voice; DownWithTyranny; Liberal Values Technorati Tags:Â 2008, Church And State, Constitution, Current Events, Elections, GOP, Headline News, Headlines, Morality, News, News and Politics, Politics, Rants, Republicans, Roe v. Wade [...]
Maybe this position will help him with Dobson. Maybe he will demand for public stoning of “fagg**s” to pander even more to the Evangelicals. Michigan won’t love him now, Bob Jones does….
Great. The political dishonesty of the top three GOP candidates takes by breath away. At least politicians used to bother to make excuses for it. Brownback for GOP candidate!
Sister Toldjah’s post on this is a must read (see trackback link in comment #7).
I’m not a McCain fan but I fail to see where he has flipflopped on this and I don’t get the brouhaha over it. It also doesn’t seem to be much different than the comments that Guiliani recently made, but if Guiliani’s phrasing of it worked and McCain’s didn’t, that’s OK by me.
CS McClown has flip-floped because he said he wouldn’t pander to corrupt evangelical leaders in 2000. Because W pandered to the RR and beat McClown, he former principled ‘maverick’ now sleeps with Falwell and Robertson. I wait for him to appear on the 700 Club to sell Pat’s shakes.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0002/28/se.01.html
Eight years later McClown now flip-flops and PANDERS to the corrupt leaders he denouced in 2000. Anything to win the 2008 nomination, will he abandon his ‘ni**er’ baby to win in SC?