John McCain’s Delicate Dance
John McCain, the maverick Senator who was left for dead a few months ago, is now the Republican nominee.
So, now comes the hard part for McCain: trying to keep moderates and independents attracted to him and not bug the hard right too much.
There is a temptation among those of us who are moderates to say that it’s time for the conservatives to “sit down and shut up.” Their candidate did not win, John McCain did, and they aren’t going to vote for the Dems anyway. Indeed, my blogmate and fellow pastor Mark Daniels says as much:
Granted, the neocons, social conservatives, and looneycons, all for different reasons and varying levels of validity, have never much cared for John McCain. But he doesn’t need to play up to them now. No matter how Bill Cunningham, Rush Limbaugh, or others inveigh against McCain, he is a conservative and he is the nominee of the Republican Party. Members of what have become base Republican constituencies since 1980 are not going to vote for Obama or Clinton this fall. Nor, as they learn more about the platform of the Democratic nominee, are they likely to sit on their hands, saying, “A plague on both their houses.”
He also thinks that with McCain chumming around with wingnut John Hagee and having such a public meeting with President Bush, who endorsed him today, he is adopting a Rovian strategy:
McCain appears to have bought into the Rovian formula for winning general elections. (Which is the mirror image of the Clinton approach on the Democratic side.) It’s a minimalist, get-out-the-base strategy. The idea is to excite the base by throwing out lots of red meat, plenty of references to Ronald Reagan, and lots of hot button issues and then squeak by.
I think Mark is wrong on both counts and besides, it’s too soon to tell.
The fact is, McCain only wrapped up the nomination yesterday. One meeting with Bush and making nice with preacher doesn’t necessarily equal Karl Rove. We have no idea what his strategy is yet. I think we will in the coming days and weeks, and if it does turn out that McCain veers too far to the right, then Mark will be correct. But it’s still too soon to tell.
McCain is a precarious position: he wants to woo the moderates and independents that are so vital to his campaign, but he also needs to have enough conservatives to win. And the fact is, he does need the conservatives to win. I respectfully disagree with Mark in his belief that conservatives have no choice but to vote for McCain. The have the choice to simply not vote and that could very well cost McCain the election. Some believe that Bush 41 lost his re-election in 1992 because conservatives stayed home or voted for Ross Perot.
I’m not saying that I like having McCain meet with people like John Hagee, I don’t. I think he is a hateful nutjob. But at some level, I do understand it- to a point that is. If he does that too much, then he ends up losing people like me.
Mark then talks about the chance McCain has to build a new coalition:
John McCain is the only Republican candidate who ran this year who had (and still has) a shot at reshaping the Republican coalition for victory in 2008. He is temperamentally suited to the task, something demonstrated by the fact that, in spite of being clearly conservative, he has, over the years, shown a willingness to reach across the political divide, winning friends and admirers of other political persuasions along the way.
What’s more, it’s only by undertaking a bold reshaping of the Republican Party, tapping back into its tradition of Progressive political reform (Lincoln, Hayes, Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt), environmental activism (Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, even Richard Nixon), and national security realism and frugal spending (Dwight Eisenhower) that Republicans have a chance of forging a new majority in this year’s election. Without such boldness, the Republicans are likelier than not to lose the White House in 2008.
Cozying up to those who have made Republican a questionable brand name these days isn’t the formula for building such a majority.
I agree that this is a momentous opportunity to build a new coalition. But let’s be real, McCain can’t ignore the hard right as much as I think he wants to. That’s politics; sometimes you have to get in bed with people you don’t like.
But, I also think that it isn’t up to McCain to recreate the GOP. The GOP didn’t veer right because of one person. It was because of people like the late William F. Buckley and magazines like the National Review. Thinks tanks arose that created new ideas for the conservative movement and so forth. McCain alone can’t do that. He might be able to bring new people into the party, but more has to be done to keep them there. To do that, you need to create a moderate GOP infastraucture of think tanks, magazines, and spokespersons who can stand behind McCain and push him to do that right thing. The fact is, there are a number of groups that are looking for people to join a movement to help bring the GOP back to a more center-right bearing, if people are willing to get involved. Hoping for McCain to do it alone is more than we can ask of him.
11 Responses to “John McCain’s Delicate Dance”
[...] â??7.62mm Justiceâ?? â?¢ wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt John McCain, the maverick Senator who was left for dead a few months ago, is now the Republican nominee. So, now comes the hard part for McCain: trying to keep moderates and independents attracted to him and not bug the hard right too much. There is a temptation among those of us who are moderates to say that it’s time for the conservatives to “sit down and shut up.” Their candidate did not win, John McCain did, and they aren’t going to vote for the Dems anyway. Indeed, my blogmate and fellow [...]
[...] â??7.62mm Justiceâ?? â?¢ wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt John McCain, the maverick Senator who was left for dead a few months ago, is now the Republican nominee. So, now comes the hard part for McCain: trying to keep moderates and independents attracted to him and not bug the hard right too much. There is a temptation among those of us who are moderates to say that it’s time for the conservatives to “sit down and shut up.” Their candidate did not win, John McCain did, and they aren’t going to vote for the Dems anyway. Indeed, my blogmate and fellow [...]
[...] â??7.62mm Justiceâ?? â?¢ wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt John McCain, the maverick Senator who was left for dead a few months ago, is now the Republican nominee. So, now comes the hard part for McCain: trying to keep moderates and independents attracted to him and not bug the hard right too much. There is a temptation among those of us who are moderates to say that it’s time for the conservatives to “sit down and shut up.” Their candidate did not win, John McCain did, and they aren’t going to vote for the Dems anyway. Indeed, my blogmate and fellow [...]
“I respectfully disagree with Mark in his belief that conservatives have no choice but to vote for McCain. The have the choice to simply not vote and that could very well cost McCain the election.”
This is very true, and was a central weakness in MarkD's analysis.
One indisputable example of this, that you did not cite, was the reaction of evangelicals to the revelation of Bush's 25 year old DUI record the Friday before the election in 2000. As expected by the Dem. activist who released it…the evangelical vote just stayed home. Karl Rove measured the loss at a full 5 point drop in one weekend.
If the religious right could sit out on Bush…they could far more easily sit out on McCain. McCain needs every vote against Obamania and, as the events of Monday showed, every vote plus a good exorcist against the unkillable Clinton.
[...] â??7.62mm Justiceâ?? â?¢ wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt John McCain, the maverick Senator who was left for dead a few months ago, is now the Republican nominee. So, now comes the hard part for McCain: trying to keep moderates and independents attracted to him and not bug the hard right too much. There is a temptation among those of us who are moderates to say that it’s time for the conservatives to “sit down and shut up.” Their candidate did not win, John McCain did, and they aren’t going to vote for the Dems anyway. Indeed, my blogmate and fellow [...]
Interesting thoughts, Dennis. Of course, I may be completely wrong about the strategy being pursued by the McCain camp. If I am wrong, it wouldn't be the first time. For example, while I said I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary Clinton won the Ohio primary, I thought that Obama would pull off the victory.
Mark Daniels
By the way, Macan, the reason for the estimated 5% reduction GWB's vote total in 2000 was a character issue. That's different from a philosophical issue. Many voters will cas their ballots for pols with whom they have philosophical disagreements whose characters they admire. Fewer will throw in with candidates with whom they agree, whose characters are suspect. The eleventh-hour report about Bush's DUI raised questions among those who particularly counted on character in their choice for president.
Mark Daniels
Mark Daniels said: “Many voters will cas their ballots for pols with whom they have philosophical disagreements whose characters they admire. “
Hmmm…well, that is a very interesting argument, I must say. I am not sure whether the evangelicals would parse the distinction so finely.
But then, I was shocked to see the inroads McCain had made with this group Monday . I had assumed he would be anatema to them, with his quasi-liberal views.
(Clearly betraying my ignorance of evangelicals here, as I only know folks of one evangelical church…nice folks, but puzzling to me how they find determinants for all sorts of actions in the Bible).
So you'll be cutting the same slack for all other politicians?
Dennis, having read both your post and Mark's, I will label myself as more aligned with your take than Mark's. To my reading, Mark's choice of words and tone seem more aligned with that of an idealist rather than a pragmatist. Moving to the middle may well be a “bold initiative”, but I just don't feel natural moderates come to their mindset from an overabundance of bold initiative genes.
I see McCain's campaign as “Rovian” as well, but only to the extent there is political calculation and not dissimilar to Clinton1. My take is McCain slightly mishandled the Hagee thing, but more as a result of failure to fully vet the perception element rather than some natural affinity. Hopefully, he has appreciated the wake-up call it brought……..not that he shouldn't continue to court their vote but rather employ the language that most of his other speechifying (that all the McCain dislikers seem to be oblivious to) contains. To me the “we may disagree on occasion, my friends, but my record is basically conservative” is exactly the type of position that can indeed compete for a coalition of 45% to 100% on a left to right scale.
As far as “big hype” over the Bush lunch, I see the hype coming only from the left blogosphere today……the MSM today seems to be more taken with the fisticuffs amonsgst the D's.
Dennis,
Do you really think that McCain should be allowed to get away with promising the Bush branch of the party the moon and the stars and then with a wink and a nudge to them pretend it never happened during the general campaign? So far as I can tell McCain only differs from Bush on a couple of issues.