Thanks to the miracle technology of RSS feeds, I am able to look at hundreds of news stories, blog commentaries, and cute pictures of kittens every day. One of my favorite news sources is the Christian Science Monitor. Their research is solid, the coverage in-depth, and despite the things implied by their name, they are very low on bias.
Today, the CSM asks “Can McCain Deliver His Home State?” And they ask, conceding at the outset that Senator McCain “consistently gets 80 percent approval ratings from Arizonans….” So what’s the problem? Why on earth wouldn’t the same people who keep sending him to the Senate not vote for him to be President?
To begin, he must win over the independents who represent about a third of Arizona voters. There is no victory without a substantial percentage of these folks, but that is no easy matter. They quoted one political expert as saying “When you look at their position on who can do a better job, they poll 2 to 1 on the side of Democrats…. They are a very fickle bunch of people, but now they lean toward ‘throw the rascals out.’ ”
The second problem he faces is from the religious right, who feel he has compromised too many of the values they hold in order to be seen as “moderate” and “electable.” They have a problem with the fact “that he voted against President Bush’s tax cuts, pressed hard for campaign-finance reform that they see as curtailing political free speech, and backed an immigration measure that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and a guest-worker program.” So remember that as you see him make seemingly contradictory statements about issues like abortion and gay marriage.
And the third problem is that real moderate Republicans (and those Clinton supporters who threatened to take their vote elsewhere) don’t like the fact that he has indeed kept to the Bush line too much of the time.
Could Arizona be a surprise battleground state? Only time will tell.