Posted on 12/27/2007 5:10:55 AM PST by billorites
SEN. JOHN McCAIN, given up for dead a few weeks ago as he ran a cash-starved, disorganized campaign, today is viewed by canny Republican professionals as the best bet to win the party's presidential nomination. What's more, they consider him their most realistic prospect to buck the overall Democratic tide and win the general election. Indeed, if Mike Huckabee holds on to actually win the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the road forward could be clear for McCain.
Mitt Romney's lavishly financed, meticulously organized campaign always has operated with a thin margin of error based on winning Iowa and then the New Hampshire primary five days later. If Romney loses to Huckabee in Iowa, he becomes vulnerable to McCain in New Hampshire. If McCain wins there, he will be favored to sweep through subsequent primaries despite meager finances and organization.
This scenario does not connote a late-blooming affection for McCain among the party faithful. Indeed, he remains suspect to them on global warming, stem-cell research, tax policy and immigration controls, not to mention his original sin of campaign finance reform (with authorship of the McCain-Feingold Act). Rather, his nomination would result from him being the last man standing, with all other candidates falling. Rudy Giuliani's baggage is getting too heavy to carry. Fred Thompson never got started. Huckabee's Republicanism is even less orthodox than McCain's and seems unviable beyond Iowa. Romney is burdened with anti-Mormon prejudice and the accusation he is "plastic."
McCain's return from oblivion also suggests a personal determination that was demonstrated during six years of torture and solitary confinement in a communist prison. Beginning the year as the GOP's putative establishment candidate, McCain presided over a spendthrift, ineffective campaign. His decline climaxed, however unfairly, when he came over as the apostle of immigration amnesty. Despite a free fall in the polls and the inability to raise funds, McCain has impressed the political community with six months of tireless grass-roots campaigning.
He never has been popular inside the party, even when it seemed he might be its anointed candidate. He is still bitterly opposed by conservative activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed and is anathema to Cato Institute members and other libertarians because of campaign finance reform. His opposition to earmarked pork and his demolition of the corrupt deal between Boeing and the Air Force have not enchanted fellow Republican politicians. Transcending ideology, he draws opposition because he will turn 72 next August.
But when Republicans get together privately, they tend to agree that McCain is the Republican most likely to defeat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Even while some consider the old naval aviator as cranky and hot-tempered, he has not exhibited those negative characteristics in debates. Rather, he exudes a heroic aura that goes beyond managing New York City or the Utah Olympics. That quality is shown in his Christmas card television ad depicting a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt. McCain has managed to support the invasion of Iraq while criticizing President Bush's management of the invasion, and he maintains his fiscal integrity in a pork-driven, spendthrift Republican Party.
Having fallen behind Huckabee in Iowa, Romney has concluded he must stop McCain in New Hampshire. He launched daily attacks on McCain last week after having ignored him for months. Apart from assailing McCain for not being a team player, Romney deplored his votes against Bush's tax cuts. McCain has admitted to me that those votes were a mistake, as Romney confesses he made a mistake in his former support for abortion rights. The difference, Romney insiders insist, is that their man freely acknowledges error.
That faint distinction may not be sufficient to stop McCain in New Hampshire if Romney loses Iowa. That is why McCain is praying for the former governor of Arkansas on Jan. 3. The GOP nominee can be determined by how many Iowa social conservatives that night support a high-tax, big-spending opponent of school choice who is called a member of the religious left by critical Southern Baptists. The Republican Party's internal competition has become as peculiar as the Democrats' used to be.
I look at this election and feel sick.
If John McCain is the G.O.P. nominee then it definatley IS time for a NEW conservative party to emerge.
NO to RINOs. No to RINO John McCain.
No to amnesty, no to silencing free speech.
Mr. Novak needs more fibre in his diet.
I didn’t write that crap. Novak’s credibility died when Rowland Evans did.
You don't think people would feel more secure, what with an emerging civil war in Pakistan, with someone like Obama, Hillary or Edwards in office? ;->
If that's true the other candidates have got to be part of the conspiracy. I mean what did they say? "We will act like complete fools and incompetents even the people who hate McCain will vote for him. Oh yeah, and let's get Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee to run"?
BWHAHAHAHAHAH
“Robert D. Novak: John McCain is the GOP’s last man standing”
novak-aine knows NOTHING of MEN and Standing... that POS dim squats to pee.
LLS
Mitt "Call in the Lawyers" Romney doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either. The events of today will boost McCain for sure.
‘But when Republicans get together privately, they tend to agree that McCain is the Republican most likely to defeat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.’
I’d say these are the same ‘Republicans’ that thought Amnesty would carrying the day politically, right up til 30 seconds before it was dropped.
I seem to remember the same thing being said, about this same time in a previous campaign. He didn’t make it then, either.
Johnny Mack is back!
If true - that McCain will be the Republican candidate, then the Democrats win in a sweep...
That was the plan from the beginning, when MSM championed McCain..
I for one will stay home.
McCain is in the best, and perhaps only, position to beat her IMHO.
If Clinton wins I will remember your post.
Get ready for the “Don’t blame me, blame the RINO’s” rant.
It reminds me of how Wesley Clark was going to parachute in and get the Dem nomination in 2004, in November 2003. There was supposedly all this Dem support for him that would sweep him in, if only he'd run. It turns out the reason he wasn't already in was because he didn't really want the job and wasn't good at political campaigning, like Fred.
These last minute bids are always big failures.
Where is Ronald Reagan when we need him most?
Um, Fred has no relationship whatsoever to Weasel Clark. Fred ain’t in it for ego, and he ain’t lying his ass off day after day pretending to be something he isn’t. If he wasn’t serious about winning, he wouldn’t be running. It’s that simple. We need to stop repeating the trash talking points of the liberal media and RINO establishment.
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