Posted on 01/11/2008 11:24:25 AM PST by Checkers
If John McCain is somehow prevented from winning the nomination, it won’t be because of his fellow candidates.
Last night, the rest of the field refused to lay a glove on McCain. Many conservatives I talk to still assume he will fall of his own weight. And, truth be told, the other campaigns’ visceral dislike of Mitt Romney is blinding them to the need for a strong voice to articulate the conservative base’s deep distrust of McCain.
For McCain, a seemingly impossible confluence of events have had the effect of parting the waters for his previously treacherous path to the nomination.
First, McCain emerged from the back of the pack. The conservative establishment didn’t know if this was serious or not, so they didn’t organize. At the outset, Romney probably found this useful to knock off Rudy in NH. Then Rudy decided he didn’t have the warewithal to challenge his friend McCain in a pro-choice, Northeastern state.
In Iowa too, Huckabee used McCain as a club to bash Romney. Romney only started attacking McCain in late December, and then only on McCain’s home field of New Hampshire.
Okay, I can see letting New Hampshire slip. That happened in 2000. But certainly South Carolina could be counted on finish him off for us. Is McCain getting any heat there?
Not much.
Mitt Romney has to save himself first, and he’s doing that in Michigan. That probably necessitates a pivot to a more positive message. Like other cash-strapped candidates, he’s counting on Huckabee to finish the job in SC. It’s also probably too late for any 527s to get going.
(Excerpt) Read more at hughhewitt.townhall.com ...
The paradox here is that while a McCain loss is more likely in South Carolina, Huckabee is the candidate most likely to let McCain off the ropes. Like Rudy, he seems to be running for Mr. Congeniality at times. Huckabee’s path to the nomination lies in convincing conservatives why John McCain was so unacceptable to them to begin with. He has to make a decision about whether he’s running for President or Vice President.
As for Rudy, if he gets to make the case in Florida, his tax argument is a good start, but it’s not enough. Rudy will need to make the case that he has the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief — and be willing to get personal in the way that McCain already has with Bernie Kerik and the 9/11 swiftboats.
FDT is in many ways the most natural person to make the case — with the most conservative movement credentials of any candidate — but it’s hard to tell if he’s still in it or is just a sleeper cell for his Washington buddy McCain, siphoning votes away from Huckabee in South Carolina.
The other candidates personally like McCain. Their staff tend to be more moderate than the GOP primary electorate, so they many have trouble seeing just how dispirited the base would be with McCain as the nominee, particularly if Obama manages to pull it out, but also against Hillary.
It’s time to take the gloves off. If you assume that McCain can still lose this, it’s a matter of driving straight down the fairway to Minneapolis-St. Paul. If you assume he’ll still be the nominee, it’s a matter of testing whether conservatives can set aside some pretty serious objections to a likely nominee.
If conservative distrust of McCain still isn’t as big a deal as I think it is, so be it. But the nomination is too serious to approach this with anything but eyes wide open. We can’t afford to get buyer’s remose — of the kind we’ve already had with McCain for most of the last eight years — particularly as he tacks left against the Democrats and his general election numbers sink back to where they were when he was last under attack in the spring.
Primaries and the sharp jabs that come with them are good for the process. They ensure we have a nominee who is thoroughly vetted. The last thing we need is what happened to the Democrats in 2004, when Kerry emerged at the last minute, wasn’t tested, and turned out to be a horrible candidate in the general.
PING
Well, now that he’s allied with Willard, it gets even easier.
Neither one of them (John and Myth) give a damn about conservatism, they just aspire to ascend to power. It’s a marriage made in heaven.
I’m not sure Thompson needed to strike at McCain directly. People who support McCain have been largely doing so because he is a more conservative response to Huckabee.
Thompson can attack Huck, and outflank McCain at the same time.
In a conservative state, conservatism wins everytime. Thompson didn’t need to call out everyone.
H
McCain can’t win a national election cycle, and Romney isn’t ‘out of cash’ not by a long shot. He hasn’t pulled commercials, he just didn’t order up additional ones in Florida and SC yet.
McCain vacations near Figi on Turtle Island. He is there ALOT and is the resorts number one boy paying over 2,500 a night for his suite.
Fred can count on losing a substantial amount of support should he win by chance & ask MeCain to be VP.
I think he’d lose less support than he’d gain.
Fred is conservative. A moderate VP isn’t necessarily a bad idea to capture the mushy middle that like McCain’s “maverick” status.
The VP has so little power, none of which isn’t under the authority of the President, that a running mate means little outside of their ability to capture voters. McCain can capture voters that Thompson may not be able to capture.
H
If a true conservative cannot see the difference between McLame and Fred.....I pity the poor fool!
A position only a liberal would love.
I think most presidential candidates choose the VP who will gain them the most votes in the Electoral College, to help put them over the top, which usually means some kind of balance, regional or political.
If the president dies in office, then all bets are off. You voted for JFK but you got LBJ. But usually voters are willing to cut a little slack for the VP. I wouldn’t vote for McCain for president, but I’d certainly vote for Fred if McCain was his VP, and just continue to pray that he survived his term.
Thompson will never strike out at McCain. Birds of a feather!
The media thinks my Hummer warming the globe.
I think there are better choices for running mate than John McCain ... but he wouldn’t be a poor choice.
H
Aw, Checkers! Are you admitting Mitt's running out of money?
One last desperation stand in Michigan fighting a two-front battle with McCain and Huckabee?
The effort last year to stop McCain’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform is becoming very clearly to be an eruption of effort that had no basis in principle. The leader of that effort, McCain, is being given a 100% pass by the right wing’s Great Right Hope, Fred Thompson.
And the guys supporting this, and watching it happen? They don’t care. They are watching him avoid attacking McCain and helping McCain put himself into a position where a GOP Senate with fewer seats next year will pass exactly what he pushed, or maybe . . . something leftward.
The right wing didn’t really care about it. They don’t care about immigration. They are supporting a candidate who won’t make the effort to stop McCain. Hell, they might as well be supporting McCain.
Astonishing, if you think the effort last year was principle rather than petulance. It it was mere petulance. If it was petulance, then it’s not surprising at all they are letting McCain be nominated.
And then we would have two old sick men in charge of the country.
Who ever is advising Fred must of been bought off by the Republican Establishment. This is a disastrous mistake. Instead of Huck, Fred should be going after the front runner McCain
They are both mavricks!
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