Sore Winner - McCain Isn't Acting Like a Frontrunner. (Mona Charen)

National Review ^ | February 1st, 2008 | Mona Charen

[Signalman]

Where is Captain Queeg getting support from?

McCain is the choice of the GOP establishment, the country-club Rockefeller Republicans, the liberal wing of the party.

In 1976, we had a similar situation, the Rockefeller Republicans picked Ford, Regan was the Conservative choice. The Rockefeller Republicans got their man...and the country got Jimmy Carter. Will this same scenario play out in 2008? God help the USA if it does.

[Petronski]

The senator from Arizona has some fine qualities but no one has ever suggested that enduring criticism manfully is one of them.

Sweet.

LOLOL

[laxcoach]

Huck brings the religious base to McCain. Gotta wonder if McCain and him have a VP side deal.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Jealous of Mitt Phony? Hardly.

[kempo]

Tell us, what lies Romney told about McCain? We would like to know.

[MrChips]

Could have fooled me!

[CIB-173RDABN]

McCain is our McGovern

[B Knotts]

Romney merely pointed out the weaknesses in McCain’s voting record. McCain lied about Romney’s record. Two different things.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Going negative, and going comparative, are different things.

Ha. Romney's attack ads against Huckabee and McCain were strung-together misrepresentations and distortions, exactly what Romney accused his opponents of doing to him. He can't stand the heat in the kitchen,. and he's the one who started the fire in there. Romney's ads started out with some platitude about Huckabee or McCain, so people would think he was honest and then he'd lie about them, like a polished scam artist.

[dan1123]

Please stop with the “anyone against Romney is an anti-Mormon bigot”. It gets you nowhere.

[Thebaddog]

McCain/Huckaby. Now that’s a pair.

[kempo]

Tell what lies has Romney told about McCain?

[jpl]

John McCain hates people who do not bow down to his superiority.

I get this feeling that somehow or another, he'll inevitably sink his own candidacy the way he nearly sank his aircraft carrier.

[Iron Munro]

Going negative, and going comparative, are different things.

I agree whole heartedly.

I notice that incumbents and their lackeys are always moaning about "negative campaign ads".

Actually, I don't see them in that light.
I consider them to be informative and have value if they are true.
Why would the electorate want to see the elimination of one source of valid information on a candidate's record?

That is what McCain-Feingold is all about: the elimination of free speech during a campaign.
It is designed to protect incumbents from criticism and to protect the built in advantage they have by virtue of their free media exposure, their established name recognition, etc.

So it is not surprising that McCain and others like him do not want their competition to have any venue for exposing their poor performance, abuse of public trust, crimes, peccadillos, lies and obfuscations.

I want to see and hear more honest revelations and criticism, not less.

[Astronaut]

If Obama gets elected, it will be bad, but we could survive. But 4 years of Her Thighness? God help us, indeed.

[COBOL2Java]

McCain/Huckaby. Now that’s a pair.

The left one's McCain, the right one's Huckabee...

[geo40xyz]

8. Member of the KEATING FIVE

[Bob J]

IMO, we’re worse off with Obama. He is a socialist idealist, Hillary just wants to be queen.

Queens can be dealt with but idealists think they are always right, never admit when they’re wrong, and engage in scorched earth tactics to get what they want.

[Cecily]

“Rush’s replacement on the air right now is talking about logic of just letting this one go - “never would have had Reagan without Carter,” etc. I’m beginning to think this way too.”

That is my view. I won’t vote for either Romney or McCain, and if one of them manages to win, maybe a real conservative will emerge for 2012. The same scenario would work if a Dem wins this year too. Conservatives aren’t ever going to get rid of the RINOs if we keep voting for these frauds.

[Defiant]

Yes, but if Ford won, and he almost did, it would have been 4 more years of very muddled Republican liberalism, complete with inflation and a sluggish economy. Ford, remember, came up with the WIN button as an economic theory. By 1980, the voters would have punished the GOP with a massive loss of seats and the White House, and the 1980s would have been very different. You might be speaking Russian instead of Spanish now.

So if we are going to get liberal government, better it come from a Dem. The conservative movement still lives in the hearts of the 30 percent of the GOP that is conservative; it remains for the movement to coalesce around a leader who can capture conservatives, the rest of the GOP and then the nation, and who can then educate and expand conservatism.

What appears to have happened is that, due to 12 Bush years and hindered by 8 Clinton years, the 40-45 percent of the electorate who would have called themselves conservative when Reagan left office are down to maybe 20-25 percent. Of self-styled conservatives, many are not in their actual beliefs, hence the support for guys like McCain. Think Fred Barnes.

Bush squandered Reagan's legacy. It needs to be rebuilt. It cannot be rebuilt with amnesty creating 20 million new voters. That is its purpose--to kill conservatism. That is why the libs love McCain--he's their guy on the inside.

So, in sum, if the GOP nominates McCain, it deserves to lose and it needs to look to conservatives to lead it back to power, or conservatives need to look for a new vessal to use to bring their policies to government.