GOP May Regret Raising McCain

WASHINGTON -- The prospect of John McCain all but clinching the GOP presidential nomination in Super Tuesday's primaries has certainly raised the anxiety level among conservative Republicans.

The trouble with McCain, conservative leaders say, is that he strays far afield from party orthodoxy on so many issues -- vital, ideological issues that lie at the core of the GOP's agenda.

There was the Arizona senator's rigid opposition to the Bush tax cuts. He voted against them twice, in 2001 and 2003, votes that to this day he claims were justified, even though he now wants to make the tax cuts permanent.

There was his authorship of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, a piece of legislation that interest groups on both sides of the political aisle said was a draconian attack on the once-sacrosanct freedom to engage in political advocacy on the airwaves in the weeks leading up to an election.

McCain said his bill would end the role of big money in election campaigns, but it did nothing of the sort. Campaign spending has only ballooned to even more mammoth proportions. Instead, the legislation turned out to be nothing more than an incumbent protection law, shielding members of Congress from serious political challenges at the ballot box.

The bill was harshly criticized by widely disparate groups, from the AFL-CIO to the Right To Life Committee, who deemed it unconstitutional, which it is.

Then there was McCain's alliance with Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, on the Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill that was hotly opposed by the base of his party who think it went too far in offering illegal immigrants a conditional path to citizenship. The uproar caused him to tone down the issue on the campaign trail, placing more emphasis on border security, which is the base's chief concern.

A core GOP position on energy independence is to make full use of this country's vast oil reserves, either offshore or in untapped parts of the country, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But McCain, unlike Bush, is opposed to drilling in ANWR, likening it to mining or drilling in the Grand Canyon, an absurd comparison. Oil drilling technology today is as unobtrusive as microsurgery. It would leave a very tiny "footprint" on ANWR's millions of acres and cause no harm to terrain or wildlife.

For many conservatives, no issue is more important than putting strict constructionists on the Supreme Court, and McCain has said he would appoint conservatives in the vein of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. But in a Wall Street Journal online column, John Fund says McCain, in private conversations with lawyers, has "indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito because 'he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.'"

These are among a number of issues that have fed deep doubts about McCain among party members and leaders at the GOP's grassroots.

It's the reason why exit polls in Florida's Republican primary found that among those voters who described themselves as "very conservative" (27 percent), McCain drew 21 percent, compared to 44 percent for Mitt Romney. The reverse was true among self-identified liberal to moderate voters (39 percent). McCain won 45 percent of that group compared to 22 percent for Romney.

McCain's problems with his party's right have been played out on conservative talk radio, where he has been a punching bag for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity and other top shows.

"He has a legislative record that is not conservative. In fact, it is anti-conservative," Hewitt said.

Still, while many conservatives have serious disagreements with him on bedrock policies, many of them also say there is much to like about him: his unflagging leadership against Islamic extremism and his unyielding defense of the war in Iraq and the troop surge, when others in his party headed for the tall grass and were calling for surrender. Few in the party have been as tough on spending cuts as he has.

"I admire the heck out of John McCain and disagree with him on at least half a dozen serious matters," said Bill Bennett, whose stout defense of the senator on his popular talk radio show has drawn legions of angry callers.

"He is a war hero, he has been consistently pro-life, he put his campaign in hostage to the success of the surge in Iraq, he's been a consistent hawk on pork-barrel spending, and can win in November," Bennett told me.

But the former drug czar and education secretary said the heated nature of the anti-McCain phone calls to his program underscores his weakness among the GOP's conservative base.

"What rankles me the most is his tendency to criticize our side first. Why bash us, why not bash Hillary Clinton? He's got to have some of the fire that Democrats have for Republicans," Bennett said.

"If he is the nominee, he's got to fix things with the base of the party, because you can't have a convention with these kinds of feelings," he said.

Does Bennett have a breaking point over the senator's candidacy? "Ask me tomorrow," he replied.

"Moderate" is the key here, and it's unacceptable.

You would have this piece of garbage "McCain" run the party?

We need a song based on "Next Time ... He'll Think Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood , " about McCain.

Ann Coulter on McCain and Conservatives

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," January 31, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. [ 5 minutes 32 seconds ]

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: And Senator John McCain is gaining momentum, but not all conservatives are jumping for joy.
Senator McCain is a polarizing candidate for many. And critics point to his stance on immigration, his work with Russ Feingold.
But with a potential Hillary Clinton candidacy on the Democratic side of the aisle, will true conservatives eventually fall in line and support the Arizona senator?

Joining us now, author of the "New York Times" best seller, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd be Republicans," our friend Ann Coulter.
How are you?

ANN COULTER, AUTHOR, "IF DEMOCRATS HAD ANY BRAINS": Fine, thank you.

HANNITY: Your thoughts about -
Look I'm standing on substance here.

COULTER: Yes.

HANNITY: It's immigration.
It's limits on free speech.
It's not supporting tax cuts.

COULTER: It's Anwar. It's torture at Guantanamo.

HANNITY: Class warfare rhetoric. It's interrogations. It's Guantanamo. It's Anwar.
These are not small issues to conservatives.

COULTER: No, and if you're looking at substance rather than whether it's an R or D after his name, manifestly,
if he's our candidate, then Hillary's going to be our girl, Sean,
because she's more conservative than he is. I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism.
I absolutely believe that.

HANNITY: That's the one area I disagree with you.

COULTER: No, yes, we're going to sign up together. Let me explain that point on terrorism.

HANNITY: You'd vote for Hillary —

COULTER: Yes. I will campaign for her if it's McCain.

HANNITY: If Hillary is watching tonight, you just got an endorsement —

COLMES: I just heard the word no.

COULTER: I was touched when she cried.
That part isn't true.
But the rest of it is true.
He has led the fight against
— well, as you say, interrogations. I say torture at Guantanamo.
She hasn't done that. She hasn't taken a position in front.

HANNITY: Without interrupting you, let me give you one distinction
— that's what liberals do to you. Let me give you one distinction, he did support the war —

COULTER: So did Hillary.

HANNITY: But he stayed with it. He supported the surge.
I didn't like his criticisms of Rumsfeld, but he was right —

COULTER: OK, let's get to him supporting the surge.
He keeps going on and on about how he was the only Republican who supported the surge and other Republicans attacked him.
It was so awful how he was attacked. It was worse than being held in a tiger cage.

Okay, well I looked up the record.
Republicans all supported the surge. He's not only not the only one who supported the surge,
I promise you no Republican attacked him for this. And you know why he's saying that, Sean,
because he keeps saying it at every debate, I'm the only one. I was attacked by Republicans.
He's confusing Republicans with his liberal friends.
They're the ones who attacked him for it, his real friends.

HANNITY: Hillary Clinton, if she gets her way, will nationalize health care.
She's going to pull the troops out of Iraq.

COULTER: I don't think she will.

HANNITY: That's what she's saying she's going to do.

COULTER: Compared to John McCain, she will do better.

HANNITY: She says in a hundred days she's immediately going to begin to pull out.

(CROSS TALK)

COULTER: Look, she's running in a Democratic primary. He's running in the Republican primary, and their positions are about that far apart.
When George Bush said at the State of the Union Address that the surge is working in Iraq,
Obama sat on his hands,
Kennedy sat on his hands,
Hillary leapt up and applauded that we are winning in the surge and that the surge is working in Iraq.

She gave much better answers in those debates when Democrats like Obama and Biden were saying what do we do? What do we do if three cities are attacked. She said, I will find who did it and I will go after them.

HANNITY: You want to sit back.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Can I just say something — Ann -

Coulter: I would trust any republican - any republican - but John McCain - more than Hillary Clinton

.HANNITY:)Hey, you want to sit back -

COULTER: - Because with John McCain - Hillary is absolutely more conservative.
Moreover -

(CROSS TALK)

COLMES: My work is done. My work is done.

COULTER: Moreover, she lies less than John McCain.
I'm a Hillary girl now.
She lies less than John McCain.
She's smarter than John McCain,
so that when she's caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they've been caught lying.
McCain is so stupid, he doesn't even know he's been caught.

COLMES: Go.
In fact, could you fill in for me next week?

COULTER: If it's McCain, I will.

COLMES: Let me get this straight, would you vote for Hillary Clinton?

COULTER: Yes.

COLMES: You would actually go in a voting booth —

COULTER: If it's close and the candidate is John McCain, because John McCain is not only bad for Republicanism,
which he definitely is. He is bad for for the country —
He is very very bad for the country.

(CROSS TALK)

COLMES: Can I tell you the last thing that Hillary Clinton wants? Ann Coulter's endorsement.

COULTER: He will not give up on amnesty.
He will not give up on amnesty. Now -
Even now he's running as a Republican, he won't give up on amnesty. I'm at that debate the other night, he's coming in attacking profits, capitalism -

(CROSS TALK)

COULTER: I'm serious.

COLMES: I know, but let me get serious for a second, because so far I haven't been.
Look, are you telling me —
look at all the people endorsing McCain.
I'm not talking about Johnny come lately Republicans.
Nancy Reagan is wrong?
Rick Perry is wrong?
Arnold is wrong?
Charlie Crist is wrong?

COULTER: Okay, other than Nancy Reagan —

(CROSS TALK)

COULTER: No. I will explain. It's not that they're wrong other than Nancy Reagan. And by the way
we loved Nancy Reagan for loving Ron Reagan. We didn't love her for her political positions.
Who wants embryonic stem-cell research? And I'm moving Nancy reagan to the -

(CROSS TALK)

COLMES: Hello. Hello. Are all of these people are off the beat.

COULTER: I'm trying to answer the question. Stop talking.
I'm moving Nancy Reagan to the side, and I'm saying all the rest of these political endorsements mean one thing;
they think he's the front runner. They want a job in his administration.
Nothing means less than an endorsement from someone who wants a position.

COLMES: They're all hoes just looking for a job?

COULTER: No,
but they all do want jobs.

COLMES: I'm giving her the opportunity —

COULTER: They do all want jobs. What they want -
It's good to be friends with the king.
Some people - like me -

HANNITY: Will you be careful.

COULTER: Some people don't care about being the king.

Read Mark Levin

"Reagan Challenged His Party from the Right. McCain Challenges His Party from the Left. [Mark R. Levin]"

I don't think most conservatives are interested in McCain’s class ranking at Annapolis or how many planes he was nearly killed in. There have been a few posts here mentioning it.
And I appreciate all the references to Reagan's efforts to advance his agenda, which did involve making compromises with a Democrat House and, throughout most of his presidency, a Democrat Congress.
And if John McCain showed this kind of temperament and vision in his political career, I don't think most who object to his candidacy during the primaries would be objecting to it today. I think we would be enthusiastically supporting him.

Painting Reagan as a tax-and-spend Republican, who basically went along with Washington and appointed a bunch of moderates to the Supreme Court, in an apparent attempt to build up McCain's conservative and leadership credentials and mollify his critics, has the opposite effect mostly because it is inaccurate. It reminds me of Bill Clinton's supporters using Thomas Jefferson's alleged adultery to explain the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Reagan challenged his party from the Right. He sought the Republican nomination in 1968 against Richard Nixon and lost. He sought the nomination against Gerald Ford in 1976 and lost. He fought the Republican establishment in 1980 as well, including Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and George H. W. Bush, and won.
McCain has challenged his party from the Left. I don't know how many more times I and others have to lay out his record to prove the point.
To put a fine point on it, when he had to, Reagan sought compromise from a different set of beliefs and principles than McCain. It does a great disservice to historical accuracy and the current debate to continue to urge otherwise.

Let me be more specific, rather than spar in generalities. Reagan would never have used the phrase "manage for profit" as a zinger to put down a Republican opponent. Reagan believed in managing for profit because he believed in free enterprise. That doesn't mean he didn't agree to certain tax increases (after fighting for and winning the most massive tax cuts in modern American history), which were incidentally to be accompanied by even greater spending cuts.
McCain believes the oil companies are evil, and said it during one of the debates.
Among his first acts as president, Reagan decontrolled the prices of natural gas and crude oil with the stroke of his pen because, as he understood, profit funds research and exploration. Reagan had a respect for and comprehension of private property rights and markets that McCain does not. There never would have been a Reagan-Lieberman bill, in which the federal government's power over the private sector would have trumped the New Deal.

Reagan opposed limits on political speech.
The Reagan administration ended the Fairness Doctrine and the media ownership rules, which helped create the alternative media that McCain despises. Reagan's reverence for the Constitution would never have allowed him to support, let alone add his name to, something like McCain-Feingold.

As for Reagan's Supreme Court appointments, it is wholly misleading to simply list those who turned out to be disappointing as evidence of Reagan's willingness to compromise on judicial appointments or appoint moderates, or whatever the point was.
In Sandra Day O'Connor's case, he was assured by Barry Goldwater and Ken Starr that she was an originalist. While on the Court, she started out on fairly sound footing, and then lurched toward the Left, something Reagan could not foresee or control.
Yes, Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy to the Court, but only after:

Reagan refused to allow the Senate to dictate which judges

Reagan sought to abolish all kinds of federal programs and agencies — from the Department of Education to the Action Agency/VISTA — and the list goes on and on.
I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for someone with the time and inclination, such as a think-tank scholar, to go back and examine the early budgets that Reagan sent to Congress. Am I the only one who remembers all the horror stories in the media portraying Reagan's budgets

The one area Reagan drastically increased spending was defense.
And while McCain is said to be among the most capable of hawks, he used little of his political capital and media savvy to oppose the Clinton cuts — or to warn the nation about the rising threat from al-Qaeda, for that matter. He did not call for the resignation of his good friend Bill Cohen, who was a terrible defense secretary. McCain was not alone, of course. But a more fulsome examination of McCain's senatorial record relating to defense, intelligence, and law enforcement is met mostly with silence or admonitions to avert our eyes.

Reagan would not have led efforts to grant the enemy constitutional and international rights, as McCain has. I believe he would have sided with President Bush. After all, as president, Reagan rejected efforts to expand the Geneva Conventions to cover terrorists.
This is a key area of departure for McCain not only from Bush but most national security advocates. But, alas, we must avert our eyes, again.

As for the 1986 Reagan amnesty for illegal aliens, we've been down this road time and again.
The bill was carefully reviewed within the Reagan administration, including at the Justice Department (at the time, the INS reported to the attorney general). Reagan agreed that amnesty would be conferred on 2-3 million illegal aliens as a one-time event in exchange for adequate funding for border security. The bill passed in 1987. The border security part of the deal was never enforced.
To say that Reagan supported amnesty and no more is to rewrite history. There would have been no Reagan-Kennedy bill, written largely by LULAC and LaRaza.

But we must rewrite history
if we are to make the case that McCain is no different from Reagan,
Reagan is no different from his predecessors,
and Reagan's speeches weren't all that revolutionary.
And if we object to such characterizations, then the argument shifts to Reagan wasn't perfect,
the Reagan era is dead,
these are different times, etc. Then, if we criticize McCain's record we are told

Look, I do not believe that McCain is a principled conservative.
I believe he is a populist hawk in the tradition of a Scoop Jackson. This isn't a perfect comparison, of course, but nothing is ever perfect, is it?
In my view, this is why the hawks will support McCain regardless of his record in virtually every other respect. Moreover, they see McCain as the only Republican who has the will or ability or whatever to fight terrorism. I don't.
But please, can we at least agree, on National Review's website of all places, to stop dumbing down or dismissing the Reagan record. If you are going to use it, at least be accurate about it. It isn't perfect, but it is far superior to the backhand it received earlier.

02/02 12:52 PM

Mark Levin isn't called the GREAT ONE for no reason.

So I ask again. Do you really want McCain?

Except for Rush Limbaugh, who "might have" endorsed Thompson by proxy through his brother, the above actors are the ones who have led us to the McCain problem in the first place.

Hannity, though he now denies it, had his nose so far up Giuliani's rear guard that Giuliani could use Hannity's lips instead of his own. Now Hannity wants us to believe that he was a supporter of ultra-liberal Romney all along. Well....that's some consolation, Mr Conservative. Why not endorse the other liberal love of your life, Joe Liebermann? Sheesh...

Ingraham has been fairly consistent with ultra-liberal Romney all along. Sell-out came early to her.

To Coulter's credit, she was solidly in the camp of Hunter and Thompson, and if she wants to say outrageous things about supporting Hillary just to get people's attention, then I know what she's up to. She'd rather a liberal democrat get the blame for devastating this country than a liberal Republican. I can see that. You go, girl.

And on it goes, everyone now claims they can support liberal Romney but not liberal McCain. I say "horse puckey" to all of that.

They were betting on the rich kid's money to give him a leg up. Guess what? It hasn't.

He's now down, and unless he does something absolutely stunning in the next 8 hours, he's out of it.

If these talk show "conservatives" had gotten off their hands, and gotten their eyes off of Romney's treasure chest, and supported Duncan Hunter at the beginning, giving him the conservative support his record deserved, then we wouldn't be in this mess.

Military background, right on taxes, right on defense, right on amnesty, right on immigration, right on life, right on the gay agenda, right on judges, right on world trade agreements, and right on the intangibles: a once-married faithful husband, a man who had Vietnam military experience as a leader of troops, a son in the military, a man with no skeletons in any closet, and a low-key, faithful Christian who didn't try to use his religion for political purposes.

And now they're arguing over which liberal to support....Romney or McCain....and acting like the world will end because we support a man with a rino record instead of a man who has a liberal record for his entire political career.

The sad thing in all this is not my disgust with Romney, McCain, and Huckabee. It's my disgust with "moderate" conservatives, and especially with sellout conservative media personalities who are CINOs!

Yep, I'll vote for Mr "fingers-crossed-behind-his-back" Romney OR I'll vote for Mr Rino himself, John McCain. At least they're saying the right things about life, guns, defense, taxes, gay agenda, etc.

Maybe they'll stand by their recent words instead of their lifelong behavior.

What choice do I really have?

But, don't try to tell me that Romney is oh-so-much-better than McCain, or vice versa. And throw Huck in there if you want, because the truth is that the CINOs have helped the RINOs win.

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