Posted on 02/28/2003 6:22:56 AM PST by dittomom
The prospect of Congressman Jeff Flake taking on incumbent John McCain in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate next year is intriguing. And there's at least a superficial plausibility to it.
Flake is known to harbor, along with colleagues J.D. Hayworth and John Shadegg, aspirations to the Senate.
Moreover, Flake is no careerist. He's likely to honor his term limit pledge, which would have him leaving the House in 2006 anyway.
Flake's mostly a contrarian in the House and wouldn't be losing much by giving up two years there to take a chance against McCain in 2004.
The term of Arizona's other U.S. senator, Jon Kyl, expires in 2006. If he stepped down, there would be a crowded Republican primary to replace him. But right now, the solidly conservative Kyl appears to be leaning toward running again.
So, 2004 may be the last U.S. Senate train leaving the station for a conservative until 2010, a political lifetime away.
Finally, Flake is being courted to make the run by the Club for Growth, an organization that supports candidates committed to supply-side economics. It has a solid track record of providing funds and helping to win contested Republican primaries. It was a strong backer of Flake's first congressional bid.
So, unlike most McCain challengers, Flake would probably have the resources to make a decent case.
But what would that case be?
There is tax policy, on which McCain is now a thorough apostate. He ultimately voted against the first Bush tax cut and has expressed what would appear to be insurmountable concerns about the second.
McCain's opposition to growth-oriented tax policy now extends far beyond being a deficit hawk, which would still be well within Republican orthodoxy.
He's now a redistributionist, supporting a progressive tax code and opposing efforts to relieve economically unproductive tax burdens on individuals in the upper income tax brackets.
Flake is a thoughtful and deeply grounded advocate of growth-oriented tax policies. But on the other side of fiscal policy, holding down the growth in federal spending, both McCain and Flake are champs, consistent opponents of pork-barrel spending and bloated budgets.
There is a sense in some Republican circles that McCain is disloyal to the party, going out of his way to trip up President Bush and continuing the presidential primary battle between the two.
That's probably not much of a campaign issue, even in a Republican primary, and the case for it is thin. McCain didn't vote against Bush's first tax cut plan until its success was certain. He has consistently supported Bush's appointees, and in Congress there is no stronger supporter of the president on Iraq.
Moreover, Flake, in his own way, is as much of a maverick as McCain. He opposed the president's second-most-important domestic initiative, the education bill, and brushed off White House entreaties not to push liberalizing travel and trade to Cuba, a politically delicate issue for the Bush family's political fortunes.
McCain does team up with Democrats regularly on Democratic causes, such as campaign finance reform, health care and the environment. It would be nice if McCain would occasionally bring one of his liberal Democratic friends to support a conservative cause, as Kyl has done with California Sen. Dianne Feinstein on victims' rights and border security.
But one-sided bipartisanship is unlikely to be a fatal political sin, even in a Republican primary.
Additionally, McCain has steadfastly resisted liberal attempts to graft social policy onto trade agreements, joining Flake as one of the most consistent free-traders in the Congress.
There's a foreign policy critique to be made of McCain's muscular interventionism, but not by Flake, who may not go as far as McCain (few do), but isn't in a materially different camp.
Tax policy and campaign finance reform - where the differences between McCain and Flake are the most serious - would make for an interesting primary debate.
But they probably aren't enough to fuel a successful insurgency movement to topple a political giant. Which is why Flake's interest in such a challenge is being vastly overstated.
Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8472. His column appears Sundays, Wednesday and Fridays.
McCain may face '04 GOP Challenge
I'd love to see any of Arizona's great conservatives (Flake, Hayworth or Shadegg) challenge McCain, but I'm not holding my breath.
Next conservative gets a chance in 2010.
Sorry, USA, but AZ fails you again.
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