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Jewish World Review Sept. 27, 2005 / 23 Elul, 5765 Bush's pain, McCain's gain By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Katrina has indeed altered our political landscape: For the
first time in years, conservatives have listened to Arizona Sen.
John McCain talk about a high-profile domestic issue and have nodded
their heads vigorously. The maverick Republican made his reputation
by bucking his own party, especially its conservative base, and,
after his failed 2000 nomination bid, seemed to want to make a
career out of it. Democrats fantasized about a Kerry-McCain ticket
in 2004, as McCain occupied his own little world of resentment at
how the 2000 nomination had supposedly been stolen from him and of a
"progressive" Republicanism at times difficult to distinguish from
Democratic orthodoxy.
After Katrina and the countless billions of dollars that began
pouring toward the Gulf Coast, conservatives clamored for spending
offsets elsewhere in the budget, and there was McCain right there
with them, excoriating pork-barrel spending (as he always has) and
calling for repeal of the massive new Medicare prescription-drug
entitlement. In a major battle between conservatives in Congress who
want to cut spending and the party's leadership, which is — to put
it mildly — unenthusiastic about the prospect, McCain is with the
conservative rebels.
This is so important because, if he runs, McCain is probably the
front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. But
he's an odd front-runner, a front-runner whose campaign is almost
certainly doomed unless he handles conservatives better than he did
in 2000. McCain will come out of the gate with formidable assets,
among them near-universal name recognition, media adulation and
credibility as a serious candidate. But if he again lets another
major candidate get to his right on nearly everything — as he let
President Bush in 2000 — his campaign will again attract
independents, but not the Republicans who are by definition
necessary to win the Republican nomination.
So McCain is in a different game from other potential
candidates. They need money, media attention and insider buzz.
McCain needs the right to stop loathing him, and he seems to realize
it.
When McCain went out on the campaign trail with Bush — whom he
held in contempt for years after 2000 — and gave him bearhugs, it
was clear that the senator's presidential ambitions hadn't died. It
is hard to believe that those hugs were heart-felt. Indeed, McCain's
campaign will strain his capacities for insincerity. If a second
marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, a second McCain
presidential campaign, to be successful, will have to be the triumph
of experience over the candidate's own predilections.
McCain's natural constituency is the bookers on "Hardball With
Chris Matthews," or any other public-affairs show; he is
"controversial," while usually managing to say what the media wants
to hear. In 2000, it became clear his grand goal was to blow up the
current Republican coalition and craft something new, although it
was left vague what exactly. He has never demonstrated great
affection for social conservatives, whom he blasted in 2000. But he
can work around these things. He recently endorsed teaching
Intelligent Design in schools, although he probably has as much
sympathy for this critique of evolution as The New York Times
editorial board does.
McCain will be the strongest performing Republican against
Hillary Clinton in early opinion polls; if anything, he is more
aggressive on the War on Terror than Bush is; he will have a strong
theme of returning to a cleaner Republicanism after the ethical
lapses of the current congressional majority. And all of this will
be wrapped in his appealing thematic mix of patriotism, sacrifice
and duty.
The problem for McCain is that he has such a richly layered
history of apostasy, including on conservative gospel like the Bush
tax cuts. Some of it is of recent vintage, for instance the
enforcement-less immigration bill he is co-sponsoring with Ted
Kennedy. A strong conservative candidate who unites the right can
take him down. But for that candidate, the less conservatives nod
their heads at anything McCain has to say, the better.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
