Is McCain Conservative Enough?
In the week running up to Super Tuesday, a number of conservative commentators and pundits started to call for Republicans to not vote for McCain, claiming that he was not the true conservative in the race. Here are two clips to consider:
Then there was Rush Limbaugh. You can find Rush on YouTube. Here is a clip of Bob Dole discussing these criticisms on Fox News:
Every candidate has their detractors, but most critics talk about voting for a different candidate from the same party. Explain the context for these comments- would these comments likely be made before the general election, were McCain the Republican candidate? Would they likely be made before an individual primary? How much of this strategy have to do with Super Tuesday? Finally, if you were McCain’s advisor, how would you have him respond?
I believe that comments like these are predominantly based on strategy. Since these comments are coming before Super Tuesday, it would make sense that they are aimed to enforce republicans’ support of other candidates who will hold stronger conservative values. There is still a hope from many republicans that another candidate will win the Republican nomination for presidency over McCain. Arguments and comments about how conservative McCain really is may add to support for other more traditional Republican candidates be undecided voters. If this were the general election and McCain had won the republican party nomination, I feel that there would be less of a focus on his lack of conservative issues and more of a focus on the fact that he is a republican. People, from my experiences, tend to become closely aligned with a political party and do not want to stray from it. In this way, I feel that it is strategy to try and berate McCain before Super Tuesday to gain support for a more traditional republican candidate.
If I were McCain’s adviser, I would want him to speak about how he holds true to many republican ideals while allowing himself the freedom to cooperate and move forward with certain issues when necessary. This may be something that I would like to hear as a voter. It could be a good strategy to play the open-mindedness card while still holding onto an affiliation with many of a party’s ideals.
A major discussion within the media right now is about the split in the Republican party between the more moderate conservatives and the religious right. The most successful recent Republicans (i.e. Bush) were able to pull off both, Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was a way to appear both moderate and socially conservative. The problem is that Bush didn’t succeed in appeasing either of them. The moderates got their tax cut, but they’re seeing major deficits, and a number of policy and political gaffes, and the religious right hasn’t gotten a defense of marriage amendment or Roe V. Wade struck down. Bush constantly would go back and say that he would do those, but he never did, it never even looked like there was any action even to do any of that. So, both sides of the Republican camp got burned by that.
At the point of recording this, we had three candidates, McCain who appealed to the moderates, Huckabee who appealed to the religious right, and Romney who positioned himself as that Bush like executive who could carry both. Those two sides of the party felt pretty burnt by Bush, so they instead voted on Tuesday for candidates that they felt better represented their personal views as opposed to looking at Romney who was supposed to be the total conservative package.
So we come to this where the Fox News commentators find themselves at an impasse because their support was always thrown to those unambiguously conservative candidates. In the world of punditry, any view which isn’t absolute is weak, and both McCain and Huckabee were troubling on some of their issues, whereas Romney was straight down the line conservative. To turn to Clinton, however, gives them a huge amount of ammo when her administration (if her administration happens, that is) does something they don’t like, and bigger ratings for them, and something to easily rail against. What would they do if they had to rail against a republican in office?
I feel like it would be less likely for these kinds of detractions to be made before the general election if McCain were the Republican candidate – parties tend to present themselves as unified behind their presidential pick because they would prefer that their party win the presidency even if the candidate was not their choice during the primaries.
But it is still primary time, however, so these comments are obviously being made with the intent of influencing the (then) upcoming elections on Super Tuesday. Coulter and the others think if they can convince their party members that McCain is not representative enough of their party than perhaps he will not win enough delegates now to continue on with his bid for the presidency.
Even though these comments were meant to be negative, I feel like they may actually help McCain. Less conservative conservatives and less liberal liberals tend to be more attractive to members of opposing parties or undecided voters than hardcore Republicans or Democrats. Much of America identifies themselves as “moderates” as far as their political affiliation, so a liberal conservative might be someone these voters would be willing to vote for.
If I were McCain’s advisor, I would tell him to respond by saying that while he appreciates that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, it saddens him that his own party members feel the need to attack him now. He should go on to say that what the Republicans need now in light of all arguments and disappointment with the Bush staff is party unity, not discord. If the Republicans plan to hold onto the office of the presidency they have to work together to make that happen.
Ultimately, I think only extremely active Republican conservatives will be swayed by Coulter’s and the others comments. McCain certainly ended up doing well enough on Super Tuesday, so the comments didn’t do much to hurt his campaign. With Romney out of the race now, McCain is one step closer to becoming the liberal conservative presidential candidate.
To ensure that he gets on the republican ticket, McCain is going to have to vamp up the support for conservative, right wing politics. However, I think he has already clearly defined himself as a moderate candidate, which I believe in the long run will win him votes. If he can walk the walk long enough to get on the ticket, the party will most definitely unify (although not necessarily because they agree with his politics, but because they are so incredibly opposed to the democratic platform). For this reason, these discussions will only take places before the primaries. I’m not quite sure why the Republican Party isn’t supporting a more moderate candidate. The way I see it, a highly conservative candidate is almost guaranteed to push the more liberal conservatives to the Democrats’ side. If the party unites behind McCain, they will save their more moderate supporters (and there’s no risk of losing the hardcore republicans to the democrats – he just needs to make sure that they go out and vote on Election Day). This is why I believe this was not the best strategy prior to Super Tuesday. I think that after this presidency people see that Republican Party as flawed and the party as a whole needs to reassure the public that their next candidate will be more reliable.
McCain is in a very tough situation because he needs to get on the republican ticket without losing his moderate image or appearing like he has the tendency to flipflop (which he has been plagued with in the past). Because he’s really fighting for those liberal conservative votes, I would advise him to stay in the grey area and to avoid making any radical statements towards either party. He needs to cross his fingers and hope the other guys make a mistake…
The problem with major republicans cutting down McCain is that they are not offering a better solution. Now with the race down to McCain/Huckabee they seem to have shot themselves in the foot. While yes, perhaps McCain is not as conservative as many Republicans would like, we have seen over and over again, especially in the Senate, that a more moderate approach garners more support. I would agree with many of the comments already made; Americans are looking for a moderate to support. An extreme conservative or liberal won’t win this race. In fact, if McCain tried to promote himself as incredibly conservative, he would just anger more people and make himself look like a flip-flopper. The two main issues of the next four years will focus on foreign policy and the economy. Other domestic social concerns that typically fall under conservative ideals just are not on the front burner. McCain recognizes this and that’s why he does not need to promote himself as a “true conservative.” McCain will win the nomination anyway by default because Republicans don’t see Huckabee as electable and so if they don’t want Obama or Clinton in the White House, they will vote for McCain out of pure survival. He doesn’t need to change anything he is doing for that result.
I do not think these comments would be present if McCain was the official Republican candidate. There might be some rumblings of it, but nothing to this extent. Uniting any individual party is not really the first goal during any primaries. That is more important when the election hits the national scale with two designated candidates.
That being said, I think Super Tuesday had a lot to do with the influx of this type of talk. Super Tuesday is where a candidate like Huckabee or Romney has the best chance of rivaling McCain’s growing popularity. For that reason, it is logical for those within the Republican party that oppose him to try their hardest to influence the voters before the Super Tuesday votes are cast. Wins on Super Tuesday give victorious candidates huge amounts of momentum, and if that momentum is large enough, it can be nearly impossible to interrupt.
That being said, as an adviser for McCain I would not advise him to change any of his policies. If he believes in the issues that he voted on, he should stick with them and explain to the American people, and more importantly at this moment to the Republican party, why he voted the way he did. Senate bills are hardly ever single issues, so a vote against one particular thing might have really been casted because there was a tag-on resolution that was unfavorable to that Senator. It’s hard to base all of this criticism solely on the votes. Similarly, I think I would advise him to stick with his current strategy because obviously it is doing something. He is winning these primaries, which is an important indicator that the American people might not be quite as right-wing Republican as those individuals criticizing him.
Ann Coulter’s comments on Hannity and Colmes were strategically placed before super Tuesday to deter voters from siding with John McCain. There is no way, as evident by her comment of being, “touched when Hillary cried,” there is no way such a conservative Republican would ever vote for a Democratic candidate With her comments, Coulter was stirring up hype and publicity for other Republican’s on the primary ballot.
Coulter’s appearance on the show was definitely a strategic move before Super Tuesday, generating a message that would reach the widest audience of actual voters. It would have been completely inappropriate and would never have occurred before the actual general election. I think even if Coulter doesn’t support McCain she would never have publicly distanced herself from the Republican Party in such a public way.
McCain’s advisors would need to debunk the credibility of her accusations that he has lied in his campaigns and that he is not truly the “conservative” candidate. I think that billing himself as the “true conservative” is one of the main weaknesses of his campaign in general. If I were one of McCain’s advisors I would align him with one of the more conservative candidates, like Huckabee in order to reach the conservative Christian voters.
My post, while being late, offers an alternate view of these accusations against McCain because he has the Republican ticket now. Therefore, all of this speculation regarding whether or not he is conservative enough to earn said ticket is confirmed; American Republicans evidently support his moderation enough to choose him as their presidential candidate. What does this say about Republicans? They chose a notoriously moderate candidate over two significantly more conservative. Evidently, the Republican party must consist of a majority of more moderate-leaning members to support McCain despite such blatant allegations. This could create discord in the party - if a majority support a moderate candidate faces the opposition of an angry ultra-conservative group that opposes McCain as the presidential nominee, like Ann Coulter, then the party may lose a significant amount of votes to a more conservative democratic or independent candidate, especially if the loser of the Obama-Hillary race opts to run under an independent ticket.
Now, McCain may have to play a more conservative role because he represents the Republican party and because he will face a strong democratic candidate that has received arguably more press than he and that probably has a more ardent following than he, considering the intensity of the democratic primary thus far in 2008. If I were his advisor at this point, I would encourage him to begin taking visible strides toward conservatism to achieve two goals: gain/retain the support of true Republicans and also keep himself positively in the media. It will be easy for him to lay low or drift off from the media since Obama and Hillary are providing such a compelling contest for the American people to watch and speculate on, and McCain may lose momentum if he cannot remain in the public eye.