A Candidate Without A War
MichaelW on Feb 07 2008 at 9:20 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Foreign affairs, MichaelW's Page, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Is the Iraq War hurting John McCain’s candidacy? By “hurting” I’m referring to his struggle to be the true conservative candidate who unites the party. Despite his clear lead in the primary race, McCain has not been able to capture the Christian right (who predominantly go for Huckabee), nor has he been able to win many races without the help of independent voters (strict conservatives breaking mostly for Romney). Indeed, Republicans don’t even seem terribly motivated this election season, as nearly double the number of Democratic voters went to the polls on Super Tuesday compared to Republicans (14.7 million vs. just 8.9 million). Meanwhile, the conservative and libertarian intelligensia (as well as yours truly) have been sniping at McCain from the right, including right-wing diva Ann Coulter who declared that she’ll vote for Hillary (yes, Hillary!) over John McCain. So, what’s going on here when even the hated Hillary Clinton can’t seem to force a consensus amongst the Republican Party to vote for the Maverick?
Amidst the internecine fighting on the right over the McCain “inevitability” train, something has been forgotten: there’s a discernible, even palpable, glimmer of hope on the Iraqi horizon. If Republican voters were as concerned about the Iraq War now as they were in 2004, then McCain would be winning hands down at this point. Since the only positive reason anyone can put forth to vote for McCain is his stance on the war in Iraq [Ed. — OK, there’s this too], it stands to reason that any diminution in the war’s importance as an election issue correlates to a decrease in support for McCain’s candidacy.
In other words, as Republican voters become less concerned about how the war will turn out, they place more importance on other issues — e.g. the economy, abortion, earmarks, values, etc. Because McCain is not perceived as being reliably conservative on all these other issues, he faces greater scrutiny from opinion-makers seeking to advance the small-government, conservative (or libertarian) agenda, and Republicans in general feel free to focus on issues that are closer to home for them personally. Much like Peg suggested as the reason for Rudy’s campaign fizzling out, McCain’s lackluster support amongst the Party base seems to be greatly affected by the decreased urgency and anxiety of the Iraq War, and worries about terrorism in general.
Taking this hypothesis to its logical conclusion, is it possible that Bush’s successes with respect to the GWOT, including the relative post-surge calm in Iraq, will be the undoing of a Republican presidency? Are we on the verge of the Republican Party faithful, who are not only “not in love” with McCain, but also threatening not to “fall in line”, blaming Bush for the loss of the White House? These are strange political times indeed.
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For someone who has “lackluster support amongst the Party base,” he certainly is getting the votes and delegates.
Let’s not conflate the right/conservative/libertarian pundocracy with the Party base.
Looking at the numbers, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/delegate_counts.html McCain has done far better then any other candidate in states with closed primaries.
85% of the delegates from states with Closed Primaries is nothing to sneeze at.
He may have one 85% of the delegates in those primaries, but he isn’t winning anything close to 85% of the vote. Take Florida, for example:
In California, McCain only garnered 42% of the votes (to Romney’s 34%), and in New York, McCain at least took a majority of the votes (51% to Romney’s 28%) but he did that on the strength of the state’s more liberal Republican voters — see, e.g. the exit polling where more than half those polled agreed that abortion should mostly or always legal, a whopping 60% of whom gave their vote to John McCain.
I think the more typical case for McCain is Missouri, where he won 58 delegates in the state’s winner-take-all primary, but he only captured 33% of the vote (Huckabee: 32%; Romney:29%). The exit polling there shows that less than a quarter of respondents think abortion should be legal (around 50% of whom voted for McCain), while over 75% think it should mostly (43%) or always (32%) be illegal, less than 30% of whom voted for McCain.
Heck, Keith, even McCain’s own mother doesn’t think that John has the support of the Republican base: