« The Obligatory, Unnecessary and Completely Meaningless Primary Endorsement | Main | A Pre-Emptive Apology »
January 30, 2008
The GOP Front-Runner?
McCain lost self-identified Republicans by a point in New Hampshire (oddly, he won registered Republicans); he lost self-identified Republicans by 14 points in Michigan; and he tied among self-identified Republicans in South Carolina and Florida. In other words, McCain is close to the presumptive nominee GOP nominee without having won self-identified Republican voters anywhereAmazing. McCain is going to have a hard time uniting the party if he continues winning primaries without a plurality of votes from actual Republicans.
Still, he's not the nominee yet. Sure, he's got the inside shot, but I don't think Romney is done yet.
What I would like to hear less of is what I heard from McCain's campaign manager in Maine. In response to a very fair question from a local radio station about McCain-Feingold and McCain-Kennedy, the campaign official said (I kid you not) "John McCain didn't spend those years as a POW because he disrespects the constitution."
Eventually, he's going to have to explain his policy positions instead of using his life story and wartime courage as a shield. I criticized John Kerry for using those tactics in 2004, and I'm not going to let McCain or his campaign off the hook for the same nonsense now.
Update - Just when I start to get used to the idea of McCain as the nominee, he pulls a dishonest stunt like this. It just serves to remind voters that McCain can be a nasty, dishonest jerk who's unable to defend his record when challenged.
McCain is acting as though he's entitled to Republican votes.
Think again, senator. I'm willing to vote for you if you get the nomination, but you've got to earn it. Class warfare and lies about your record just aren't doing it for me.
Try harder.
Posted by slublog at January 30, 2008 07:34 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.slublog.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3601
Comments
McCain's attitude reminds me of an item I saw in today's Best of the Web from The Wall Street Journal. Every Republican nominee between 1956 and 2004 fell into the "next-in-line" item. Though James Taranto dismisses 1964 as an outlier because Barry Goldwater did not finish 2nd voting in 1960 ("unpledged" did, with George H. Bender the next actual name on the vote total), Goldwater had the 10 delegates that did not vote for Nixon at the convention.
Posted by: steveegg at January 31, 2008 12:37 AM
Bush was a newcomer to national politics, wasn't he? He was pushed as the party's nominee before we even had the first primary, which ticked me off mightily at the time, but he wasn't next in line in that sense.
Posted by: S. Weasel at January 31, 2008 09:17 AM
There was nobody in 2000 that fell into the broader "next in line" meme; the elder Bush, Reagan, and Ford weren't running again, and Pat Buchanan (who was second in the 1996 primary) wasn't running. Therefore, the GOP went for heredity.
Posted by: steveegg at January 31, 2008 11:06 AM