Hell Freezes Over: McCain Now GOP Savior

Back in January and February, the big question on the GOP side was whether base conservatives would rally to John McCain's banner after he secured the nomination.

We still have quite a few folks out there suffering from McCain Derangement Syndrome, but I just have to get a chuckle out of today's piece over at the Politico, "GOP Turns to McCain to Reinvent Party":

In a delicious piece of irony, many dispirited Republicans, devastated by Tuesday’s special election loss in Mississippi, now believe their savior to be John McCain — a not-so-constant conservative many of them also have long intensely disliked.

The logic: McCain, the vaunted maverick, can move the party away from President Bush and reinvent a Republican brand that, at the moment, is in tatters.

“The public is prepared to believe that McCain is a different kind of Republican,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Donatelli, McCain’s point man at the committee. “This is not some political idea that was cooked up.”

But for all the talk and expectation that McCain will run from Bush like a scalded dog, the reality is different; so far, he hasn’t drawn many stark contrasts at all. Since winning the nomination, his policy proposals and high-profile speeches have included more conventional conservative dogma than nonconformist deviation.

To be sure, there are areas where McCain has walled himself off from the White House. A more aggressive response to global warming is one, and McCain spent two days in the environmentally conscious Pacific Northwest pressing the topic this week.
But on such central issues as the economy, health care, the judiciary and national security, McCain hasn’t wavered far from the right’s prized principles: tax cuts and less spending, market solutions and tax incentives, judges who will strictly interpret the law, and a stay-the-course approach on Iraq.

I noticed many times earlier this year - when Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, and all the big right wing bloggers were hammering McCain -that the very qualites for which the Arizona Senator was being attacked (bipartisan compromise, especially) would be the issues that made him the most attractive to independents and moderates in an election expected to be all about "change."

McCain's going to be fine this fall. All the lefties think they've got a shoo-in of an election this year, but the Maverick's holding his own so far, and once Obama finally wraps things up, the conservative 527s are going to lay into him like Cuban pinata.

See also, "Obama, McCain Highly Competitive for Independent Vote."