The Honor of John McCain

Roger Cohen, over at the New York Times, thinks John McCain's too conservative, and wouldn't support him for the presidency! Here's the introduction:

Nobody’s been right all the time on Iraq, but Senator John McCain has been less wrong than most. He knew a bungled war when he saw one and pressed early for increased force levels. He backed the injection last year of some 30,000 troops, a surge that has produced results.

Modest results, yes, and violence has blipped upward again this month, and, yes, Iraqi political progress is slow. But progress is always slow when a population terrorized over decades is freed. Violent attacks were down 60 percent in December from their 2007 high and refugees have begun to go home.

A trickle homeward, yes, a speck in the ocean of 2.2 million Iraqis forced into exile, but tens of thousands of people don’t return unless they see hope. That’s why more than 4 million Afghans have gone home since the Taliban’s fall.

Yes, I know, the myriad Iraqi dead won’t return.

McCain was politically dead six months ago, his campaign undone by his backing of President Bush’s Iraq policy. His remarkable resurgence, which has put him in the lead among Republican candidates, according to recent polls, is one measure of the Iraq shift.

That shift has unsettled the political ground. With Iraq looking less hopeless, McCain has scored points for being consistent and forthright on the war — a quality shared only by Barack Obama (in his opposition to it) among leading candidates.

At the same time, an economy getting a subprime pummeling has nudged Iraq from the center of Americans’ concerns. The victory of McCain’s rival Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary came in a state craving quick fixes for 7.4 percent unemployment. McCain didn’t offer that.

So, three states have chosen distinct Republican candidates, with a social conservative, Mike Huckabee, triumphing in Iowa; McCain taking New Hampshire with independent support; and Romney using his C.E.O. image to win Michigan. Bush’s party is split: God, heroic nation and Wall Street are out of sync.

It’s been widely assumed that the Democratic Party’s shoot-itself-in-the-foot capacity, evident in 2004, would have to hit overdrive to wrest defeat from victory this year. These Republican splits comfort the notion of inevitable Democratic triumph.

But, as Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute noted, “There’s no doubt that the one Republican candidate that leaves most Democrats quaking is McCain. They’re uneasy about the breadth of his appeal.”

Read the whole thing.

Not too many folks think the Arizona Senator's too conservative (see the point at Cohen's conclusion). There's no doubt, though, that McCain's honor is unimpeachable; and I don't think there's another candidate in the race - on either side of the aisle - who's more prepared to be chief executive.

The man's stubborn, and it showed in his inflexible message in this week's Michigan campaigning. But we could use more straight talk in the country, on economic issues and beyond, and such leadership starts at the top.

The Democrats know it, and so do McCain's GOP rivals. It's no surprise that a McCain-swiftboating campaign's already begun down South. The stakes are high, and there's no room for pussy-footing around, but McCain's rapid reaction team is already on the job.

On to South Carolina!

Will the GOP Race Go to the Convention?

The dramatic GOP presidential race - which has so far failed to produce a clear frontrunner - has raised a good deal of speculation that we might see a brokered convention in 2008.

Why?

The party is divided among its three wings: the anti-taxers, the evangelicals, and the foreign policy hawks. No single candidate has so far been able to unify these disparate factions.

Adam Nagourny, over at today's New York Times, argues that Republicans have failed to restore the voting coalition that propelled Ronald Reagan's two terms in Washington. Mitt Romney's win in Michigan yesterday dramatically illustrates the point:

On the most tangible level, the vote on Tuesday was proof from the ballot box of what polls have shown: this is a party that is adrift, deeply divided and uninspired when it comes to its presidential candidates and unsure of how to counter an energized Democratic Party.

Even in victory, Mr. Romney stood as evidence of the trouble the party finds itself in. He won, but only after a major effort in a state he once expected to win in a walk. That was before he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, two other states where he had campaigned all out.

More than any candidate in the Republican field, Mr. Romney has made a conscious effort to reassemble the coalition of economic and social conservatives that came together with Ronald Reagan and that President Bush kept remarkably unified in his two campaigns and through much of his White House tenure.

Mr. Romney’s uneven performance has highlighted the strains in that coalition, and a central question about his candidacy is whether he will be able to rally its fractured components to his side. It was no coincidence that he invoked Reagan more than once in his victory speech on Tuesday, though it was perhaps equally telling that he also invoked the first President Bush, who like Mr. Romney struggled to convince Republicans that he was Reagan’s rightful heir.

It's still too early to tell whether Romney's the man to unite the fragments of the Republican Party coalition. A second win for either Mike Huckabee or John McCain in Saturday's South Carolina primary might clarify the race a bit, but it's probably going to be February 5 - and the 22 contests showcasing then - when we'll know whether we're headed for a backroom showdown in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Ruth Marcus at today's Washington Post addresses the prospects of a brokered convention this year for both parties. While Marcus mostly discusses the dynamics on the Democratic side - where there is greater proportional representation in delegate selection, and the superdelegates might decide the race before summer - the chances for a real decision-making convention on the Republican side look even greater.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Following the 1968 election, when Hubert Humphrey secured the Democratic nomination without entering the primaries, the McGovern-Fraser Commission created the modern presidential primary process, which required candidates to win a majority of convention delegates in state caucuses and primaries.

The Democrats have not chosen a nominee at the convention since then (although the GOP selected Gerald Ford over Ronald Reagan in 1976 on the first ballot, the last time in the post-1968 era that a nominee of either party was selected after the primaries).

Jay Cost, over at Real Clear Politics, provides an analysis of the delegate selection process for this year's Republican National Convention. It's not too early to begin political horse trading.

Neoconservatism: The Right Side of History

Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons is out this week.

I'm on my way in a couple of minutes to pick up a copy, but I thought I'd share Peter Wehner's review of the book over at the New York Post.

Unlike Timothy Noah's review at the New York Times, Wehner defends the neoconservative record (and provides a counterbalance to what he sees is Heilbrunn's "animus"):

The author is forced to acknowledge that neoconservatives were right about a few things - like understanding early on that the Soviet Union and jihadism were genuine causes for concern. But, he quickly adds, even the proverbial stopped watch is right twice a day.

This is silliness. To have been right before it was fashionable about the nature and threat of Soviet Communism and militant Islam are deeply impressive achievements. Moreover, neoconservatism has correctly critiqued and offered remedies for many domestic ills. Neoconservatism is an imperfect movement comprised of people of sometimes different and competing views, but it has certainly enriched and deepened our public life.

Heilbrunn believes the Iraq war will return neoconservatives to exile since they were the primary advocates for the war, which to him has been a colossal failure. The bad news for Heilbrunn's book (and the good news for America and Iraq) is that 2007 was a year of remarkable improvement in Iraq, thanks to the counterinsurgency strategy. We have seen often staggering progress, on many key fronts.

Heilbrunn can also be sloppy. He writes that in the aftermath of the failure to find WMDs, President Bush “suddenly veered to embracing the democracy crusade" in his second inaugural (delivered in January 2005). Yet Heilbrunn cites President Bush's November 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, in which Bush said, “Iraqi democracy will succeed and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran, that freedom can be the future of every nation." The truth is that President Bush promoted the Freedom Agenda before the Iraq war began.

Heilbrunn also asserts that neoconservatives like William Kristol, in an effort to deflect criticism for their role in the Iraq war, turned on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on precisely Dec. 14, 2004, in a Washington Post op-ed. Except that Kristol and Robert Kagan were critical of Rumsfeld and his strategy as early as the summer of 2003, writing “[i]t is painfully obvious that there are too few American troops operating in Iraq." The success of the surge is vindication for Kristol and Kagan. They, like Sen. John McCain, were right in their concerns - and Iraq would be in far better shape today had we heeded their early counsel.

Woo hoo, go McCain!

Also, check out today's essay from the New York Times' public editor, who defends the paper's decision to hire Kristol as a columnist.

Kristol pointed out Monday that the Democrats - in their predictions on the war - were wrong throughout 2007.

McCain Holds Edge in South Carolina

John McCain holds a lead in South Carolina, two new public opinion surveys out this week show.

Zogby finds McCain leading 29 to 23 percent over Mike Huckabee (via Memeorandum):

New York – Arizona Sen. John McCain is the leader in the South Carolina Republican primary race with 29% support, a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby tracking poll shows. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is a strong second with 23%, and Mitt Romney is a distant third with 13%. The Republican primary election is Saturday. Democrats hold their primary in South Carolina a week later on Jan. 26.

Romney, however, is coming off a handy victory in Tuesday’s Michigan primary, defeating McCain, who had hoped to repeat his 2000 win in that state and continue the momentum generated from his New Hampshire victory.

The interviews of South Carolina likely Republican primary voters included in this report were completed before the Michigan GOP results were in. The survey including 813 interviews with likely Republican primary voters conducted Jan. 13-15, 2007. It carries a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percentage points. The daily tracking poll will continue up until the election.

The survey shows Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson at 12%, just a point behind Romney. Only 5% said they liked former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, while 10% said they were still undecided.

Additionally, Ramussen on Monday had McCain up 9 percentage points over Huckabee:

Over the past several days, the only real movement in South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary has been a four-point gain for Fred Thompson and a five-point decline for Mike Huckabee.

The big winner from that trade-off is John McCain.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows McCain at 28%, Huckabee at 19%, Mitt Romney at 17%, and Fred Thompson at 16%. Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul are tied with 5% support. Giuliani is betting his entire campaign on a strong showing in Florida, where he is now tied for the lead with three others.

The current results show McCain getting some breathing room in South Carolina. The previous South Carolina poll, conducted the night after McCain’s victory in New Hampshire, had McCain at 27% and Huckabee at 24%. Before the New Hampshire vote, Huckabee was leading McCain by seven points. McCain and Huckabee are pulling away from the field nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Thompson has been directly challenging Huckabee on the campaign trail and hoping to gain some traction that will keep his campaign afloat. Earlier this year, Thompson had hoped to exploit dissatisfaction with the rest of the field and emerge as the choice for conservatives. When his campaign failed to take off, Huckabee saw the same opening and capitalized on it in a way Thompson did not. As recently as November, Thompson was tied for the lead in South Carolina.

The race remains very fluid with 8% of voters undecided and 11% saying there’s a good chance they could change their mind.

The Zogby results are especially interesting in showing McCain gaining Republican across the state (and not only the coastal regions where he ran strongly in 2000).

Note that both surveys were conducted before Romney's Michigan win, who's likely to get a bump this week - although he'd need a lot of upward movement to dislodge either McCain or Huckabee.

Big, Bruising Week Ahead for GOP in South Carolina

The Michigan primary results have left the GOP still scrambling to settle on a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

With the first Southern primary scheduled on Saturday, all eyes are turning to the Palmetto State for some relief from the suspense. The New York Times has an analysis:

Fresh from a commanding primary victory in Michigan, Mitt Romney’s campaign rolled into South Carolina Wednesday morning, declaring he was committed to fighting hard in the state’s crowded Republican contest.

There had been some question about whether Mr. Romney would even compete here — a matter his advisers debated over the last few days — given how influential evangelicals are in the state’s Republican’s primary and the suspicions many harbor about Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith. Aides for Mr. Romney, who won Michigan on Tuesday night with nearly 40 percent of the vote, said he was now committed to “playing hard” in the Palmetto State.

The rest of the Republican field meanwhile had its sights on South Carolina already. On Wednesday, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who leads in the polls there, immediately began a sprint to the vote on Saturday, and picked up a key endorsement along the way. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has a reputation as a voice for fiscal discipline, announced his endorsement of Mr. McCain in Greenville on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Coburn called Mr. McCain a man “whose rudder is deep, whose principles are sound, and who has been tested, time and time again,” adding, “Our children are worth John McCain.”

Mr. McCain, for his part, pledged to crack down on pork barrel spending and to keep up a strong military, and he talked about his opposition to abortion, a big issue in South Carolina. “I’m proud of my pro-life record of 24 years in the United States Congress,” he said.

From there, Mr. McCain is expected to travel to Spartanburg and Lake Wylie. Mr. McCain is hoping to appeal to the many veterans in South Carolina and to military families with relatives serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also looking to sharpen his talk about the economy.

The campaign is dispatching Senator Joseph Lieberman to campaign for Mr. McCain in Florida, where Rudolph W. Giuliani has camped out to try to lock down support while the rest of the field has been competing in Michigan and South Carolina.

After losing on Tuesday night, Mike Huckabee and Mr. McCain each need a victory in South Carolina to keep their momentum from flagging. Mr. Romney finished with 38.9 percent of the vote, compared with 29.7 percent for Mr. McCain and 16.1 percent for Mr. Huckabee. Ron Paul, the antiwar congressman from Texas, came in fourth with 6.3 percent of the vote.

The outcome on Tuesday means three different Republican candidates have won each of the first three major contests. The race also moves to Nevada this weekend with no clear front-runner and two credible candidates, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, yet to seriously contest a state.

Thompson supporters this morning are bearing the ignominy of their candidate losing to Ron Paul in Michigan.

Meanwhile, Giuliani's completely off the radar, and doubts are swirling that he can pull anything off in Florida:

Florida is crucial to his strategy, and a win in the Jan. 29 primary would give Giuliani momentum going into the Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5. His campaign recently unveiled several new ads here and has moved dozens of staffers and volunteers into the state to help with absentee balloting.

South Carolina's pretty much coming down to Huckabee and McCain. The state's obviously key for both candidates, as the momentum from their respective wins in Iowa and New Hampshire fades.

Polling data shows McCain edging the former Arkansas governer by a couple points.

McCain's flirted with permanent frontrunner status going into Michigan, and some sectors of the GOP coalition are trying stem the Arizona Sentor's advance. In South Carolina a vicious attack advertisement has surfaced hammering McCain's integrity during his internment as a POW in Vietnam (see here and here).

Some analysts are dissecting the Michigan results for evidence of a McCain collapse, as well as the potential for the lower-tiered candidates to pull together and "take McCain out."

That might be wishful thinking, according to Fred Barnes:

...McCain's loss in Michigan--a stage on which he trounced George W. Bush in 2000--is hardly fatal. Nor does victory make Romney the frontrunner. Not that he'd want to be so dubbed. Winning improves a candidate's poll numbers, but actual voters don't appear to be affected. They don't swoon. Momentum? Winning hasn't generated much of that in 2008.

This means Romney shouldn't expect a serious bump in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday. In fact, he doesn't. Instead, Romney intends to concentrate on winning the Florida primary10 days later on January 29. However, if he doesn't finish in the top three in South Carolina--that's a distinct possibility--the press will surely gig him for it.

In case you hadn't noticed, the media loathes Romney and likes McCain. Reporters think Romney is a stiff and a phony. They give McCain credit for straight talk, though not as much credit as they gave him in 2000.

Anyway, this allows McCain to call reporters "jerks" and other playful names. They know he's joking. On Fox News yesterday, McCain said he needs not only "Republican, Democratic, libertarian, vegetarian" votes, but also "Trotskyites. I know there's still Trotskyites around because I travel with the media on the bus."

If Romney had said that, the press would have pilloried him.

I'll have more analysis this afternoon. See Memeorandum in the meanwhile.

The Democrats and Martin Luther King

John McWhorter's got an analysis of Hillary Clinton's roiling of the racial waters with her dismissal of Martin Luther King's significance, at the Wall Street Journal.

Clinton commented that in fact President Lyndon Baines Johnson bears primary responsibility for the rights revolution of the 1960s, for his leadership in shepherding Civil Rights legislation through the Congress. By implication, a strong leader in the White House - assumably Clinton - is preferable to a grassroots activist - Barack Obama.

What's the problem? Here's McWhorter:

Why do people like op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn and countless black bloggers hear a grievous insult in her simple observation? The outcry is so disproportionate to the stimulus that one can barely help suspecting something outright irregular.

I think of a study published last year in the Journal of Black Psychology. It documented that the extent to which black Americans perceive their lives to be affected by racism correlates with symptoms of general paranoia disconnected from racial issues.

To be able to hold in one's mind the notion that Mrs. Clinton would attack King suggests a bone-deep hypersensitivity that overrides sequential reasoning. "We have to be very, very careful how we speak about that era," Rep. Clyburn explains.

But why so very, very careful? What effect does it have on anyone's life if that era is occasionally discussed in less than perfectly genuflective phraseology? Is the Klan waiting behind a hill? Will a black man working at an insurance company in Cleveland have a breakdown because someone didn't give King precisely enough credit in a quick statement?

There is a willful frailty, a lack of self-confidence, in this kind of thinking. It suggests someone almost searching for things to claim injury about, donning the mantle of the noble victim in order to assuage a bruised ego.

Of course, there is a less depressing interpretation of the current uproar: Mrs. Clinton's critics are playing political hardball. You know, let's get blacks to vote for Mr. Obama by playing the race card to pretend Mrs. Clinton is dumping on King. John Edwards, for example, is obviously not mouthing agreement with these people out of insecurity about his blackness.

Well, politics is rarely pretty, but in this case the price is too high. For one, misinterpretation of statements in this vein makes black people look disinclined to process detail and context -- in other words, dim. It only gives that much more fodder to views on black intelligence like those uttered by James Watson.

Think, for example, how utterly unreal the notion is that Bill Clinton, our "first black president," would call Mr. Obama's whole candidacy a "fairytale" rather than referring, specifically, to perceptions of his record on the Iraq war. It's as if the outraged crowd is only capable of processing seven words at a time.

In an election that is supposed to focus on larger issues such as America's role in a violent world, playing the race card in this fashion distracts us from real problems. When most new AIDS cases are black and the murder rate among young black males is sky high, what kind of black representative throws tantrums over extremely unlikely implications of something someone said?

In the name of speaking for Mr. Obama, the people throwing these tantrums are presenting a parochial, cynical face, rather than the thoughtful, cosmopolitan one that the candidate himself is trying to show.

Overall, Mr. Obama has not run a "black" campaign. The past few days suggest that if he did, many would consider it a favor to him to churn up 10 more months of dustups over phrases carefully lifted out of context and held up as evidence of racism. Hopefully Mr. Obama is too smart, and too much a man of the world, to succumb to this twisted rendition of black identity.

Obama's so far above such pedestrian race politics. Still, he'd better get ready for more attacks ahead. The Clintons will use their race authenticity to provide cover for subtely insidious race-based attacks on Obama's "blackness," credibility, and integrity.

The buzz is that the Democrats are pulling back from the racial brink, but when push comes to shove things could still get nasty.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Romney Wins Michigan Primary!

Mitt Romney secured his first primary victory in 2008's topsy-turvy race for the GOP nomination. The New York Times reports:

Mitt Romney, seizing on his personal ties to a state where his father made his family’s political fortune, captured a must-win victory in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, claiming the first major trophy for his ailing campaign and throwing the wide-open Republican field into further disarray.

Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, led Senator John McCain by 9 percentage points. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Iowa caucus, conceded after polling at 17 percent of the vote.

In the Democratic race with 14 percent of precincts reporting, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won by a commanding margin in a field that did not include her closest competitors, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards. However, about a third of voters in the Democratic primary opted to allow the party to choose uncommitted delegates to the national convention, effectively a vote against Ms. Clinton.

“It’s a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism,” Mr. Romney told The Associated Press. “The people of Michigan said they believe in someone who is going to fight for them.”

Mr. Romney’s victory guarantees a headache for political watchdogs as the competitive Republican field heads to South Carolina for its Saturday primary. Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee have each won a major primary or caucus, leaving the party without a clear frontrunner.

Another top Republican, former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, is putting most of his immediate efforts into Florida, which will hold its primary on Jan. 29.

Mr. McCain, of Arizona, conceded the Michigan race, but he told supporters in South Carolina that he would not be deterred in his campaign.

“Starting tomorrow, we’re going to win South Carolina, and we’re going to go on and win the nomination," Mr. McCain said.

Mr. Huckabee has also flown to South Carolina, a state he is looking to win with support from his evangelical base.

Mr. Romney, who was born and raised in Michigan, used his final campaign appearances to remind voters of his personal ties to the state, where his father served three terms as governor. He promised, if elected president, to “not rest” until the state’s battered economic fortunes have been restored.

The message appeared to resonate with Republican voters, more than half of whom said in exit polls that their vote was driven by overwhelming economic concerns. A majority of those polled after they voted said a candidate’s position on the economy was more important than the war in Iraq, illegal immigration or terrorism. The exit poll was conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and the Associated Press.

Early reports of sluggish voter turnout may also have helped Mr. Romney’s cause. Freezing temperatures, an early morning snowfall, and a dearth of Democratic contenders on the ballot may have affected turnout, according to a state official.

It appeared from early returns that much of Mr. Romney’s support came from the three-county Detroit metropolitan area, home of many well-off Republicans and where the Romney name is better known from his father, George, being governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.

Surveys of Michigan voters leaving the polls on Tuesday also showed that Mr. Romney did well among those who decided in the last day or two, validating his strategy of saturating the state with advertising and personal appearances over the last five days. Mr. Romney aired almost twice as many television ads as his two leading opponents combined.

In exit polls, more than half of Republican voters in Michigan said their vote was driven by overwhelming economic concerns. A majority of those polled after they voted said a candidate’s position on the economy was more important than the war in Iraq, illegal immigration or terrorism. The exit poll was conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and the Associated Press.

While the voters said a candidate’s position on the issues was more important than a candidate’s personal qualities, more than 4 in 10 voters said it was more important to them that a candidate share their values than be able to win in November against a Democrat or have the right experience.

About a quarter of the voters said it mattered a great deal to them that a candidate shared their religious beliefs.

On the issues of abortion, about 10 percent of Republican voters said it should be legal in all cases, 25 percent said abortion should be legal in most cases, about 35 percent said it should be illegal in most cases and about 25 percent said abortion should be illegal in all cases.

A plurality of voters said immigrants should be deported to the country they came from rather than be allowed to stay as temporary workers or offered a chance to apply for citizenship.

A majority of voters approve of the war in Iraq. When asked to describe their feelings about the Bush administration, they were closely divided.

Michigan’s primary occurred much earlier than usual this year, and many residents interviewed over the past few days said they were not even aware there was an election on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton is expected to lead the pack on the Democratic side because she was the only major candidate whose name is on the ballot. Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards withdrew their names at the request of the national Democratic Party, which stripped Michigan of its delegates because the early date of its primary violated party rules.

But state party leaders said they believed the Michigan delegate slates would be seated.

The race here in Michigan forced the Republican candidates to focus chiefly on the dismal economy of the state, where thousands of manufacturing jobs have evaporated over the last several years and where the unemployment rate, 7.4 percent, is the highest in the nation.

Mr. McCain may have hurt himself here when he declared in a debate in South Carolina last week that because of the restructuring of the global automobile industry many of those jobs would never be restored in Michigan.

As I noted in the update to my previous post, Romney's optimistic message of economic revitalization appealed to Michigan voters who have been battered by economic transformation and the housing collapse (thanks to Elaine, over at Elaine's Place, for providing me with inside information on Michigan's housing market).

There's a lesson of caution for John McCain's straight-talk campaign: He's right that most jobs lost to global economic competition and market restructuring won't be coming back to the Great Lakes region. But his message was easily attacked by Romney as "economic pessimism." McCain's realism plays better in foreign policy than in economic affairs, where people need a voice of hope to lift their spirits.

I'll be looking at the polling data and political analyses over the next couple of days, but even without checking Memeorandum, I predict that the Daily Kos netroots will take credit for an independent crossover impact in blunting the McCain momentum (which early voter turnout data shows to be false).

Now, while I think McCain's right to focus on the next stop in South Carolina, the bigger impact of the Michigan results is to topple Mike Huckabee from his top-tier perch secured by his win in Iowa.

Romney - with his Michigan take - will have a big push heading into South Carolina. A Huckabee win in the Palmetto state is the former Arkansas governor's do-or-die sitiuation. Fred Thompson's down but not out, and he too will have to secure a victory or a strong second place showing in the first Southern primary to have any hope of being competitive heading into February 5.

John McCain, fresh off his New Hampshire comeback, has the wind of national public opinion at his back - and note that national polls show way more diversity of opinion than the views coming out of the Wolverine State, so it remains to be seen how substantial a bounce Romney gets heading into the later contests.

What's not in doubt is this is the most exciting GOP nomination process in decades!

The "Super Tuesday" round of nominating contests will truly be a crowning event if one of the GOP candidates taps some compelling theme to carry him to victory in a plurality of states, especially the big states like California and New York.

Don't forget, Florida votes before then. Maybe Florida will indeed provide Rudy Giuliani with the bounce that he needs to avoid an utter collapse, although things aren't looking good.

Photo: New York Times

McCain in Michigan: Is There a Push-Back?

Yesterday's Washington Post noted a substantial push-back by conservatives against GOP frontrunner John McCain.

It remains to be seen how right-wing opposition to McCain influences the race. But according to Jonathan Martin over at The Politico, the conservative fire is more heat than light, and McCain's facing little opposition within the overall Republican coalition, in Michigan at least:

His opponents aren’t going after him. There isn’t a single third-party group hammering him in broadcast TV or radio ads. Even anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, a longtime adversary, is taking it easy on John McCain this time around.

In short, McCain is getting a free pass, and it’s beginning to show. In campaign events across western Michigan, voters are once again being reminded of the qualities of character that have made him an admired figure on the national political scene, without the distraction of ads designed to muddy that image.

Asked why she likes McCain, Tina Wolfis of Kalamazoo pointed to “his honesty, his straight-forwardness.”

Other voters, Republicans all, cited similar qualities. Pressed about issues, some mentioned federal spending or the war.

“He puts country ahead of politics,” added David Hassenger, a Republican official in St. Joseph County, just south of Kalamazoo. “[Republicans] deserved to have their asses kicked in the last election. ... We’ve forgotten what we were supposed to be doing there.”

Even those who mentioned immigration — or “the illegal aliens,” as Wolfis put it — seemed unaware that McCain was an outspoken Republican advocate for providing illegal immigrants with a pathway to citizenship last spring.

Sharon Hoogendoorn, who works at Hope College in Holland, Mich., where McCain also had a town hall meeting Monday, said she was a border hawk and felt strongly about the issue. Asked how that squared with McCain’s stance on immigration, Hoogendoorn, who is leaning toward the Arizona senator, said, “I think that’s how he feels — we didn’t bridge that issue today. But I’m pretty sure that’s how he feels, as well.”

As McCain campaigns through western Michigan ahead of tomorrow’s primary, it’s abundantly clear that he’s running a race in stark contrast to the 2000 election, when the conservative establishment united against the maverick senator and went after him in full force after his New Hampshire victory.

McCain’s support appears less tied to any one particular issue than to his well-cultivated, straight-talking persona — one that is unsullied this year as opponents such as Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson express their own admiration or friendship for McCain rather than a desire to defeat him. And the lack of negative messaging has led to widespread unfamiliarity with McCain’s position on illegal immigration. Mitt Romney, for his part, is broadcasting only spots about his own record here after seeing what a barrage of negative ads got him in the first two states.

The Republican candidates aren’t the only ones treating McCain with kid gloves. Norquist, who helped spearhead third-party anti-McCain efforts in 2000, has overseen just a single round of little-noticed phone calls into New Hampshire urging voters to call both McCain and Thompson and urge them to sign the no-tax-increase pledge. He said his group has no plans to do any further calls.Norquist’s approach this year is indicative that McCain is in a stronger position this time around. By Norquist’s reckoning, he has come around on some key issues, while others don’t have the resonance they once did.

“In 2000, we criticized McCain’s call for campaign finance reform,” Norquist noted in an e-mail message. “The whole movement was concerned with that issue — the NRA, Right to Life, Right to Work, American Conservative Union, most business groups.

“Today, McCain is calling for continuing the Bush tax cuts — that is leading with a $2 trillion tax cut,” Norquist added.

So instead of trying to defeat McCain, Norquist has simply declared victory and welcomed him as a convert to the cause.

It may be that McCain's already appearing the most electable Republican to party insiders and voters looking for experience and intgrity on foreign policy.

There's been a backlash in some quarters, of course.

Mark Levin at National Review pulled out the knives in an attack on McCain last week. Bloggers are seeing red over the maverick's New Hampshire resurrection (here and here, for example).

The Michigan results today will sort things out a bit. May the best man win!

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

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UPDATE: Captain Ed predicts a Romney victory in today's primary:

I predict that the crossover vote will not be as heavy as predicted, discouraged in part by lousy weather. Three inches of snow wouldn't keep motivated voters from reaching the polls, but I don't think that the Republican slate will motivate non-Republicans to turn out in force while it's dark, snowy, and miserable on the roads. That favors Mitt Romney, and I think he edges out John McCain for his first significant win. My full prediction:

Romney - 30%
McCain - 28%
Huckabee - 17%
Giuliani - 12%
Thompson - 6%
Paul - 4%

I got New Hampshire wrong on the Democrats, but I had plenty of company. Let's see how this turns out ....

I frankly haven't the slightest clue as to who's going to win. Captain Ed doesn't mention other variables beyond the weather.

Romney has bankrolled a huge ad buy in Michigan, spending almost three times the amounts of McCain and Huckabee. Moreover, Romney's upbeat message on the economy is extremely attractive to voters, with Michigan suffering a "one-state" recession that could be a prelude to greater economic troubles nationally.

I think these two points give Romney an edge, although the campaign on the ground may end up being more vigorous than Captain Ed acknowledges.

I'll have more tonight.

Michigan is Do-or-Die for Romney

A victory for Mitt Romney in tomorrow's Michigan primary is a do-or-die situation, as the New York Times reports:

With economic issues at the top of the agenda, the leading Republican presidential candidates set off Monday on a final flurry of campaigning in Michigan ahead of the state’s primary that could again shake up a remarkably fluid Republican field.

Recent polls have indicated the contest is neck-and-neck between former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Senator John McCain of Arizona, with former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas further back.

Mr. Romney’s advisers have acknowledged that the state’s primary is essentially do-or-die for him after successive losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has been campaigning heavily throughout the state, emphasizing his childhood in Michigan and delivered a policy speech on Monday focused on aiding the automotive industry.

In his speech at the Detroit Economic Club, Mr. Romney took Washington lawmakers to task for being a “disinterested” in Michigan’s plight and imposing upon the state’s automakers a litany of “unfunded mandates,” including a recent measure signed by President Bush that requires the raising of fuel efficiency standards.

He criticized Mr. McCain and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, for a bill that they have pushed to cap and trade greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Romney asserted that the bill would cause energy costs to rise and would ultimately be a “job killer.”

Mr. Romney further pledged to bring together in his first 100 days representatives from the automotive industry, unions, Congress and the state of Michigan to come up with a plan to “rebuild America’s automotive leadership” and to increase to $20 billion, from $4 billion, the federal support for research and development in energy, fuel technology, materials science and automotive technology.

“There are some people who don’t think there’s a future for the domestic automobile industry,” Mr. Romney said. “They think the industry and its jobs are gone forever. They are wrong.”

Mr. Romney has hit hard at Mr. McCain for saying that Michigan’s manufacturing jobs are gone and are not coming back. At an event with more than 1,000 people at Kalamazoo Christian High School on Monday morning, Mr. McCain attempted to counter the accusations that he is a pessimist by saying that he would focus on job retraining programs to help the thousands who have lost their jobs in the state.

“We’re not going to leave these people behind,” Mr. McCain said, according to the Associated Press.

McCain had some rough campaigning over the weekend, getting booed over immigration at some events.

Yet polling shows an extremely tight race in the Wolverine State, and McCain even leads in the latest Zogby tracking poll (via Memeorandum):

Arizona Sen. John McCain holds a slim lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney heading into the Republican primary election in Michigan, a new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll shows.

The survey shows McCain with a 27% to 24% edge over Romney, with Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee trailing with 15% support. McCain, fresh off a 37% to 32% victory in New Hampshire over Romney, is battling the former governor on what is essentially Romney’s home turf, having grown up in the Detroit suburbs while his father, George, was governor of the state in the early 1960s.

The Zogby findings are a little at odds with the weekend's trend toward Romney, but in the case of a large independent cross-vote to McCain, the Arizona Senator may carry the day.

See Captain Ed's analysis, in any case:

Two arguments can be made from these results. The Romney argument will focus on the response of Republicans to the candidate. They will argue that their lead among Republicans shows that Mitt represents conservatives best in the race, and that McCain will shift the party to the Left. They can point to New Hampshire for support, where CNN's exit polling had Mitt winning the plurality of "very conservative" voters 43%-18% over McCain, while McCain won the plurality of "moderate" and "somewhat liberal" Granite State voetrs (both in the mid-40% range).

McCain's team will press the electability of their candidate. Having the ability to draw Democrats and independents constitutes a feature and not a bug, they will argue. The Republican nominee has to be able to beat Hillary Clinton in the general election, or perhaps Barack Obama, and recent polling shows him best positioned to do both. Romney's limited draw from the center will be their message if McCain wins Michigan.

Which will it be -- electability or policy reliability? On the latter, McCain can be expected to point out his 82.3% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. That stacks up against Fred Thompson's lifetime 86, and Ron Paul's 76. (Romney, Giuliani, and Huckabee never served in Congress and have no ACU rating.) Will that give conservatives a big enough fig leaf to vote for electability? Expect that to be the central Republican debate over the next couple of weeks, which is at least better than what roils the Democrats lately.

As I've noted here, here, and here, national polling trends favor McCain.

A Romney win tomorrow will staunch the flow a bit, but a knockout for any of the candidates will have to wait until February 5. In California, one of the biggest, trendsetting states voting that day, McCain was ahead this afternoon with 20 percent over Romney's 16 percent.

It's obviously early, and the latter poll results are based on a small sample with a high number of undecideds (6 out of 10), although voters judged McCain the most electable Republican by far.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Gallup Poll Finds McCain Leading Nationally

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds John McCain leading in national public opinion after his surging come-from-behind victory in the New Hampshire primary:

A new USA Today/Gallup poll documents the net effect of the mixed results from the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary on national preferences for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

On the Republican side, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have essentially swapped positions since a mid-December USA Today/Gallup poll. According to the weekend survey, conducted Jan. 10-13, McCain now leads the GOP field with 33% of the vote of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. Giuliani has traded his front-runner position for third place (although he is just two points ahead of Mitt Romney), with 13% now supporting him for the nomination, down from 27% in the Dec. 14-16 poll. Mike Huckabee is in second place with 19% -- similar to where he was before the real voting started. He was tied for second place with 16% in mid-December, though he briefly rose to first place with 25% support immediately after his strong win in Iowa.

Romney is hanging on to his second-tier position with 11%. Support for Fred Thompson, at 9% in the new poll, has faded from the 14% recorded in December, and is his worst showing since he entered the race last spring.

The Gallup findings match up well with today's New York Times poll, which found McCain favored by 32 percent and Mick Huckabee following well behind with 18 percent support nationally. Gallup and NYT's findings for McCain were higher than the results from the Washington Post's poll out today, which found McCain at 28 percent over Huckabee at 20.

What's interesting in this last comparison is the difference in support of undecideds, who are less attached to the lower-tier candidates (Romney and Giuliani), which could work to strengthen polling trends for the leading contenders.

See also the Los Angeles Times, which has a poll out today finding California voters favoring John McCain (more on this survey later).

Poll Shows McCain Leading GOP Pack

Today's Washington Post, with its poll findings on the presidential nomination horse race, provides the second jab in today's one-two polling knockout for GOP frontrunner John McCain (the New York Times' new presidential poll is also out this morning).

Here's the WaPo story:

The first contests of the 2008 presidential campaign have led to a dramatic shake-up in public opinion nationally, with Sen. John McCain now leading the Republican field and Sen. Barack Obama all but erasing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-overwhelming advantage among Democrats, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As the campaigns head into the next round of voting this week, the competitive contests in both parties have captured the public's attention. Four in five are closely tuned in, and a third are "very closely" following the races, a sharp increase from a month ago, and well higher than the proportions saying so at this stage in 2000 or 2004.

Clinton had dominated in national polls from the outset, holding a 30-point advantage as recently as a month ago, but the competitiveness of the first two contests appears to have reverberated among Democrats across the country.

In the new poll, 42 percent of likely Democratic voters support Clinton (N.Y.), and 37 percent back Obama (Ill.). Clinton's support is down 11 percentage points from a month ago, with Obama's up 14. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) held third place with 11 percent, followed by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) at 2 percent.

The big gains by McCain (Ariz.), which come after his victory in the New Hampshire primary, mark the first time he has topped the Republican field in a Post-ABC News national survey. His rise mirrors a dramatic tumble for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who led most national polls throughout 2007.

Giuliani, who finished well back in both Iowa and New Hampshire, ranks fourth in the new poll at 15 percent. McCain, meanwhile, has more than double the support he had a month ago and now stands at 28 percent among likely GOP voters. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who scored a big victory in the Iowa caucuses, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the runner-up in both early contests, sit just above Giuliani, at 20 and 19 percent, respectively.

Former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) registers 8 percent, in single digits for the first time, with only half the support he had in early November. Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), who got 10 percent of the votes in Iowa and 8 percent in New Hampshire, is at 3 percent; Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.) is at 2 percent.

The sudden turnaround in national sentiment partly reflects the continued uncertainty among Republican voters about their field of candidates. Although McCain sits atop the GOP field, only a third of his supporters back him "strongly."

And this week's primaries may further unsettle the race. Victories by McCain over Romney in Michigan on Tuesday and in Saturday's South Carolina GOP primary, where his main rival appears to be Huckabee, would stamp McCain as the front-runner, but stumbles in either contest could further disrupt the GOP nomination battle.

First up is Michigan. The Los Angeles Times has the background:

Castigated by the national party for moving their primary ahead in the nominating calendar, Michigan Republicans could inject even more volatility into the 2008 GOP presidential campaign when they go to the polls Tuesday.

Although only half of the state's delegates will be seated at the Republican National Convention as punishment for flouting party rules and jumping ahead of the approved Feb. 5 date, Michigan is a crucial state for all three of the top contenders.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the son of a popular former Michigan governor and auto executive, needs a win to counter growing perceptions that he can't do better than his second-place finishes in the first two significant nominating contests.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who won here in 2000, needs a win to keep his New Hampshire-born comeback alive.

And a first-place showing by Mike Huckabee could help propel the former Arkansas governor through the South Carolina and Florida primaries heading into the coast-to-coast balloting Feb. 5, on which former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is not campaigning in Michigan, has pinned his hopes for the nomination.

The significance of the vote here can be read in the candidates' schedules. With South Carolina and the Feb. 5 states looming, McCain and Romney focused exclusively on Michigan over the weekend, each arguing in town halls, drop-ins and party dinners that he is better suited to end Michigan's economic slide.

Romney is to address the influential Detroit Economic Club today. Huckabee, who spoke before the club Friday, returned here Sunday night after a whirlwind spin through South Carolina, where he is trying to protect a lead in the polls.

Recent Michigan surveys show a tight contest among Romney, Huckabee and McCain, but a local Detroit Free Press-Local 4 poll released Sunday gave Romney a slight advantage. Conducted by Selzer & Co., the poll found that he had a 27% to 22% lead over McCain, with Huckabee trailing at 16%, tied with "uncommitted."

If the poll holds up and Romney wins, that would mean that three different candidates had won the first three major Republican nomination fights.

With state unemployment at 7.4% -- the highest in the nation -- and an industrial base dominated by the embattled auto industry, the campaign has focused more directly on economic issues than it did in Iowa and New Hampshire.

An added wild card: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is the only major candidate on the Democratic ballot Tuesday -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina dropped off after Michigan scheduled its primary for Tuesday.

State rules allow anyone to vote in any party's primary, and it was independents and crossover Democrats who gave McCain the win in 2000. With an uncompetitive Democratic primary Tuesday, they could again be a determining factor.

"McCain needs momentum and crossover. Huckabee needs the young voter turnout, and he needs the evangelical turnout," said Ed Sarpolus, a veteran Lansing pollster. "Romney's really in the best position when you consider he's got the time [campaigning in the state], money and organization."

But Romney also has the most pressure on him to win, said Bill Ballenger, a Lansing-based analyst.

"Romney has got to stop the hemorrhaging," Ballenger said. "His strategy is predicated upon winning in the first three contests, and he's already lost two of them. This is his native state. He's invested an enormous amount of time . . . and he's spent $1.5 million on TV already."

My weekend analysis of the Michigan race is here.

The GOP May Need McCain

The media buzz over John McCain's comeback continues to grow. Check out John Heilemann's article over at New York Magazine, where he argues that Republicans may in fact need the Arizona Senator's leadership and stature:

The McCain resurrection in New Hampshire was, no question, a remarkable thing to behold. Six months ago, the extent of his meltdown was so severe that he was mired in fourth place in the state behind Mitt Romney, Giuliani, and, yes, even Fred Thompson. But by December, McCain, back to waging a guerrilla campaign, had scrapped his way into the lead. In the days before the primary, the sense of nostalgia was palpable: the Straight Talk Express crisscrossing the snow-banked byways, McCain cracking wise and holding forth, the hack pack huddled around him, lapping up every word. His town-hall meetings were jammed to the rafters, his wit, spontaneity, and candor on vivid display. “You’re still in purgatory,” said one independent voter, who questioned McCain’s devotion to fiscal discipline. “Thank you,” replied McCain. “That’s a step up from where I was last summer”....

The concept of McCain as the candidate of the Republican Establishment may cause some minds to reel, but there are already signs that it may become a reality: On the eve of New Hampshire, 100 alumni of the Reagan administration—including George Shultz, Alexander Haig, and Iran/contra pardonee Robert McFarlane—trumpeted their endorsement of McCain. What makes him attractive to such people despite his transgressions against Republican orthodoxy is crystal clear. As McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt put it bluntly in New Hampshire, “He is the most electable of all Republicans.” Though one Democratic strategist licked his chops when I mentioned the prospect of a McCain-Obama matchup—“It would be the future versus the past, change versus more of the same”—the septuagenarian senator would compete fiercely with his younger rival for independent voters, and would be able to play far more effectively the experience card that Clinton has employed against him. And having been carpet-bombed by Bush in 2000 and Romney this time around, he’d be well prepared to handle the brass-knuckle brawl into which a race against Clinton would surely turn.

Read the whole thing.

Heilemann is clear that McCain's far from wrapping up the nomination - surprisingly, he suggests, things could go down to a final Giuliani-McCain showdown.

A McCain win tomorrow in Michigan ought to confirm all the speculation of McCain as unstoppable frontrunner. Mitt Romney's doing well in Wolverine State polls, so the suspense may continue for some time.

The Origins of Neoconservatism

The New York Times is probably the least conducive place to read a review of neoconservatism, but Timothy Noah's review of Jacob Heilbrunn's new book, They Knew They Were Right, is still worth a look.

Here's a bit on the intellectual origins of the movement:

The first half of Heilbrunn’s book relates neoconservatism’s origins and its journey to the brink of political power in the late 1970s. It’s a familiar tale, told better in “The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America’s Politics,” published in 1979 by Peter Steinfels (then the executive editor of Commonweal and now a columnist on religion for The New York Times). Steinfels came at the neocons from farther to the left than Heilbrunn and consequently was more critical. But the Steinfels book was also more rigorously analytic and, strangely, more generous in granting neocons their due as thinkers. Chalk it up to the narcissism of small differences. As best I can make out, Heilbrunn retains most of the foreign-policy views that he held before but applies them with greater judiciousness, and can no longer bear the sight of those who don’t. (The neocons’ domestic policies seem to interest Heilbrunn not at all; he scarcely mentions them.)

From both Steinfels and Heilbrunn, we learn that neoconservatism was the final stop of an ideological journey for a group of New York intellectuals, typically the children of Jewish immigrants, that began during the early 1940s in Alcove 1 of the cafeteria at City College. Alcove 1 was the gathering place for a group of brilliant young Trotskyists that included Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer and Melvin Lasky. Along with Irving Howe, who would later break with Trotskyism but not with the left, and Daniel Bell, who never accepted Marxist orthodoxies in any form, the Alcove 1 Trotskyists waged intellectual battle with the Stalinists in Alcove 2, who vastly outnumbered them.

Coaxed by a diverse group of thinkers that included Sidney Hook, Reinhold Niebuhr and Samuel M. Levitas, known as Sol, the veterans of Alcove 1 eventually drifted away from Trotskyism, becoming stalwarts of the anti-Communist left, where they were joined by Norman Podhoretz, then a young literary scholar. With the advent of the cold war, the proto-neocons pushed for a hard line against the Soviet Union, sometimes harder than that of anti-Communist liberals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and George F. Kennan; few if any of them expressed concern when they discovered that Encounter, a magazine that Irving Kristol co-founded in 1952, was secretly underwritten by the Central Intelligence Agency. The student radicalism of the late 1960s disillusioned proto-neocons about the left; George McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972 disillusioned many of them about mainstream liberalism and the Democratic Party; and after Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, a number of them stopped resisting the “conservative” label, joined the Republican Party and began to exercise power.

During the presidencies of Reagan and George W. Bush, neocon influence followed parallel arcs, gaining influence in the first term and losing it in the second. In Reagan’s case, the break came with the Iran-contra scandal, which dulled the White House’s enthusiasm for proxy wars against the Soviet Union, and the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev, in whose glasnost and perestroika many neocons did not believe. (Heilbrunn nicely compares the Soviet Union’s imminent collapse to “a Christmas present handed to a grumpy child who was not in the mood to accept it.”) In the case of Bush, the loss of influence followed the military debacle in Iraq.

The great mystery of George W. Bush’s presidency is why he ever jumped into bed with neoconservatives in the first place. During the presidential primaries in 2000, The Weekly Standard, by then neoconservatism’s pre-eminent publication, had preferred John McCain. Bush had no great fondness for intellectuals, and a disinclination to engage in nation-building. And before 9/11, even Wolfowitz had predicted that the big foreign-policy challenge would not be Iraq, but China. What brought about this unlikely alliance?

It helped that as neoconservatism relocated from the Upper West Side to the Virginia suburbs, it had mostly abandoned the intellectual sphere for politics and journalism, where Bush felt more comfortable. No longer a lively debating society, by the 1990s it had become, Heilbrunn writes, “an echo chamber.” Probably the most significant factor was the presence of Vice President Dick Cheney, who helped Wolfowitz secure his berth with Rumsfeld, which in turn allowed Wolfowitz to install Feith. What transformed Cheney from a mild skeptic about Iraq intervention when he was defense secretary in the early 1990s (one “former colleague” informs Heilbrunn that in those days Cheney was “not in thrall” to Wolfowitz) to the unappeasable hawk he revealed himself to be after 9/11?

On this, Heilbrunn is stumped, just like everyone else. Maybe an evil spirit terrorized Cheney while he slept. The ghost of Hitler, perhaps?

How about September 11, 2001?

I'm picking up a copy of Heilbrunn's book tomorrow, and will likely posts some thoughts on it at some point.

In the meantime, as an antidote to Noah's dismissal of neoconservative ideology, see James Kirchick's "The Anti-Neocon Fervor" or my post, "Preventive Strike? Declaring War on Neoconservative Foreign Policy."

McCain is Favorite Nationwide, Poll Finds

Senator John McCain is favored by 33 percent, nationwide, for the Republican presidential nomination, the latest New York Times poll has found:

Republican voters have sharply altered their views of the party’s presidential candidates following the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, with Senator John McCain, once widely written off, now viewed more favorably than any of his major competitors, according to the latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News Poll.

The findings underscored the extraordinary volatility in the Republican race and suggested that the party was continuing to search for a nominee whom it could rally around. Nearly three quarters of Republican primary voters said it was still too early for them to make up their minds “for sure,” meaning that they could shift their allegiances yet again if one or more of Mr. McCain’s rivals breaks through in the two Republican primaries this week, in Michigan and South Carolina....

The survey was begun one day after the primaries in New Hampshire, where Mr. McCain won, and amounted to a snapshot of a Republican contest that remains remarkably fluid after almost a year of campaigning. While national polls are of limited value in predicting the outcome of primaries in particular states, they capture broad shifts in opinion, in this case a sharp movement for Mr. McCain after a big victory and a wave of media attention. Thirty-three percent of Republican primary voters in the poll named Mr. McCain, of Arizona, as their choice, up from 7 percent a month ago.

Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, whose favorability ratings jumped after he won in Iowa, was the choice of 18 percent of Republican primary voters. Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who is focusing his campaign on later contests, had the most precipitous fall; he was the choice of 10 percent of Republican voters, down from 22 percent last month. Support for other candidates was in single digits.

The poll also had worrisome signs for Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who finished second in both Iowa and New Hampshire and is in a tough three-way battle in Michigan against Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee. Not only did support for him among Republican voters plummet over the past month, but he was also viewed much less favorably than a month ago.

Mr. McCain, a longtime maverick in his own party, was named by Republican primary voters in the survey as the candidate most likely to win his party’s nomination. Thirty-nine percent of these primary voters saw Mr. McCain as the likely nominee. Only 11 percent saw Mr. Giuliani prevailing.

Mr. McCain’s image ratings also have soared. More than half of the Republican primary voters (57 percent) — including more half of the conservatives — viewed him favorably in the new poll, compared with 37 percent in December.

“I don’t always agree with him on all the issues,” Jeff Little, a 34-year-old actuary and Republican from Apple Valley, Minn., said in an interview after he participated in the poll. “But I feel he, more than most politicians, tells you what he thinks.”

Patrick Herron, a 61-year-old retired social studies teacher from Syracuse, described Mr. McCain as “more of a moderate.”

“He’s willing to cross the aisles and work with the Democratic Party,” said Mr. Herron, another poll participant.

The poll also includes data on the Democratic Party favorites.

Heading into Tuesday's crucial Michigan GOP primary, voter preferences are unstable, with various polls showing nearly 4 out of 10 voters undecided as they prepare to head to their polling stations. The New York Times graphic below shows the unsettled nature of this weekend's surveys on the Michigan race:

The timing of the poll - out in hardcopy with tomorrow's edition, complete with banner headlines declaring McCain's national stature - is perfect for momentum-building.

See also Memeorandum.

Photo: Detroit News

McCain, Romney See Big Battleground in Michigan

The Michigan Republican primary is shaping up to be a truly crucial contest.

Henry Payne of the Detroit News, in an essay over at the Wall Street Journal, suggests that Michigan's decision to advance its primary earlier in the calendar is not as significant as party officials had hoped, at least on the Democratic side.

With the decline of automobile manufacturing, the Wolverine State's lost political clout, a fact of political life exploited by Chrysler 300-driving Barack Obama, whose hypocritical envirnomental pandering is not lost on Michigan political observers:

As their industrial union base has shrunk, Democrats have forsaken blue collars for green elites....

Most emblematic of the shift is Barack Obama, senator for Archer Daniels Midland, the corporate behemoth from Illinois that turns corn into ethanol. Thanks to the ethanol mandates Mr. Obama supports, ADM has been racking up profits.

In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club last May, Mr. Obama could barely hide his contempt for auto execs in attendance. The "change candidate" -- who had a gas-guzzling, powerful Chrysler 300 in his garage -- lit into the Big Three for producing the very vehicles he uses: "While foreign competitors were investing in more fuel-efficient technology for their vehicles, American auto makers were spending their time investing in bigger, faster cars. The auto industry is on a path that is unacceptable and unsustainable. And America must take action to make it right."

So much for discussing "Michigan issues."

It's the Republican primary, however, that's turning out to be a decisive breakneck affair:

Mike Murphy, a Republican campaign guru who cut his teeth in Michigan, says the state is the candidates' first true test because of its demographics. Michigan is a quilt of inner city blacks, suburban businessmen, Reagan Democrats, religiously conservative reformers and liberal college towns.

The state's unique mix of voters has produced surprises in the past. Eight years ago, Mr. McCain won the state's primary despite George W. Bush's strength nationally. Mr. McCain looks to do well again, but must contend with Mr. Huckabee, who has caught fire with west Michigan's vast grassroots evangelical network. Even without much of an organization in the state, he has made this a three-man race, says veteran Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell. Mr. Huckabee's theme -- "Americans want a president who reminds them of the guy they worked with, not the guy that laid them off" -- resonates here.

John McCain and Mitt Romney will likely refight the 2000 McCain/Bush battle. Like Mr. Bush, who won Republicans by a 2-1 margin, Mr. Romney is pushing to get out the GOP vote, and is trying to exploit the fact that his father was once a popular governor here.

But with an uncompetitive Democratic contest, Mr. Mitchell predicts that, as in New Hampshire, Mr. McCain will reap votes from independents and crossover Democrats, which he carried by respective margins of 2-1 and 3-1 eight years ago.

Mr. Romney's best chance is to go after Mr. McCain for his flip-flops on the Bush tax cuts. Michigan is aflame with anti-tax sentiment at the moment because Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm pushed through a big income tax increase last fall, sparking recall campaigns.

As the country has moved left in recent elections, Michigan too has become more reliably blue and ceased to be a swing state. But after two small, beauty pageant primaries, the Republican survivor of Michigan will deserve the crown of 2008 frontrunner.

Who's going to get that frontrunner crown?

John McCain had pulled ahead of Mitt Romney in midweek polling, but this weekend's survey data is showing a tossup.

A Detroit News poll out today shows a statistical dead-heat for the GOP in Michigan (via Memeorandum):

With just two days left before the primary, Michigan's volatile Republican presidential race is going down to the wire for frontrunners John McCain and Mitt Romney.

And Mike Huckabee is still a factor.

A Detroit News/WXYZ Action News poll shows McCain with 27 percent, Romney at 26 percent; and Huckabee at 19 percent. All three campaigned in Michigan on Saturday. McCain, a senator from Arizona, and Michigan-born Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, are scheduled to continue their sprint drive Sunday. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, is campaigning in South Carolina on Sunday, but is expected to return to Michigan on Monday, election eve.

The poll shows not just a statistical tie, but a full 45 percent of those surveyed remain undecided. Thus, this weekend's campaigning will be a key factor in Tuesday's vote, as well as the ground-game efficacy of the respective campaigns.

Also out today is another survey from the Detroit Free Press:

Republican primary voters whose greatest concern is the economy could give Bloomfield Hills native Mitt Romney his first major state victory in Tuesday’s Michigan presidential primary, according to the Detroit Free Press-Local 4 Michigan Poll.

Romney leads John McCain, 27%-22%, with Mike Huckabee in third at 16%, the poll showed. Romney’s core of support is in metro Detroit, where he has a 2-1 advantage.

Of the 40% who named the economy as their top concern, Romney had a 42%-25% advantage over McCain. McCain wins by about the same margin over Romney among the 24% of Republican voters whose top issue is the Iraq war.

But Romney's lead could evaporate, depending on how tentative, undecided and uncommitted voters lean over the next two days. About 38% of voters who had a favorite said they might change their mind by Tuesday. Another 22% hadn't picked a candidate.

We see again - as with the Detroit News survey - the key role undecideds will play Tuesday.

What may be even more important is the role of Michigan's independents. The state issues non-partisan ballots, and independents may cross-over to vote in either major party primary.

A heavy crossover vote presumably favors McCain, who has polled well among independents. But former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his economic populist message might hit home here as well.

Either way, an independent surge likely damages former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who does best among pure Republicans.

A McClatchy/MSNBC poll vote finds McCain the preference of 38 percent of independents and Democrats, while Huckabee had 22 percent and Romney taking 18 percent.

At this point, the vote appears wide open, and considerable skepticism over the polling trends is warranted.

Watch out for the unexpected, in any case: Michigan's unemployment rate is the highest in the nation at 7.4 percent, and the results Tuesday may again upset all consensus views, given the volatility of economic issues in the sate.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Iraq and the Election

Is Iraq off the political agenda for campaign '08?

Time has an analysis of the issue, with this week's Bush administration shuttle diplomacy to the Mideast the point of departure:

On his grand tour of the Middle East, George Bush was far away from the ground wars of the U.S. presidential campaign. Indeed, thanks to the success of the U.S. military surge, the war he started in Iraq is now a second-tier issue in American politics. But Iraq may become a resurgent factor in the strategies of those who want to succeed him in office. The "good news" of the surge and tentative steps forward in Iraqi internal politics may weigh on how voters view the politicians maneuvering to become the next President of the United States.

On Saturday, the current President stopped at the 3rd Army's Camp Arifjan in Kuwait to get a briefing on the war from Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, and to do some morale-boosting with the troops. He made the most the timing: his visit came just over a year since he announced the troop surge, and he reminded his audience that last year's strategy shift was initially scorned in the U.S. but has turned out to be remarkably effective. At the dusty rally with troops, flanked by an enormous American flag, Bush projected that success out into the future, saying history will judge that "victory was achieved by the U.S. military [in Iraq] for the good of the world."

The event was paralleled in Iraq with a political breakthrough of sorts: the parliament's unanimous passage of a law that allows former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to take government jobs for which they have expertise and experience. The so-called de-Baathification of the Iraqi government after the fall of Saddam contributed significantly to the violent sectarian divisions of the country as well as to a collapse in the way the country was run. The new law is meant heal the rift between the Shi'ites who now dominate the government and the Sunnis who used to. "I come with an upbeat message," Bush said at the news of the passage of the Accountability and Justice law. It is, he said, "an important step towards reconciliation... an important sign that the leaders of that country must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people."

While Bush spoke of history's judgment, the short term may be more important right now for most Americans. If the last year in Iraq has changed the course of the war and the region's future, the next year in that country may determine who will succeed Bush in the White House. Petraeus and Crocker have started an analysis that will determine the troop levels through the heat of the election season from July through November. The success of the surge has diminished the role of Iraq in the U.S. campaign; but the political — and electoral — ramifications of the next decision on troop levels remain an open question. Bush even said Saturday that the current draw down, which is expected to bring troops to pre-surge levels by July, and as low as 100,000 by the end of the year, could be reversed if Petraeus decides he needs to beef back up.

Despite left-wing spin to the contrary, the war will be a political plus for Republicans heading into November.

Certainly, events on the ground - security and stability - will shape political perceptions at home. But there should be no mistake that the Bush administration and GOP backers were right that the war was not lost. The effects of the strategic shift under General Petraeus have been dramatic and were unanticipated by most political actors. The military is currently not rushing to redeploy, and if the continued progress in Iraqi political cooperation holds, we'll see more and more evidence that this war is being won.

Republican candidates can take that to the bank in November.

Photo Credit: Time