Romney Supported Quitting Iraq!

The GOP contest in Florida is getting hot, with the latest flare-up over Mitt Romney's evident and controversial backing last year of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq (via YouTube):

Here's more on the story, from CNN:

A fired up Mitt Romney demanded John McCain apologize Saturday for recently saying the former Massachusetts governor had once supported a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq – part of the latest back and forth between the two Republican candidates leading up to the crucial Florida primary.

"I don't know why he's being dishonest," Romney told reporters in Lutz, Florida. "But that's dishonest. To say that I have a specific date is simply wrong and is dishonest and he should apologize. That is not the case, I’ve never said that."

Campaigning earlier in Fort Myers on Saturday, McCain said, "In the conflict that we’re in, I’m the only one that said we have to abandon the Rumsfeld strategy and Rumsfeld and adopt a new strategy. Gov Romney wanted to set a date for withdrawal, similar to what the democrats are seeking which would have led to the victory by al Qaeda in my view.”

McCain has suggested for days that Romney once supported a timetable for withdrawal, though he only recently began naming the Massachusetts Republican by name.

The Arizona senator later rebuked Romney's calls for an apology, at an event in Sun City.

"I think the apology is owed to the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform that we will not let them down in hard times and good," he said. "That is who the apology is owed to."

In his press conference with reporters, Romney also suggested McCain was trying to shift voters' focus away from the economy — an issue that would seem to favor the former business executive.

"I know he's trying desperately to change the topic from the economy and trying to get back to Iraq. But to say something that’s not accurate is simply wrong and he knows better," Romney said.

On Friday, McCain's campaign circulated the transcript of an interview from April, in which Romney seemed to support a private timetable.

Hot Air's got a post up on this, which includes a retaliatory smear against McCain, suggesting the Arizona Senator favored timetables as well (although the news article cited highlights McCain's "sense of the Senate" resolution from January 2007, which considered benchmarks as a contingency to the strategy shift of increased troop numbers under General David Petraeus). More McCain demonization?

See also my previous post, "Battleground Florida: GOP Race is Dead Heat."

Don't forget the campaign coverage at Memeorandum and Michelle Malkin.

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UPDATE: Jonathan Martin at The Politico says that McCain - after enduring talk of the economy for days - successful put Romney on the defensive with a shift of focus to Iraq:

The easiest way for John McCain to get the campaign back on the national security turf he wants to fight it on?

Hammer Romney on the topic.

That's what he did today....

Romney was probably right about the first part of what he said -- and it appears that McCain succeded in doing so.

After days of letting Romney essentially define the debate and drive his economy message, the McCain folks won a news cycle the old-fashioned way: They had their candidate make news.

For an evenhanded analysis of the dust-up, see "McCain's Conversation Changer: A Misleading Low Blow, at Time:

McCain wants the Florida primary to be an election about national security, his best issue. But until Saturday, the contest was humming along as an election more about the economy, Mitt Romney's best issue. So McCain went on the attack Saturday, lashing out at Romney by accusing him of having once wanted to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

''Now, one of my opponents wanted to set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster,'' McCain said about Romney, at a stop in Fort Myers. Then McCain added, "If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher."

When told of the comments, Romney got visibly testy. ''That's dishonest, to say that I have a specific date. That's simply wrong,'' Romney said at a stop outside Tampa. "To say something that's not accurate is simply wrong, and he knows better."

Romney demanded an apology from McCain, which seemed to simply delight McCain, since he used it to escalate the war of words even higher. "I think the apology is owed to the young men and women serving this nation in uniform," McCain said. Then his campaign started sending out a blizzard of emails, including comments from former CIA director James Woolsey knocking Romney's support for the war.

After reviewing what Romney actually said, here's the final take on McCain:

McCain says that he thinks this amounts to Romney supporting a drop-dead deadline for withdrawing troops. But that's not what happened. A more fair reading of the exchange shows that Romney was instead talking about private benchmarks that would allow Bush and Maliki to measure success or failure. In fact, Romney says flat out that he would veto any bill from Congress that contained such a timetable for withdrawal.

But even if Romney had explicitly supported withdrawal, what exactly does McCain mean by demanding that Romney apologize to American troops? Is McCain suggesting than any American who opposed the surge was somehow not supporting American troops? Is he saying that it is unpatriotic to debate American policy in Iraq? It sure sounds like it. And it is an unbecoming posture for McCain, who has been boasting in recent days about the "respectful debate" he would have with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Barack Obama should he win the nomination.

Well, I would add that if it can be shown, by parsing Romney's words, that he indeed supported pulling the troops, then he'd be more closely aligned to the Democrats and foreign policy. He really would need to apologize in that case.

In fairness, though, I think Romney's views on foreign policy are among the best of any of the candidates this year, of either party.

Whatever you might think, McCain won this round.

Battleground Florida: GOP Race is Dead Heat

Here's this GOP election update, just in from Florida, from Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:

The latest Florida poll has McCain with a narrow lead and, in a sure sign the race is close, my in-box is fillling up with nastygrams from the Romney camp focusing on McCain’s un-Republican leanings. The most telling part of today’s poll is Rudy’s number: 15 perecent. As that number decreases (a function of the bandwagon effect and perhaps Mel Martinez’ endorsement of McCain) expect McCain’s to rise.

It is worth exploring how critical Florida is and for whom it is a “must win.” Despite pledges he would continue on, it is hard to see how Rudy, whose numbers are already dropping in February 5 states, would remain viable after a Florida loss. For Romney, a loss here would leave Michigan as his only win in a contested state and deprive him of a needed boost going into February 5, where he must take on both McCain and Huckabee, who remains a threat in Red states. Things would look grim. But, just as he soldiered on after New Hampshire and Iowa, he would have no reason to give up. (Romney said just that today.) McCain, who now is building leads in California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York, could survive a close loss in Florida. However, the last thing he wants is to do is revive criticisms that he cannot win in a closed primary and set up a coast-to-coast battle with an opponent who has seemingly unlimited funds. So, on balance, Rudy is the only one who must win, Romney needs it very badly and McCain would sure prefer not to lose.

That point about Romney, that he's only won one contested state is significant. His money's keeping in the game, not popular support. Indeed, as Ann Althouse notes, there's "a sense that Romney's hilariously uncool."

Here's some news from the trail, at the Caucus blog.

The McCain Revolution!

Peter Wallison's got an interesting article discussing the search for a new Ronald Reagan this primary season. Maybe our savior's right under out noses, in Senator John McCain.

From the American Spectator:

Apparently dissatisfied with their presidential choices, Republicans are asking, "Why don't we have another Ronald Reagan?" But if we think seriously about what made Ronald Reagan a great leader and a great president, we may find that there's a reasonable facsimile hiding in plain sight. John McCain, although he has failed to toe the line of conservative orthodoxy, has many of the characteristics that the American people admired in Ronald Reagan, including the key elements that made him a successful president. In fact, given his electability, McCain offers a rare chance for conservatives to recapture the essence of the Reagan revolution.

The similarities between Reagan and McCain begin with their extraordinary attachment to principle. Reagan never altered his views about Communism, the Soviet Union or the importance of shrinking the government, and it was this quality that made him a successful president. Washington is a city where everything is negotiable. In this world, a president with actual principles has a unique attribute -- credibility. When Reagan stayed the course on tax cuts, despite high interest rates and a weak economy in 1982, he was relying on his principles. When John McCain said, in supporting the surge in Iraq, he would "rather lose an election than lose a war," he is demonstrating the same attachment to principle that animated Ronald Reagan. And this firmness will give him the same credibility in Washington that Reagan enjoyed.

A second similarity is their view of the United States and its role in the world. Reagan, as we recall, described America as a shining city on a hill. What he meant by this was that the United States is an exceptional nation -- "the last best hope of earth," in Lincoln's words. This is the foundation of an aggressive foreign policy, respectful of other nations but ultimately doing what is necessary to defeat the enemies of peace and freedom. Thus, Reagan's foreign policy -- much to the chagrin of our European allies -- was the opposite of the accommodationist approach followed by his predecessors in dealing with the Soviet Union; as he summarized it: "We win; they lose." McCain sees the United States in the same way, having served in its armed forces, borne years of torture in its behalf, fought for a stronger military, and promised to follow Osama bin Laden to "the gates of hell." He wants to defeat our next great enemy, Islamofascism, not live with it, just as Reagan refused to accept the Soviet Union as a permanent fixture on the international scene.

Wallison makes a good case, and his words here capture some of the most important elements of McCain's candidacy explaining my backing. He notes, for example, that Republican presidents after Reagan increased government spending - against McCain's opposition, as he led conservative demands in Congress for spending restraint!

But note this as well, regarding the conservative backlash to McCain:

The Reagan coalition is still out there, a majority of Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents -- who believe that the size of government and its role in the economy should be reduced. Through the aggressive use of the veto pen, McCain has promised restore this essential element of Reagan's vision. Why should disaffected conservatives believe this? Because John McCain is like Ronald Reagan in the most significant respect of all: he is an authentic person, not a confection designed by consultants. Reagan, as his diary shows (as if we needed further proof), wanted to be president for a purpose -- as a real person would -- not simply to hold the office. He had a consistent and firmly held set of views that he intended to pursue as president. McCain's straight talk is popular because it's the way real people talk to one another, not the coddling way today's politicians present themselves to us. So when John McCain said, after his victory in South Carolina, that he was a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution and is running for president "not to be something, but to do something" he was making clear that on a range of issues -- from defending the nation to reducing the size of government -- he would bring a new vitality to the Reagan revolution.

I hope irate conservatives will finally get it at some point.

But we all need to remember this as well: We'll never have another Reagan. What we need is a candidate who's got the experience and values to lead the country at both home and abroad, amid our current circumstance. McCain's the one for the GOP in 2008.

Ideological Positions of the Candidates

Probably the biggest meme going around right now is that John McCain's just a bleeding-heart liberal, no better than Hillary Clinton.

Of course it's not true. Folks are entitled to their views, of course, but for many brain-addled, anti-McCain talk-radio Rush-bots, there's little of practical reason that might break through the prejudice.

But I'll make a stab anyway: Take a look at this chart, from Andrew Kohut, over at the New York Times. I just love this graphic!!!

I'm getting a kick out of it, mainly because this is Political Science 101. I draw this image on the chalkboard every semester when I cover political ideologies, particularly during classrooom discussions on the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Although it's quite common for people to chant, in exasperation, "there's not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties," in truth the American political parties offer dramatically different ideological orientations and policy programs. The U.S. does not have a tradition of multiparty democracy and true radicalism, as in European history. But our distinct culture of individualism and markets is often challenged quite vigrorously by left-wing preferences for expansive governmental intervention (i.e., the Great Society), and more recently by the upsurge of postmodern leftism following the cultural and rights revolutions in the 1960s.

But look at the graph: For all the fulminations against McCain and Huckabee and the alleged threat they pose to the GOP, it's interesting that the median voter clumps McCain, Huckabee, and Mitt Romney all together - nice and neat - on the right of the spectrum (hint: the right wing's conservative folks). Indeed, Huck's further to the right than is Mitt Romney, to whom many conservatives gravitated following the withdrawal of Fred ("Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act") Thompson.

We need to send some talk radio hosts back to school!

But what's even more important is that John McCain's position on the right of the scale rests closer the country's media voter, and hence the hypothesis from this spatial model is that while he's conservative, he's more likely to capture moderate-to-liberal voters in a general election matchup against the eventual Democratic nominee.

Here's what Kohut says about John McCain's ideological placement, and his general election electability:

In a national Pew survey conducted in January, voters were asked to judge the political ideology of President Bush and each of the leading Republican and Democratic candidates. While President Bush, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney were placed on the far right end of the ideological scale, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani fell in the middle — where voters placed themselves. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were considered liberal — and placed about as far to the left of voters as President Bush was to the right.

The same poll found that independents like Senator McCain better than other candidates from both parties. Sixty-five percent of independent voters expressed a favorable opinion of the Arizona senator. Almost as many independents rated Senator Obama favorably (59 percent), but only 4 in 10 of independents gave Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Romney, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Huckabee a positive rating. And keep in mind that independents have been deciding the winner in recent presidential elections....

All other things being equal, Senator McCain appears to be the G.O.P. candidate best able to run a competitive race against the Democrats in the fall. But the challenge for any Republican will be to appeal to the conservative.

I mean no disrespect with this analysis, although I can hear some conservative whiners now? "Oh, Kohut's just a liberal," or "don't listen to those MSM lies."

Such responses (or others, likely to be less diplomatic) are emotional, and hence irrational.

I commented on this today in my earlier post, "Conservative Fears in Election '08":

A few previously respectable conservative commenters here have frankly become unhinged at the prospect of McCain securing the GOP nomination.

But I hope this post clarifies the point for those who are confused.

John McCain's compromised on some big issues of public policy, often reaching across the aisle to legislate with some of the most reviled big-spending Democrats in Congress. We can question that bipartisanship - and McCain can be criticized for excessive pragmatism - but this tendency alone doesn't make him a liberal.

The Democrats' Worst Nightmare

Recall my previous post, where I indicated that John McCain's far and away the most electable candidate in public opinion polling. The Democrats aren't thrilled, as this new McCain ad points out (from YouTube):

See also Peggy Noonan's new column on the conservative crackup, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (via Memeorandum).

McCain is Most Electable, Poll Finds

Further data from the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that John McCain's overwhelmingly seen as the most electable candidate in the presidential race this year:

The leading Republican presidential candidates all claim to be the best-suited to overcome the Democratic tide expected in the general election. But opinion polls clearly favor Arizona Sen. John McCain in that regard.

In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 37% of respondents said Mr. McCain has the best chance to win in November against the Democrats. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was far back in second, with 16%, followed closely by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 15% and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 12%. Those results are mirrored in other polls.

Mr. McCain also did the best in hypothetical matchups with the two leading Democrats. The poll shows him beating New York Sen. Hillary Clinton by 46% to 44% and tying against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama with 42% support. Messrs. Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee all lose handily in polling matchups with Sens. Clinton and Obama. Statistically, the results are about the same -- a dead heat -- whether Mr. McCain's opponent is Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama because the poll has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Many Republican primary voters face a quandary this year: Whether to choose the candidate they like best or the one they think has the best shot against a formidable Democratic opponent in November.

"We have got to figure out who's the most electable. That's the hard part," said Ron Dahlstrom, a 67-year-old retiree living in Naples, Fla., who says he hasn't decided on a candidate. The self-described religious conservative likes Mr. Huckabee, but says the Baptist preacher is too religious to get elected. That leaves him undecided between Messrs. Romney and McCain. "Anybody but Hillary," he said Tuesday.

The Journal's findings come on the heels of a new Gallup survey showing McCain as the most "tested leader" in public opinion.

Yet polls also indicate that few people vote on the basis of "strategic preferences" in the primaries, so it remains to be seen how the electability and leadership factors influence the vote in upcoming primaries.

Florida's now considered the make-or-break state for all of the remaining candidates in the GOP field.

The focus next Tuesday, however, is on McCain and Mitt Romney.

The most recent surveys out of the Sunshine State show a dead heat.

This could shift over the weekend, although the big news this afternoon is Mel Martinez's endorsement of McCain in Florida.

Martinez is a GOP Senator from Florida and the outgoing RNC chair. Martinez's endorsement signals not only increasing Republican establishment support for McCain in Florida on the eve of Tuesday's vote, but could be of significant help in securing the state's Hispanic vote for McCain as well.

Photo Credit: Washinton Post

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UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin at Commentary adds some perspective to the SurveyUSA data on Florida cited above (via Memeorandum):

The latest SurveyUSA Florida poll shows McCain at 30 percent, Romney at 28 percent, Rudy at 18 percent and Huckabee with 14 percent. Some interesting internal numbers jump out. First, with Hispanic voters, McCain leads 60 percent to 16 percent over Rudy, while Romney draws only 10 percent. These voters are 10.7 percent of the GOP electorate and were thought to be a source of strong support for Rudy. But the numbers tell a different story. McCain may get a further bump today with the endorsement of Senator Mel Martinez, who may not be the favorite among conservative Republicans nationally but is very popular with Florida’s Hispanic population.

Even more startling is this nugget from the poll: McCain leads 37 percent to 25 percent over Romney among voters who say the economy is the number one issue. This seems counterintuitive in light of Romney’s improved messaging and his obvious command of economic issues. However, there may be something missing in his appeal. In a speech today at the Latin Builders Association he added some lines that we haven’t heard before:

I’ve had settings where I’ve had to lay people off. It’s an awful feeling. No one likes laying someone off . . . Someone who thinks that you’re a bad person if you lay someone off doesn’t understand. You feel bad. Its probably the hardest thing I’ve done in business.

Could it be that Romney comes across too corporate or too upscale and is now attempting a slight course correction? There is some evidence this is a problem for him. In New Hampshire, for example, he lost every economic group except those making $150-199K, and lost 22 percent to 39 percent to McCain among voters who considered the economy the number one issue. His focus on economics has intensified since then, and he has had much more time to demonstrate his expertise, but if the Florida poll is accurate it suggests he still has not connected with the majority of voters on what should be his best issue. Hopefully, he won’t resort to tears, but I do expect more ” I feel your pain” moments before Tuesday. (By the way, we should keep in mind that with over 700,000 early and absentee votes already in, half the voters expected to turn out have already voted.)

Well, things could shift alright!

The Left Blogosphere vs. The Foreign Policy Community

David Frum has a neat piece on (antiwar) blogging and foreign policy at the new National Interest.

Frum looks at the frustration among a number of top left-wing bloggers with the "foreign policy community," or "FPC." Why should these sheltered mandarins have the final word on the direction of American international affairs? Moreover, what gives them the right?!!

Read the whole thing (Frum provides some juicy quotes on hard-left outrage over the FPC's alleged enabling of Bush administration foreign policy "disasters").

I liked this part, however:

Here, for example, is a marvelous demonstration of the mutual torment practiced upon each other by the bloggers and the FPC.

On August 14, 2007, Brookings Institution scholar Michael O’Hanlon was asked on a radio show about Glenn Greenwald’s lengthy and highly personal attacks upon him. He replied,

Well, I don’t have high regard for the kind of journalism that Mr. Greenwald has carried out here. I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time rebutting Mr. Greenwald because he’s had frankly more time and more readership than he deserves.

This put-down was featured on the left-leaning website CrooksandLiars.com and provoked 71 responses, including this one:

Dear Michael O’Hacklon, Armstrong Williams wants his job back, the one that you are currently occupying. . . .Anyway, there never seems to be a shortage of your special brand of treasonous frauds running around. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.

And this one:

Oh my goodness Mr. O’Hanlon, so sorry the caviar was not up to your supreme standards. We’ll have the beluga beaten immediately.

And this one:

two words for you o’hanlon: f--- you (sorry for the language C&L)

glenn greenwald is a true patriot, working to ensure the continued viability of our ever-so fragile democracy. and, ohanlon? nothing but a blowhard caught in inaccuracies and, like armstrong williams and gannon/guckert, a tool of the administration. the question i have for o’hanlon is just how much money it took for you to sacrifice your integrity.

good job mikey, you have done serious damage to the brookings institute. from now on any ‘finding’ or opinion stemming from this now-compromised “think” tank will be followed by an asterisk, saying: beware, some brookings fellows spew govt propaganda and try to pass it off as independent conclusions. . . .

Bitter! And also strange. Michael O’Hanlon, as readers of The National Interest will know, is the editor of the Iraq Index, a source relied upon by people of almost all points of view. He served in the Congressional Budget Office during the last Democratic majority and has strongly criticized the Bush Administration almost from Inauguration Day. What makes him such a detested target?

To find the answer, revert for a minute to a key point in Gideon Rose’s above-quoted paragraphs: The bloggers’ attacks are generally aimed at the think-tank world. Which is to say: at members of the FPC who are currently out of power. Which is to say: at Democrats. Especially at moderate Democrats, internationalist-minded Democrats, Democrats who in 2002–2003 expressed support for the Iraq War. The bloggers hurling the invective are Democrats too, usually more liberal Democrats.

The blogosphere of 2007 is a predominantly liberal and Democratic place. This was not always the case: As recently as 2005, former Vice President Al Gore castigated “digital brownshirts” who bullied and intimidated critics of George Bush. He would have no such complaint today. Today, it is the critics of George Bush who do the brown-shirting.

Thus, the generally liberal journalist Joe Klein complained in June 2007 of the

fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable.

While online readership surveys are notoriously unreliable, such data as exists suggests that the liberal site Daily Kos outdraws Rush Limbaugh’s website. Traffic on participatory conservative sites like Free Republic and Red State has plunged, and as this election cycle opens, one senses greater energy and sees more comments on big liberal blogsites like TalkingPointsMemo.com and the WashingtonMonthly.com than on their conservative counterparts. Technologically, liberal sites like the HuffingtonPost and MediaMatters seem a generation ahead of counterparts like Drudge and the Media Research Project.

So when we talk about the antagonism that has arisen between bloggers and the FPC, we are really talking about liberal bloggers and the Democratic half of the FPC. This is a family feud, one that bears more than a passing resemblance to the great Democratic schism over Vietnam.

It's an interesting analysis, but incomplete.

I think the left's outrage is directed at any and all support for the Bush administration. There's nothing possibly redeeming about "the Bush/Cheney regime" to the hard left. So for those scholars who would normally be consided natural left-wing allies, the controversy's tantamount to an online ideological inquisition.

Now, it's true that most of the foreign policy professoriate resides on the left of the spectrum. There is some diversity, however. Daniel Drezner, a right-of-center international relations scholar at the Fletcher School, took Glenn Greenwald to the woodshed in a series of posts a while back, a debate which provides some data for the Frum discussion.

Neoconservatives, naturally, as Frum rightly notes, come in for the lion's share of abuse. But the left blogosphere's not exclusively outraged with liberal turncoats: It's anyone who's backed the Bush administration's foreign policy, left, right, or center.

Beyond this, an interesting hypothesis would be to argue that the radical netroots will hold an inordinate level of influence in Democratic foreign policy in 2009 (should the party come to power).

If we take Frum's discussion to the next level - starting with the notion that the leftosphere's not content to sit on the sidelines in foreign affairs - the Democratic Party's assumed inclusiveness should propel the netroot hordes to the status of an elite "Bloggers' Council on Foreign Relations."

I hope I'm proven wrong.

Conservative Fears in Election '08

It's been an unusually interesting time for blogging this last couple of weeks, since John McCain won the New Hampshire primary.

In resurrecting his political campaign, McCain's triggered the most vitriolic debate on the future of the conservative movement since G.H.W. Bush broke his "read-my-lips-no-new-taxes" pledge in 1990.

The debate's been felt at American Power. Some longtime conservative commenters here have frankly become unhinged at the prospect of McCain securing the GOP nomination. This is uncomfortable, for vigorous debates and an occasional coffee-house atmosphere have prevailed here on many occasions. This is especially true on questions of Iraq and international security. Indeed, building a community of national security conservatives to fight left-wing appeasement and nihilism has been a driving goal of my project.

But the McCain campaign has fractured the conservative blogging community, and in the larger media environment - in the mainstream media and talk radio - conservatives appear more crazed than ever in their goals for the movement and the Republican Party.

Sure, the primary process is designed to winnow the also-rans, elevating a strong movement leader to raise the party's standard. But that's not happened this year. It's no surprise, of course. With no incumbent president or vice-president seeking the nomination, the 2008 election marks the first time since 1928 in which a GOP race has been considered this wide open.

Here's Susan Page at USA Today on the GOP's current divisions:

Never before in modern times has there been such a muddle over the GOP nominee.

Republicans have seen three different contenders win the first three major contests — this year in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan — something that hasn't happened in the GOP since primaries began to dominate the nominating process.

At this point, none of the contenders confidently can claim front-runner status. Four — McCain, Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani — can credibly argue they could be nominated. The fifth candidate still in the race, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, has the money to continue his anti-war, anti-establishment crusade.

The field hasn't been significantly winnowed not because the contenders are so strong, but because none of them is fully acceptable to all the major factions of the GOP.

As McCain moves forward to capture the mantle of national Republican frontrunner, conservative activists are increasingly alarmed.

Jay Carney over at Time suggests there's some fear and irrationalism driving the opposition to McCain's straight-talk juggernaut:

Conservative fears about McCain are often irrational: through a 25-year career in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate, McCain has proved himself consistently pro-life on abortion and a hawk on defense, a scourge of wasteful government spending and a generally reliable vote in favor of tax cuts. Yet at last year's Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of party power brokers, McCain was booed.

Conservative élites are the ones most likely to break out into hives at the mention of McCain's name. Former Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay has declared that he would not vote for McCain in the general election, even if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee. Railing against McCain and Huckabee, both of whom he views as anathema to conservatives, talk-radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh recently warned his 13.5 million listeners, "If either of these two guys gets the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party." A few days later, Limbaugh was so outraged by the possibility that Republicans might support McCain that he bellowed, "If you Republicans don't mind McCain's positions, then what is it about Hillary's positions you dislike? They're the same!"

The truth is that McCain and Clinton remain far apart on the political spectrum. But it is also true that conservatives have a lengthy bill of complaint against McCain. In the past decade he has joined with Democrats on a series of crusades in Congress — with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform and Ted Kennedy on immigration reform — that a majority of Republicans have opposed. He voted against President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and '03, each time citing the need for fiscal restraint. And during his 2000 campaign, he labeled Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance."

He has seemed to delight in doing battle with members of his own party and creed. "John's mistake is that he makes it personal," says a close friend in Washington. "When he's convinced he's doing the right thing, he has a hard time staying above the fray." All the while — and this may be what galls conservatives most — McCain has been hailed by liberals and lionized in the mainstream news media for being a rebel.

This maverick reputation, so prized for its general-election appeal, makes it difficult for McCain to pass the primary threshold. As was the case in 2000, McCain in 2008 has yet to win even a plurality of Republican votes in a presidential primary outside his home state of Arizona and the generally liberal Northeast.

This frustrates McCain, something I saw over dinner with him in Washington in May 2002, when McCain told me he was probably through with running for President. He had tried it two years before and almost pulled off a historic upset against Bush. But, he said, "you can't bottle lightning." Twice during dinner, patrons went over to shake McCain's hand and urge him to run again — against Bush in 2004 — as an independent or Democrat. The Senator was gracious and noncommittal. But after the second time, he gave me an exaggerated roll of his eyes and shook his head. "I'm a Republican, for chrissakes!"

The whole controversy seems almost unreal. McCain's widely considered to represent the most fundamental appeal to American honor among any politician currently on the scene.

Given such thoughts, I find the debate on McCain's conservative credentials rather undignified, even juvenile at times.

I've supported McCain since early 2007, when I first learned he was seeking the nomination. I put up a few posts (here-and-there) on the Arizona Senator throughout 2007. I wasn't all that upset when his campaign started to tank last summer, and through my blogging I've been evaluating the various GOP hopefuls and weighing my vote. On foreign policy, I consider all the to GOP candidates vastly superior to the Democratic field. Even Mike Huckabee - for all his folksy inexperience in international affairs - has the gut instincts on the rightness of our cause, and he'll duly represent our infinite determination to defend American freedom. (I don't consider Ron Paul to be a top-tier candidate, and his candidacy has been an embarrassment to the GOP cause of American power).

The Florida primary next Tuesday will not settle matters for Republicans. If McCain wins the Sunshine State, he'll be annointed by the press as the prohibitive GOP frontrunner - but the conservative base will kick-and-scream all the way through the February 5 round of primaries and beyond.

I'll be blogging for McCain throughout it all. Some conservative blogging buddies, I'm sure, aren't so happy with my McCain enthusiasm, and some will turn against me on the basis of their narrow self-interest. That's life - politics ain't beanbag. Others - so far as I can tell - appear to value their online relationships, and will be breathing easier when the nomination is all wrapped up. That's certainly how I feel.

But I'll be sticking to my guns, reporting and commenting on the race as I see it. I'm for McCain, sure. But I'm also a political scientist who's been formally studying politics for over 20 years. If McCain fails to secure the party's backing, I'll be thrilled to rally behind the eventually nominee.

What I won't do is demonize anyone, and I won't compromise my personal integrity by making cheap shots at others who don't toe any particulary ideological line. May the best man win, I say. But in the end conservatives need to look ahead to November. Vilifying McCain now only helps pave the way for Democratic electoral success in November.

The Arizona Senator's a genuine, virtuous Republican, and his conservative record is outstanding. I'm confident he'll provide the leadership and stature to unify the country, and the world. More than that, he'll win with honor, whatever happens - and so far that's more than I can say for some his opponents intent on hammering him into oblivion.

Why Conservatives Should be Open to John McCain

Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey explain why conservatives should back John McCain, at the Weekly Standard:

SOME OF THE SHARPEST minds of conservative punditry have lately been whetting their knives on the candidacy of John McCain. The trend of these arguments is disturbing, because it indicates conservatism may be drifting far from its roots. The ire against McCain contains elements of two of the greatest fallacies of modern political thought: the notion that ideology can replace virtue as the mainstay of a decent regime, and the cynical assumption that virtue is not real but vanity in disguise.

The main current of opposition to McCain faults him for departures from strict free-market ideology. McCain's decisions about tax cuts, campaign finance, and greenhouse gas caps may be prudent or imprudent, and it is important to debate their practical effects on our economy and on our nation's well-being. Nonetheless, if conservatives succeed in marginalizing anyone who does not toe the doctrinaire line of their free market ideology, they will lose an important--indeed the most central and precious--aspect of their creed: the faith in the virtue of individuals to make a good society for themselves, rather than the faith in an ideology to make a good society for us.

The modern form of this debate goes back at least as far as Immanuel Kant, who articulated the core of the progressive faith when he argued that "a people of devils" could form a well-governed society, as long as those devils were intelligent--that is, as long as they believed in the correct ideology. Alexander Hamilton knew better. Hamilton warned that when virtue came to be considered "only a graceful appendage of wealth . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard." Hamilton was one of the most ardent believers in the benefits of commerce among the Founding Fathers. And yet he was not an ideologue. He knew that rigorous adherence to any single idea was a recipe for political decline. Hamilton argued that a decent political order requires virtuous statesmen because the activity of politics demands moral intelligence, or what the ancient philosophers called prudence. Even the best-designed republic requires prudent leadership, and Hamilton knew there is no substitute for this virtue....

Senator McCain is not perfect, but he has the priceless virtue of believing in virtue. He knows himself to be ambitious, but he also knows that to be honorable he must put his ambition in the service of something greater than himself: his country. Difficult as it is to embody virtue in action or define it in thought, conservatives must have the courage to acknowledge the reality of virtue and its necessary role in public life. Hamilton didn't think that virtue was an attractive ornament; he insisted that it was indispensable to republican government. Free-market ideologues, who pride themselves on their hard-headedness, are insufficiently hard-headed about this stubborn fact.

Storey and Storey might have added immigration, a policy area that has generated some of the right's most vehement anti-McCain denunciations.

It's a good piece, nevertheless, although the argument's at an abstract level of political theory that hardline conservative ideologues won't find compelling. The authors are right, in any case: Unflinching ideology - a driving force for political mobilization - is often disfunctional in terms of resolving society's policy dilemmas.

In contrast, political science has recognized the efficacy of political pragmatism - a willingness to seek practical solutions to pressing demands - which is seen as the democratic political orientation most conducive to the long-term institutional effectiveness of the regime.

The Foreign Policy Election

I disagree with Matthew Yglesias on just about everything, but he helps clarify party differences on foreign policy and electoral choice over at the American Prospect:

Thanks to improving casualty statistics from Iraq and worsening numbers from our economy, recent months have seen the presidential campaign move toward an increasing focus on domestic issues. These same factors, however, make it all but inevitable that Republicans will run in 2008 on a strong national security message in an effort to counteract an economic situation that will almost certainly run in the Democrats' favor. And if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama hopes to prevail, they're going to have to come up with something better than what was on display during their brief foreign-policy tussle during Monday night's debate. Hillary Clinton, attempting to drive the knife into Obama's back, warned that if John McCain is the Republican nominee, "we know that once again we will have a general election about national security. That is what will happen. I believe of any one of us, I am better positioned and better able to take on John McCain or any Republican when it comes to issues about protecting and defending our country and promoting our interest in the world."

This was a Clinton debacle in the making; a pitch tailor-made for Barack Obama to slam out of the park by quipping, "I don't think the way to beat Republicans on national security is by supporting their catastrophic invasions."

Instead, John Edwards talked for a while about lobbyists, and then Obama weakly returned the conversation to Clinton's comment, saying, "I believe that the way we are going to take on somebody like a John McCain on national security is not that we're sort of -- we've been sort of like John McCain, but not completely, you know, we voted for the war, but we had reservations." Then, figuring this wasn't abstract enough, he went meta: "I think it's going to be somebody who can serve as a strong contrast and say, 'we've got to overcome the politics of fear in this country.'"

I'm sympathetic to what I think Obama was trying to say, but the point is better put more simply -- to have the best shot at winning national security arguments with John McCain, the Democrats need a candidate who didn't support the invasion of Iraq. After all, McCain won't be tarred with the specific acts of "incompetence" that are frequently (and misleadingly) alleged to have been responsible for disaster in Iraq. The Democratic nominee is going to have to argue that there is a fundamental strategic difference in their approach and that of the Republican nominee.

Yglesias might want to be careful in his recommendations. Note how he does not concede America's increasing progress in the Iraq war.

Military success is the biggest foreign policy fact of election '08, and frankly, it's the reason all the Democrats fear McCain as they do.

Progress on the war illustrates the reality of any public policy, foreign or domestic: policies are not always immediately effective; unintended consequences often create new dilemmas requiring adjustments and reconsideration.

This is what happened in the war.

The Bush administration took the Afghanistan model and applied it to Iraq. The three-week anti-Saddam incursion brilliantly toppled the regime in Baghdad, but faulty assumptions left the U.S. unprepared for the murderous reign of mayhem and terror to follow.

Yet the Bush administration adapted - pushing through a troop increase under the counter-insurgency plan of General David Petraeus - achieving the greatest strategic comeback in the post-World War II era.

John McCain can claim foresight and resolve on such progress, and the Democrats will be hard-pressed to respond. We can move ahead in Afghanistan and in the broader war on terror with a combination of increased manpower in South Asia and smarter policies in counterterrorism and antiproliferation.

The policies that Yglesias wants candidates to denounce are the very policies the Democrats backed in Congress following 9/11.

The outcome of the debate will further demonstrate the party's fundamental weakness on an issue that may be receding to the background amid economic uncertaintly, but one that will rush to the front of the policy agenda at news of the next international crisis and accompanying calls for American leadership.

A Vicious Broadside Against John McCain

Captain Ed provides his analysis of the New York Times' endorsement of John McCain:

As if John McCain didn't have enough problems appealing to the Republican base. Last night, as the presidential primary debate in Florida started, the New York Times issued a vicious broadside against the McCain campaign, one that will only estrange him further from the voters he needs the most as he head into a series of closed primaries.

The Captain quotes the editorial, and adds this:

He [McCain] stands on principle, except for those few times he panders. They like his bipartisanship except when he isn't. They think he did a great job in calculating the cost of a losing war strategy, for a war they insist the US can't win. Talk about damning with faint praise! The only passion they have for McCain comes from his enthusiasm for global-warming policy.

Yeah, that'll win over reluctant Republicans.

And this:

It's this kind of staggering cluelessness that makes their Republican endorsement poison. It does provide a test for the McCain campaign, however. If they trumpet this endorsement, it will show a tone deafness towards the party base they need in the closed primaries. Rudy, on the other hand, should note that his candidacy is the one that the New York Times fears the most.

Actually, as I've noted, McCain's campaign is most feared by NYT, which is why the paper endorsed him. Here's what I said earlier:

Perhaps the paper's pragmatic, getting its bets in now with the most publically-identified leader among the candidates of either party. Truth be told, though, McCain will be NYT's arch nemesis on American foreign policy and the battle for global freedom. McCain will protect American national security on the march of freedom. This is an agenda the Old Gray Lady's already resisted to its very core.

Captain Ed's right, though: McCain should ignore the New York Times.

See also the reaction at Memeorandum.

Americans Prefer Tested Leader to Inspiring One

New survey data indicate that public opinion prefers a tested leader to an inspirational one, the Gallup Poll reports:

Americans say being inspiring is an important presidential quality, but when forced to choose, they would rather see a president elected in 2008 who is a tested leader, but not inspirational, than a candidate who is inspiring but not a tested leader. Most Republicans opt for electing a tested leader, while Democrats are evenly divided. Among the four leading Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, Barack Obama is most often rated as being inspirational, while John McCain is the runaway leader for tested leadership.

The Jan. 10-13 poll finds that 71% of Americans say it is "very important" for a president to be inspiring; an additional 23% say it is "somewhat important." Similar percentages of Republicans, independents, and Democrats believe it is important to have an inspirational president.

Even though Americans value having an inspiring president, they give higher priority to a leader who has been tested when asked to choose between two hypothetical candidates as defined by these two dimensions. Fifty-two percent of Americans say they would prefer the 2008 presidential election winner to be "a candidate who is a tested leader but who is not that inspiring" while 43% say it would be better to elect "a candidate who is inspiring but who has not been tested as a leader."

Republicans show a strong inclination toward a tested leader: 60% think this is more important for the next president than being inspiring, while 33% think the opposite. Democrats are evenly divided, with 49% preferring an inspirational leader and 49% preferring a tested one. Independents show a slight preference for a tested leader.

I frankly see the leadership test as one of the most powerful reasons for conservatives to rally to the McCain banner.

Iraq now is increasingly pacified, but there's national security challenges around the corner; and at home Americans need a leader with proven ability to hold the line on special interest demands for earmark extravaganzas and multicultural munificence.

That man is Senator John McCain. The public says so, and I hope partisan conservatives will soon recognize the facts on the ground in the American heartland.

New York Times Endorses Hillary Clinton

Via Memeorandum, the New York Times has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination:

The early primaries produced two powerful main contenders: Hillary Clinton, the brilliant if at times harsh-sounding senator from New York; and Barack Obama, the incandescent if still undefined senator from Illinois. The remaining long shot, John Edwards, has enlivened the race with his own brand of raw populism.

As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election.

We have enjoyed hearing Mr. Edwards’s fiery oratory, but we cannot support his candidacy. The former senator from North Carolina has repudiated so many of his earlier positions, so many of his Senate votes, that we’re not sure where he stands. We certainly don’t buy the notion that he can hold back the tide of globalization.

By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton would both help restore America’s global image, to which President Bush has done so much grievous harm. They are committed to changing America’s role in the world, not just its image. On the major issues, there is no real gulf separating the two. They promise an end to the war in Iraq, more equitable taxation, more effective government spending, more concern for social issues, a restoration of civil liberties and an end to the politics of division of George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

I'll just end the quote right there.

Readers need to keep in mind that NYT - despite the demands of journalism's professional ethics of objectivity - will do just about whatever takes to disrupt Republican prospects for retaining the White House this year.

First step: Get on board "Hill Force One" while it's motoring down the tarmac, better that way to get in on the ground floor of Democratic Party access and media largesse in a Clinton-times-two presidential administration.

Besides this, NYT has the most pronounced political agenda of any of the country's major national dailies. This is the newspaper, of course, that has repeatedly compromised American national security by unveiling U.S. intelligence programs that have worked to secure vital information on America's enemies and their plans.

This is a newspaper whose readership, egged on by outlandish frontpage reporting and editorial commentary, epitomizes the ultimate, narrow echo chamber of left-wing intolerance - the outrage at neoconservative William Kristol's hiring attests to that.

This is the paper, moreover, that has seen its reputation as the country's unofficial newspaper of record tarnished by scandals of plagiarism and shoddy journalistic practice.

It's with these thoughts in mind that one should consider the paper's backing of Hillary Clinton. No matter Hillary's obvious political skills and perseverance, there's a venality and remorseless in her drive for power that's mirrored by the Times' opportunistic backing.

Conservatives have a big year ahead of them. Democratic partisans are more enthusiastic about election politics so far. This big push by the leading liberal journalistic mouthpiece will add more kindling to that fire.

It's time to think now - beyond the primaries - of the consequences of easy cruising while the left-wing media mobilizes behind the Clinton machine. The highest stakes lie ahead, on November 4, when the country selects our next president and commander-in-chief.

**********

UPDATE: The Times has also endorsed Senator John McCain, but for all the wrong reasons.

The paper endorses his criticism of the Rumsfeld follies of light infantry and zero post-conflict stability. Simultaneously, the editors refuse to acknowledge the most important fact of the war today: military success, which is leading to increasing political accomodation:

Mr. McCain was one of the first prominent Republicans to point out how badly the war in Iraq was being managed. We wish he could now see as clearly past the temporary victories produced by Mr. Bush’s unsustainable escalation, which have not led to any change in Iraq’s murderous political calculus. At the least, he owes Americans a real idea of how he would win this war, which he says he can do.

NYT also makes light of Senator McCain's essential conservativism, writing off his bedrock positions on abortion and gay rights, as though these positions result from flexible campaign pandering.

Perhaps the paper's pragmatic, getting its bets in now with the most publically-identified leader among the candidates of either party. Truth be told, though, McCain will be NYT's arch nemesis on American foreign policy and the battle for global freedom. McCain will protect American national security on the march of freedom. This is an agenda the Old Gray Lady's already resisted to its very core.

New Poll Shows GOP Challenges Ahead

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll indicates troubled waters ahead for the Republicans in the November election:

Just when it seemed Americans couldn't get any gloomier about the country's direction, they have. That finding, from the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, could leave Republicans the gloomiest of all, as prospects for their party darken further in a presidential election year.

Amid a weakened economy and market turmoil, President Bush's stock has fallen again as he prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address next week, underscoring the burden he could pose for his party's presidential nominee in the race to November's election.

As for his would-be successors, the remaining Republicans candidates have dropped further behind in hypothetical match-ups against potential Democratic standard-bearers Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The exception is Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has revived his still-fragile candidacy and takes the lead in Republicans' contest for the first time in the poll.

He runs even with both Democrats in hypothetical contests -- 46% to 44% against Mrs. Clinton, and a 42% draw against Mr. Obama. Both results are essentially the same given the poll's margin of error.

In a Republican field that is down to five candidates from originally twice that, Mr. McCain is the top choice of Republicans, with 29% support versus 23% for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Mr. Romney, who tied former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the top spot in last month's poll with 20% support each, remains at that number.

But Mr. Giuliani, the Republicans' national poll leader for all of 2007, drops to fourth place with 15%, continuing a long slide that is reflected, more ominously, in state polls in Florida. He has staked his candidacy on winning the Sunshine State's Republican primary on Tuesday, but now trails Messrs. McCain and Huckabee, who are splitting the votes of, respectively, Florida's moderate Republicans and Christian conservatives.

I've said many times that 2008 is shaping up as a Democratic year.

Fortunately, GOP near-frontrunner John McCain runs evenly against either prospective Democratic nominee. Indeed, recent surveys have found the Arizona Senator most respected in the electorate on leadership qualities and fitness to step into the nation's top job.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Mitt's Money: Romney's Wallet Keeps Him in the Race

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Mitt Romney's personal wealth is sustaining his otherwise marginal campaign:

Mitt Romney lost three of the first five big Republican contests and lags behind in most major state and national polls. Yet he is still widely seen as a credible contender for the nomination thanks mainly to one trait: his wallet.

A senior aide to Mr. Romney says the millionaire investor plans to spend as much as $40 million in the campaign. Mr. Romney spent $17.4 million of his own money on his campaign through the third quarter of last year, according to the Federal Election Commission.

By comparison, Arizona Sen. John McCain raised a total of $31.4 million in individual donations during the same period. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee raised $2.3 million.

At a time when some campaigns are running dangerously low on funds, Mr. Romney's ability to self-finance will make it difficult to count him out of the race until the very end.

"At the end of the day, he doesn't have to worry about the things that other people have to worry about," said Ed Rollins, a senior adviser to Mr. Huckabee who recently agreed to forgo his $25,000 monthly paycheck because the campaign was running out of money. "He just goes to his ATM machine and pulls out whatever he needs."

"Each of us runs our campaign the best way we know how," Mr. Romney responded yesterday, "given, if you will, the cards we were dealt."

Mr. Romney's use of his wealth doesn't seem to bother Republican voters. "I think he's fortunate," said Freeman Healy, an 85-year-old retiree who lives in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Mr. Healy hasn't decided between Messrs. Romney, McCain or former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but he, like many other Florida residents, said Mr. Romney's wealth wouldn't be a concern. "He's worked hard and he earned it," he said.

Mr. Romney, who is reportedly worth at least $250 million, is certainly not the first, or the largest, self-financing politician. Ross Perot spent a combined $71 million in his pair of bids for the Oval Office in 1992 and 1996. Steve Forbes gave $76 million of his own money during two unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000. And the White House isn't the only prize that prompted others to dig deep in their pockets. Jon Corzine, the former head of Goldman Sachs and Democratic governor of New Jersey, spent more than $60 million on his successful U.S. senate race in 2000.

For presidential hopefuls, money matters most during the primary season - as a rule, it's easier to get donations during the general election - and never more than this cycle. The front-loaded schedule leaves little time for victors of key states to hold fund-raisers and cash-in on their winnings. Feb. 5, known as Super Tuesday, will be the toughest time of all, with the candidates trying to hit as many of the 21 states holding Republican contests as possible. Each contender needs millions of dollars just to stay viable.

Also today, the New York Times reports that Romney's not well liked along the campaign trail among the other top contenders for the GOP nomination:

At the end of the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire this month, when the Democrats joined the candidates on stage, Mitt Romney found himself momentarily alone as his counterparts mingled, looking around a bit stiffly for a companion.

The moment was emblematic of a broader reality that has helped shape the Republican contest and could take center stage again on Thursday at a debate in Florida. Within the small circle of contenders, Mr. Romney has become the most disliked.

With so much attention recently on the sniping between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, the almost visceral scorn directed at Mr. Romney by his rivals has been overshadowed.

“Never get into a wrestling match with a pig,” Senator John McCain said in New Hampshire this month after reporters asked him about Mr. Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

Mike Huckabee’s pugilistic campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, appeared to stop just short of threatening Mr. Romney with physical violence at one point.

“What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process,” Mr. Rollins said.

Campaign insiders and outside strategists point to several factors driving the ill will, most notably, Mr. Romney’s attacks on opponents in television commercials, the perception of him as an ideological panderer and resentment about his seemingly unlimited resources as others have struggled to raise cash.

Romney's money could be a decisive factor if he wins the Florida GOP primary on January 29. He could, with a win, combine his massive personal wealth with a rush of "earned media" time that comes free of charge with the momentum of campaign victory.

As I've said all along, this year's an amazingly interesting race.

The hope of many, of course, is for the Republicans to unify around a strong party standard-bearer, which would position the GOP to be more competitive against the Democratic nominee in November.

Rush Limbaugh's Diminished Power?

I'm not a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. I've paid more attention to him this week than ever before, considering his intemperate attacks on John McCain.

That said, note Peter Wehner's analysis of Limbaugh's influence:

I think there is some amount of ignorance when it comes to people who don’t often listen to Rush Limbaugh trying to explain him and his influence. For one thing, he doesn’t view himself as the commanding general of a political army and his listeners as his troops. He has said, time and again, that his listeners are not “mind-numbed robots” who take order from him or anyone else. Limbaugh is above all a radio-talk-show host — an immensely talented, humorous, and well-informed one, and among the most important voices in the history of radio. He is that before he is anything else — and he has never fashioned himself as a political kingmaker or even the leader of a movement. Obviously he exerts great influence over conservatism and has influenced our understanding of it. Yet he calls things as he sees them, and sometimes his audience doesn’t agree with him. He seems wholly untroubled by that. I recall that in 1992, many of his listeners were early and enthusiastic supporters of Ross Perot. Limbaugh knew all that — and yet he criticized Perot anyway. It turned out he was right and his listeners were wrong about Perot — but at the time, Limbaugh was said to be out of step with the views of his audience. Yet he continued to make his case — and, eventually, he won over many of his early critics.

I think Rush will be wrong in 2008. Or, at least, he's wrong to villify the Arizona Senator as a traitor to the Republican Party.

To borrow from Michael Medved's column on McCain over at Townhall:

He [McCain] has never backed Democratic candidates for president or lesser posts – other than supporting his friend Joe Lieberman in his Independent campaign for US Senate in 2006. Over the years, he has campaigned tirelessly for Republican office-holders in every corner of the country – including vigorous campaigning that helped win elections for his former rival George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. McCain has earned a lifetime rating of 83 for his Senate voting record from the American Conservative Union; his friend, Fred Thompson, won a very similar lifetime rating of 86 and appropriately dubbed himself “a consistent conservative.” While some of McCain’s harshest critics regularly talk of abandoning the GOP for some third party option (and some did so to back Pat Buchanan’s embarrassing run in 2000), McCain has never abandoned his party. On three crucial items in the Bush agenda – taking the offensive against terrorists, cutting wasteful government spending, and comprehensive immigration reform – no member of Congress has provided more loyal or significant support for the President of the United States and the leader of the Republican Party.

Now, the primary process is designed to narrow the field of candidates and clarify the party's governing vision. Unfortunately, narrow partisan battles and criticism weaken the party in the long run, which is exactly what Rush Limbaugh's doing right now with his incessant attacks on McCain.

At this time candidates are required to appeal to narrow voting constituents. Pandering to single-issue groups contrains candidates in the straightjacket of ideological conformity. There's less appreciation of a candidate's moderating propensities, and especially general election viability.

This is why parties seek to pick a nominee quickly, wrapping up partisan haggling to unify under a party standard-bearer. The GOP in the last few openly contested nominations quickly centered around a frontrunner and made that candidate their man for the White House (Reagan in 1980, G.H.W. Bush in 1992, and G.W. Bush in 2000).

This year's race for the Republican nomination - as dynamic and competitive as it has been - may ultimately be contributing to the emergence of GOP minority status, should the party prolong the process of backing a clear frontrunner.

The closest anyone's come to securing that mantle is John McCain, with his dramatic wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina. It's no wonder the media's focused so intently on the McCain campaign - his is the up-from-the-bootstraps, feel-good, straight-talk comeback of the year.

Rush Limbaugh doesn't like it. Nor do the base conservatives who gravitated to Fred Thompson's lazy waltz of a candidacy, or those who now back Mitt Romney's personally-financed bid.

Folks are certainly entitled to suppporting their preferences, but with so much at stake this year - the Democrats are looking at the best electoral environment in decades - it might behoove Rush and his Dittoheads to think about the prospects of a Democratic administration to come. They might look at the totality of McCain's conservativism and reconsider, rather than risk destroying the GOP from the inside-out, ultimately engendering a disastrous hard-left presidency in 2009?

Bill Kristol, Iraq, and the New York Times

The controversy over William Kristol's New York Times gig continues with a piece by Gabriel Sherman over at The New Republic.

Sherman reviews the massive hard-left criticisms of the Times' choice of Kristol as the paper's second right-wing op-ed columnist: Kristol's a neoconservative water-carrier for the reviled Bush-Cheney regime; he's a hack of a writer whose name belongs nowhere near a NYT byline; and, indeed, his debut essay itself illustrated how unfit The Weekly Standard publisher is for the big leagues of print journalism.

But underneath all of this is one organizing thorn: The Iraq war. Here's Sherman on this:

...behind much of the internal distaste for Kristol lies the paper's complicated relationship with the Iraq war. In an August 2002 column in The Weekly Standard, as the Bush administration began marshaling its case for war, Kristol labeled the Times a member of the "Axis of Appeasement," and a piece in his magazine commented that the paper's bias against the war "colors . . . practically every news story on the subject."
According to a former Times staffer, criticism from Kristol and other conservatives weighed heavily on the Times' pre-war coverage, which turned more hawkish under then-executive editor Howell Raines and Washington bureau chief Jill Abramson. In September 2002, Judith Miller's credulous front-page pieces on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction began appearing with increasing frequency and were echoed in The Weekly Standard.

Miller's discredited coverage created a near-open revolt in the newsroom, especially in the Washington bureau. Even today, staffers there chafe at Kristol's appointment. "There is a concern internally about Judy. No one wants to go back to those bad old days," the senior staffer said. Another worried that Kristol's columns signaled that "Judy's point of view has returned." (Miller doesn't share her former colleagues' reservations. "[I]t's an appointment that's a long time coming. The page needed balance," she told me. But "an unabashed neocon without remorse is unacceptable to Times people. . . . He's not kosher in that sense.")

More recently, Kristol attacked the Times' publication of a June 2006 piece disclosing the CIA's classified monitoring of international bank transfers. "I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution," Kristol said on "Fox News Sunday" three days after the article was published.

"My personal opinion is it's an appalling choice," a former veteran Times staffer said of Kristol's appointment. "Not because he's been wrong about so much, but because he called for prosecuting the Times for treason. You're entitled to your opinion, but, in all due respect, go fuck yourself."

(Sulzberger and Rosenthal declined to comment on the appointment; a spokeswoman said the paper had "brought Mr. Kristol on board after a long and thoughtful search." Kristol declined to comment about his column. "I'm going to let the column speak for itself," he said.)

Read the rest. Sherman concludes by joining the attack on Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s leadership of the paper, noting that the choice of Kristol cast aspersions on his tenure.

Be that as it may, perhaps this will be the last discussion we'll see on the outrage for a while. Kristol's in the slot now, and if his column fails to lift off, he'll be canned at the end of his term. But let me add my own perspective, beyond the couple of quick posts I've already written on this (here and here).

I've never met Kristol, for one thing, although I've seen him in attendance at American Political Science Association meetings a couple of times. It turns out Kristol's a trained poltical scientist, with a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard. He's certainly got the academic credentials to speak intelligently about politics and policy (even if it's uncouth to appeal to such things).

Not only that, the guy's a successful publisher of one of the most important conservative journals on the market. Sure, the Weekly Standard's a long way from the stature of, say, the National Revew among the mass media elite, but it's no hill of beans either.

Okay, perhaps he's not the greatest writer after all. Still, let's be honest: William Safire - one of the foremost journalistic experts on the English language - is a hard act to follow. Kristol, in any case, will surely publish both good and bad essays by the bagful. In time, he may even generate some critical praise - and this might perchance result from Kristol himself being acculturated to the very journalistic ethos of the newspaper he once denounced.

Such an outcome would probably never satisfy Kristol's vociferous detractors on the left: The Iraq war will forever consign Kristol to journalistic purgatory among Bush-bashers and antiwar peaceniks.

In that Kristol must be enjoying some delicious schadenfreude, since for all the talk of him being wrong on Iraq, he's been proven right in the most important development of the war: We're winning.

Indeed, not only are we winning, neoconservative ideas are currently gaining mass popular steam in the candidacy of GOP frontrunner John McCain. A McCain presidency would not only vindicate proponents of the surge (Kristol being one of the greatest), it would possibly extend the life of the most important doctrinal innovations in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War (the Bush Doctrine of preventive war).

That's what's really driving New York Times readers nuts - their worst nightmares aren't going away any time soon.

See Memeorandum for more.

John McCain: No One More Qualified

Here's another new John McCain campaign ad, now flooding Florida media markets in advance of Tuesday's primary (from YouTube)::

See also my post yesterday on McCain's fundraising push, and an earlier campaign ad, "No Surrender."

Plus, via Jonathan Martin, don't miss Chuck Todd 's analysis of the political dynamics of the Florida race.