Jesse Helms, the Far-Right, and the GOP

The GOP's right wing debate on John McCain's impending nomination provides a needed round of partisan introspection on the future direction of the conservative movement.

I've discussed the McCain controversy forward and backward, although in more recent posts I've looked beyond talk radio puritanism to examine conservative doctrinal foundations (see "After Optimism? Redefining Conservatism in the Post-Reagan Age").

With growing evidence that McCain's candidacy is forging a new GOP coalition, what historical or ideological lessons might we draw from the far-right's successes in Republican Party politics in the last few decades?

David Greenberg 's new review of Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism, establishes some important points to consider:

Appearing on “Larry King Live” in 1995, Jesse Helms, then the senior senator from North Carolina, fielded a call from an unusual admirer. Helms deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, the caller gushed, “for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers.” Given the rank ugliness of the sentiment — the guest host, Robert Novak, called it, with considerable understatement, “politically incorrect” — Helms could only pause before responding. But the hesitation couldn’t suppress his gut instincts. “Whoops, well, thank you, I think,” he said. With prodding from Novak, he added that he’d been spanked as a child for using the N-word and noted (with a delicious hint of uncertainty), “I don’t think I’ve used it since.” As for the caller’s main point — the virtue of keeping down blacks — it passed without comment.

William A. Link, a historian at the University of Florida, recounts this incident in “Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism,” his hefty life of the blunt, bullheaded, hard-right leader who — more than anyone besides Ronald Reagan — embodied conservatism in the 1980s and beyond. Summoning a measure of sympathy for his rather unsympathetic subject, Link can be overly diplomatic in discussing, as he calls it, Helms’s “racial insensitivity.” But it’s to his credit that even when engaging Helms’s more odious views, he shuns stridency while still managing to demonstrate the centrality of Dixie-bred racism to Helms’s career — and to the book’s larger tale of Southern-style conservatism’s ascent since the 1960s.

By the 1990s, to be sure, this racism was rarely articulated so starkly, or even manifested so consciously, as it was by the talk-show caller. But for more than four decades in public life — first as an influential journalist defending Jim Crow in the 1960s in North Carolina, then as “the most important conservative spokesman in the Senate” — Helms was obsessed with race; it was his political weapon of choice. In 1972, as a recent convert to the Republican Party, he won election to the Senate on school busing and kindred issues. In 1990, he aggressively played the race card — broadcasting a TV ad that showed white hands crumpling a job rejection letter — to repulse a challenge from Harvey Gantt, an African-American. And in his five Senate terms Helms led most of the major fights against racial change, opposing the creation of a Martin Luther King holiday in 1983 and the civil rights bill of 1991.

This disposition, of course, was hardly peculiar to Helms. On the contrary, he succeeded because he tapped into grievances — felt by the unbigoted as well as the nakedly prejudiced — that liberals were promoting black progress at the expense of struggling whites. He may have struck Northern liberals as a backwater buffoon, but his skill in framing racially charged issues, like busing and affirmative action, was instrumental in building today’s conservative movement.

By the end of his career, it is true, Helms’s malign wizardry with racial issues failed him. In 1993 his Senate colleague Carol Moseley Braun, an African-American, bested him in a floor fight over granting an extension of a patent to the United Daughters of the Confederacy for a design that featured the original Confederate flag. So stirring was her appeal that even Howell Heflin of Alabama, himself a Helmsian creature of the Old South, decided to oppose the extension, declaring, “We live today in a different world.” Hence the irony of backlash politics: even as Southern conservatives like Helms soared to power because of an antagonism to rights-based liberalism, they did so amid a national culture that was steadily growing more tolerant, more liberal.

Is the Helmsian model of Republican politics an anachronism?

Greenberg suggests it is. Yet, Harold Ford, who in his 2006 Senate bid was the target of Republican-financed, racially-charged attack advertising, might argue to the contrary.

To be clear: While it's obvious that today's GOP is not rife with Jesse Helms wannabes, the party's far-right faction nevertheless continues to stir allegations of intolerance on issues such as gay rights, immigration, and racial politics (I've been the subject of some myself).

The criticism's usually a caricatured version of principled political positions.

Still, it's hard to miss, for example, some apparent and highly-charged non-white animus in recent controversies over immigration reform in 2006 (and frankly during current debate over McCain's earned legalization for illegals as well). Indeed, some of the current outrage on the far-right over immigration reform would make Jesse Helms downright proud.

Having said that, it remains the case that this year's Republican race has demonstrated the marginalization of conservative talk radio mandarins (many of whose listeners formed the core of conservative partisans Helms brought into the GOP in earlier years).

As it looks now, the McCain campaign's been backed increasingly by moderate Republicans and independents, voters who'll likely form a potential winning Republican coalition in the fall.

Note, also, that while deep conservatives in last night's Potomac primaries backed Mike Huckabee over McCain roughly 2-to-1, exit polling found that three-quarters said they'd be satisfied with him as the GOP standard-bearer in November.

Considering McCain's alleged apostasies among the irrational right, yesterday's election data suggest that conservatives may indeed be different than those in the time of Helms' grip on the movement.

Peace and Struggle in the Classroom: The New Intellectual Foundation?

Your kids are getting the straight dope at school right?

Good teachers laying it out, right down the middle, eh? Passionate, rigorous training, professionally delivered?

Maybe not.

The Nation's got a new piece discussing an old problem: left-wing multcultural indoctrination (via Maggie's Farm):

Positioned among smoky factories and aging row houses on Chicago's West Side, the immaculate Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) serves as a constant reminder to community residents of what collective action can produce. Concerned that 70 percent of neighborhood students traveled to different parts of the city for high school, parents organized vigorously for the construction of a new facility in their backyard. After initially approving the plans, city officials stalled construction, claiming that funds had to be diverted to other projects. In response, the community redoubled its efforts, culminating in a nineteen-day hunger strike at the site of the proposed building, referred to by supporters as Camp Cesar Chavez. "Construyan la escuela ahora!" was the protesters' battle cry, and after six long years, the school was opened as promised in 2005.

Aside from the beautiful building, the struggle birthed a new educational environment for Little Village's youth. "The parents kept saying they really wanted our school to teach the values of peace and struggle," says Rito Martinez, the principal of Social Justice High School at LVLHS, "and what the community had to do to fight for the school." One of four small schools housed on the campus, Martinez's social justice school was specifically created to foster basic skills and literacy--as well as critical inquiry--through projects and problems centered on race, gender and economic equity. "There's a combination of self-awareness and the opportunity to become socially conscious," he says. "We're not dogmatic about it...but we give them the opportunity for self-discovery."

On a fall morning a week into the school year, it's clear that the school's methodology excites the students of LVLHS, 98 percent of whom qualify as low-income. It's Wednesday, which means the kids participate in extended teacher-generated colloquiums focusing on topics that allow students to explore their identity in an academic setting. In a section on student organizing, thirteen high schoolers attempt to define the word "community," brainstorming about their city's assets and problems and how the students can tackle an issue of importance to them. Down the hall, an enthusiastic teacher focusing on ethnography leads a lively discussion about racial stereotypes in the media as an entree into the idea of hegemony. Hands pop up across the packed classroom as students argue about how advertisements influence the way society views larger populations. As Martinez notes, providing students the flexibility to "explore learning" is something that's generally offered only to kids in affluent districts, yet the practice can be transformational.

While the history of LVLHS's genesis is unique, its approach is not; the movement to link education, social justice and activism is appealing to a growing number of educators and community organizations around the country. Updating successful principles from liberatory education programs of the past, teachers and community members are finding exciting ways to engage a new generation of urban students alienated by mainstream methodologies, something countless reform efforts have thus far failed to accomplish. And as Congress moves to reform or scrap the No Child Left Behind Act, legislators could benefit from studying these new techniques, which have been largely ignored on a national scale.

Hmm...

Students can explore identity? I wonder what that might be?

Indigenous education? Hueheutlamachilistle — "the way of our ancestors"? Learning communities on "the Europeans' slaughter of this continent's original inhabitants"? How about high school lectures on "the anthropology of race, gender, and power"?

I'm sure there are many more possibilities when teaching social justice eduction.

Here's more from the article:

Conservatives, with the New York Sun and City Journal leading the charge, have denounced the movement for indoctrinating public school students with leftist politics at the expense of general education. But successful social justice education ensures that teachers strike a balance between debating sociopolitical problems that affect children's lives and teaching them academic basics on which they will be tested. A science teacher can plant an urban garden, allowing students to learn about plant biology, the imbalance in how fresh produce is distributed and how that affects the health of community residents. An English teacher can explore misogyny or materialism in American culture through the lens of hip-hop lyrics. Or as Rico Gutstein, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, suggests, a math teacher can run probability simulations using real data to understand the dynamics behind income inequality or racial profiling. These are "examples of lessons where you can really learn the math basics," he says, "but the purpose of learning the math actually becomes an entree into, and a deeper understanding of, the political ramifications of the issue."

Such practical exercises, advocates argue, improve upon the standard approach to youth development, which aims to promote individual success but fails to examine the inequities that inhibit it. "At least to expose people to a structural analysis of inequality and the distribution of goodies in society," says Charles Payne, the Frank P. Hixon Professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, "seems to be one of the more obvious ways that we can do better than we have done." If executed properly, social justice education also lays the intellectual foundation so essential for independent analytical thought while providing students the opportunity to realize their own human agency. In this way, urban students are treated not as burdens to their community but as partners in solving the complex problems that plague their neighborhoods.

I'm a bit skeptical that this pedagogy's really "the intellectual foundation so essential for independent analytical thought."

A couple of semesters of Western political philosophy would be my recommendation for some intellectual foundations. You know, those dead white males...

Senate Votes on Surveillance Security, Democrats in Disarray

The New York Times has the story on yesterday's Senate wiretap defeat for Democratic surrender advocates:

After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.

One by one, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve legislation that the White House had been pushing for months. Mr. Bush hailed the vote and urged the House to move quickly in following the Senate’s lead.

The outcome in the Senate amounted, in effect, to a broader proxy vote in support of Mr. Bush’s wiretapping program. The wide-ranging debate before the final vote presaged discussion that will play out this year in the presidential and Congressional elections on other issues testing the president’s wartime authority, including secret detentions, torture and Iraq war financing.

Republicans hailed the reworking of the surveillance law as essential to protecting national security, but some Democrats and many liberal advocacy groups saw the outcome as another example of the Democrats’ fears of being branded weak on terrorism.

“Some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee and who had unsuccessfully pushed a much more restrictive set of surveillance measures.

Among the presidential contenders, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, voted in favor of the final measure, while the two Democrats, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, did not vote. Mr. Obama did oppose immunity on a key earlier motion to end debate. Mrs. Clinton, campaigning in Texas, issued a statement saying she would have voted to oppose the final measure.

The measure extends, for at least six years, many of the broad new surveillance powers that Congress hastily approved last August just before its summer recess. Intelligence officials said court rulings had left dangerous gaps in their ability to intercept terrorist communications.

The bill, which had the strong backing of the White House, allows the government to eavesdrop on large bundles of foreign-based communications on its own authority so long as Americans are not the targets. A secret intelligence court, which traditionally has issued individual warrants before wiretapping began, would review the procedures set up by the executive branch only after the fact to determine whether there were abuses involving Americans.

“This is a dramatic restructuring” of surveillance law, said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department intelligence lawyer who represents several telecommunication companies. “And the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets.”

The Senate plan also adds one provision considered critical by the White House: shielding phone companies from any legal liability for their roles in the eavesdropping program approved by Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks. The program allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.

This is commonsense legislation, frankly. To most folks who would make a rational trade-off in a little less liberty for a greater promise of security, the surveillance bill is a no brainer.

Importantly, the vote was a dramatic repudiation of the antiwar, terrorist-enabling retreatists of the hard-left Democratic Party coalition.

Take a look around at the online handwringing among radical surrender mavens (here and here). While the Senate vote is a realistic response to the new security of international interdependence (as technology increasingly links our enemies to the U.S. market), American antiwar nihilists continue to beat the drum - louder and louder - for the radicalization of Democratic Party foreign policy.

For now, the wiretap vote illustrates the impotence of much antiwar interest group mobilization on the issue. The balance of power could change, of course, if the unleavened masses elect more appeasement-minded Democrats to Congress in the fall.

We're beginning to see the formation of the real constellation of electoral choices for the year ahead.

President Bush and moderate Democrats and Republicans won this round. A Republican presidential victory in November would work to keep this anti-terror legislative momentum rolling.

Obama Wiretap Vote Would Punish Private Companies, Weaken Security

In recent posts (here and here), I've made the case that a Democratic victory in November would send American foreign policy into a disastrous surrender to the world correlation of forces now arrayed against the United States and its allies.

There's more news to that effect this morning with reports on the Senate's vote yesterday on the administration's surveillance bill, which would grant telecom immunity for companies assisting government intelligence-gathering efforts.

For example, this morning's Wall Street Journal discusses Barack Obama's vote against the wiretap legislation:

Now and then sanity prevails, even in Washington. So it did yesterday as the Senate passed a warrantless wiretap bill for overseas terrorists while killing most of the Lilliputian attempts to tie down our war fighters.

"We lost every single battle we had on this bill," conceded Chris Dodd, which ought to tell the Connecticut Senator something about the logic of what he was proposing. His own amendment -- to deny immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies that cooperated with the government after 9/11 -- didn't even get a third of the Senate. It lost 67-31, though notably among the 31 was possible Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. (Hillary Clinton was absent, while John McCain voted in favor.)

It says something about his national security world view, or his callowness, that Mr. Obama would vote to punish private companies that even the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said had "acted in good faith." Had Senator Obama prevailed, a President Obama might well have been told "no way" when he asked private Americans to help his Administration fight terrorists. Mr. Obama also voted against the overall bill, putting him in MoveOn.org territory.

The defeat of these antiwar amendments means the legislation now moves to the House in a strong position. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in the Dodd-Obama camp, but 21 Blue Dog Democrats have sent her a letter saying they are happy with the Senate bill. She may try to pass the restrictions that failed in the Senate, and Republicans should tell her to make their day. This is a fight Senator McCain should want to have right up through Election Day, with Democrats having to explain why they want to hamstring the best weapon -- real-time surveillance -- we have against al Qaeda.

An Obama presidency, it can be said, would be even more dangerous to American national security than a Hillary Clinton administration. While both senators are hopelessy tied to the antiwar, retreatist base of their party, Hillary's shameless pandering leaves some room that the austerity of the Oval Office could snap her back into the reality of realpolitik in international affairs.

With Obama - already untested as a novice, unheralded freshman senator - we see a genuine desire to open uncritical diplomatic arms to our enemies, placing America's hard-fought gains against the world's nihilist henchmen at risk.

The Journal editors are right: This is a fight McCain wants up through November. He'll floor his opponent on the issue - especially Obama, should he be the Democratic nominee.

McCain Strikes Fear into New "Axis of Evil"

Max Boot makes the case for John McCain in today's Los Angeles Times, and in so doing places the Arizona Senator's commanding national security strengths in stark relief.

Boot suggests that the conservative crackup over McCain's right-wing credentials misses a fundamental issue of campaign '08: how best to combat the forces of world evil arrayed against the United States and our allies.

Of particular concern is the "the new "axis of evil" - an updated three-part spector of terrorism in the likes of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria's Bashar Assad, and North Korea's Kim Jong Il, a dark trio currently threatening America's interests with "impunity."

Boot argues that the Bush administration has dropped the ball in confronting the group. McCain, on the other hand - in a presidency not bound by political baggage or lame-duck status - would truly strike fear into the heart of this anti-American alliance:

While visiting Iraq recently, I was told by U.S. military sources that an estimated 50 to 80 foreign jihadists a month are still infiltrating Iraq from Syria. They have simply changed their route from Anbar province, which has turned decisively against Al Qaeda, to further north in Salahaddin and Nineveh provinces. Moreover, Syria has become the headquarters of a new Iraqi Baathist party that is working with Al Qaeda to facilitate and finance attacks in Iraq. There is even evidence to indicate that Abu Ayyub Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, is hiding in Syria. For its part, Iran continues to train and support the Shiite "Special Groups" that are among the most vicious sectarian terrorists in the entire country, and to smuggle dangerous munitions for use against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both Iran and Syria are perfectly aware that the United States knows what they're up to. Administration officials, from the president on down, have warned them numerous times that their actions are unacceptable and must be stopped. Yet their subversion continues.

Clearly, these rogue regimes do not fear the consequences of waging a proxy war on America and our allies. They think they can get away with killing and maiming American soldiers -- and so far they have been right.

President Bush has not done enough to back up his threats against Iran and Syria, beyond pushing for economic sanctions of limited value at a time when oil is hitting $100 a barrel. The president has refused to authorize even limited special operations strikes on jihadist networks inside Syria or Iran.

This is part of a larger trend of Bush combining strong words with weak actions. The president talks of promoting democracy and supporting dissidents, but when he visited Egypt last month, he failed to publicly chide his host, Hosni Mubarak, for jailing the chief liberal opposition leader. This disconnect has done serious damage to American standing and credibility.

It is hard to see how Bush could reverse this decline in America's "fear factor" during the remaining year of his presidency. That will be the job of the next president. And who would be the most up to the task?

To answer that question, ask yourself which presidential candidate an Ahmadinejad, Assad or Kim would fear the most. I submit it is not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, the leading candidate to scare the snot out of our enemies is a certain former aviator who has been noted for his pugnacity and his unwavering support of the American war effort in Iraq. Ironically, John McCain's bellicose aura could allow us to achieve more of our objectives peacefully because other countries would be more afraid to mess with him than with most other potential occupants of the Oval Office -- or the current one.

Boot makes a compelling case for a vigorous foreign policy under a McCain administration. He establishes a sharp contrast between McCain and the two current Democratic frontrunners.

Both Clinton and Obama epitomize the pliable surrender platform of the Democratic Party's antiwar plank.

Clinton was for the war before she was against it, and still can't decide what she'd do to protect American interests in Iraq and the world beyond. Obama claims not only to have opposed the war from the start, but is one of the Democratic Party's biggest cheerleaders for failure in Iraq, right next to Harry Reid.

Last night I indicated how the Democratic Party's antiwar base has become increasingly unhinged over the congressional majority's failure to secure an immediate withdrawal on the war.

The MoveOn hordes and the unkempt Kos crowd will simply step-up their drumbeat of surrender as the general election campaign reaches full steam.

The Democratic nominee, if elected, will abandon whatever current, pre-election facade of internationalism and anti-terror firmness, ultimately opening arms to our rogue-regime enemies, placing the current gains in Iraq and against al Qaeda at risk.

Max Boot puts it well: McCain will be the go-to guy on securing peace through strength, a point conservatives may want to think about more clearly.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

After Optimism? Redefining Conservatism in the Post-Reagan Age

Cal Thomas offers a provocative argument on the direction of conservativism in the post-Reagan era, at Townhall:

This just in: Ronald Reagan is dead and he's not coming back. Now, can conservatives please move on?

Reagan always spoke about the future and its possibilities. Today's conservatives, however, can't seem to break with the past and the nostalgia for the Reagan years. Even in his letter to the American people in 1994 in which he revealed he suffered from Alzheimer's disease, Reagan wrote of his "eternal optimism" for the country's future. Too many modern conservatives seem embedded in a concrete slab of pessimism, preferring to go over a bridge and drown rather than "compromise" their "principles." If you can't get elected, your principles can be talked about on the lecture circuit, but are unlikely to be adopted in Washington.

John McCain, some say, is not a true conservative. Was Reagan? Reagan campaigned as a tax cutter. He cut taxes, but he also raised them. He promised conservative judges and spoke of his opposition to abortion, yet named two justices to the Supreme Court (Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy) who voted to uphold Roe v. Wade. Against the advice of some, Reagan deployed Marines to Lebanon and saw them murdered by a homicide bomber. Reagan engaged in an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. As president, Reagan seldom went to church, unlike his evangelical base. If conservatives knew in advance these things about Reagan, would they have voted for him in such numbers?

Contemporary conservatism has mostly been about saying "no" to the liberal agenda. Suppose conservatives instead begin to circumvent liberals by applying better ideas to achieve ends liberals and conservatives claim to seek?

This is the point of David Frum's new book, "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again." Frum, a former speechwriter in this Bush administration, believes the issues that brought Republicans to power in the 1980s and '90s are different from the concerns of most Americans today....

Frum proposes an agenda that uses conservative principles to actually solve, rather than just talk about, serious problems. He wants universally available health insurance, but offered through the private sector; lower taxes to encourage savings and investment, but higher taxes on energy and pollution to promote conservation; a conservative environmentalism that promotes nuclear power to reduce our need for oil and coal (this would satisfy the Left's misguided belief in "global warming," while simultaneously pleasing the Right by freeing us from dependence on foreign oil); federal policies to encourage larger families; major reductions in unskilled immigration; a campaign for prison reform and a campaign against obesity; higher ethical standards inside the conservative movement and Republican Party; and a renewed commitment to expand and rebuild the armed forces in order to crush terrorism and prepare for the coming challenge from China.

I would add a micro-loan program to help the poor out of poverty, rather than more government programs that subsidize the poor in their poverty and offer no hope for the future.

Conservatives also need to do a better job of storytelling. They should celebrate people who have overcome poverty and hopelessness as examples to others. It is not enough for conservatives to advocate for lower taxes and smaller government if the purpose is for Americans to acquire more money and material goods Americans already have so much they are renting storage units in which to place the overflow. Imagine the economic - even spiritual - revival that might occur if conservatives "adopted" one person or family and made it their goal to help them improve their lives. There are few thrills greater than seeing a life transformed in which you have played a part.

There are number of new books in print on conservatism, in addition to Frum's, making the case for a more active right-wing governmental agenda for the 21st century (for example, Michael Gerson's, Heroic Conservatism, and John Bolton's, Surrender is Not An Option).

I think the problem - which is pretty much evident from reading Thomas' essay - is that this new version of "conservativism" pushed by Frum (and especially Gerson) is not all that conservative.

It's another vision, a movement away from Goldwater/Reagan conservatism to a newer "neonconservatism" without the Wilsonianism in foreign policy. This vision, in short, is conflicted (internally incoherent) and not compelling as ideology (for a review of Frum along these line, click here).

In any case, back to present essay: Thomas places this debate over a post-Reagan conservatism in the context of the McCain ascendancy, and suggests it may be possible to forge a new conservative identity that combines traditional principles with pragmatic flexibility.

The task of hammering out this vision is going to be extremely chaotic and wrenching, if it needs to be done at all. While some evidence is in place that current events now demonstrate the need, indications are also clear on the likely trauma resulting from such an ideological transformation.

It's important project, although in the end honesty may require those on the right to not just redefine, but reimagine what conservatism truly represents.

McCain Remains Strong Against Obama, Clinton

John McCain remains competitive in head-to-head matchups against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, according to the latest news from Gallup:

John McCain essentially holds his own when pitted against either of the two leading Democratic candidates for president in hypothetical general-election trial heats. This is despite the fact that Democrats have a decided advantage on several non-election measures of party strength and positioning.

The new USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Feb. 8-10, shows that McCain leads Hillary Clinton by one point, 49% to 48%, in a hypothetical general-election matchup among likely voters. He trails Barack Obama by four points, 46% to 50%. Both of these differences are within the poll's margin of error, and suggest that if the election were held today, it would be a close race if McCain were the Republican nominee and either Obama or Clinton were the Democratic nominee. The results also suggest that despite vigorous discussions of whether Clinton or Obama would be most electable in November, Obama has at best a slight advantage over Clinton on that dimension.

At the same time, a number of recent measures included in the Gallup Poll and other polls show that the Democrats in theory have some strong structural political advantages at this point. In terms of the parties' favorable images, Democrats have double-digit leads over Republicans in recent Gallup Polls. Within the current sample, 54% of those interviewed either identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared to just 39% who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. And on generic presidential election questions, in which respondents are asked which party's candidate they would like to win the presidency next fall (without naming names), the Democrats have typically been winning by double-digit margins.

In short, there appears to be a significant advantage for the Democrats over the Republicans on several general measures of party image and strength. McCain thus outperforms what would be predicted in the general-election trial heats, everything else being equal.

Many things can and will change between now and Election Day next Nov. 4. For the moment, several indicators in recent polls point to a propitious political environment for the Democrats. Despite that, the front-running GOP nominee, McCain, tests quite well against the two leading Democratic candidates -- beating Clinton by one point and losing to Obama by four points, both of which are gaps within the margin of error. If these types of numbers were to hold through the fall, the coming election could be a close one, regardless of voters' apparently negative attitudes toward the Republican Party.

See also my entry on "McCain's Electoral College Advantage."

Should Conservatives Back McCain?

Should conservatives back John McCain to lead the Republican Party against the Democrats in November.

Hello?

Let's see how Jonah Goldberg tackles the query, from USA Today:

There's a fascinating irony to John McCain's de facto victory in the race for the Republican nomination. While the self-styled independent maverick is arguably the best "change" candidate the Republicans could offer in the general election (itself ironic given that he has been in Washington longer than any other GOP contender), McCain wasn't the change candidate in the primaries. And GOP voters wanted change, too.

There are lots of reasons, some good, some bad, for conservatives' angry dyspepsia toward McCain. I have bouts of it myself. From campaign-finance reform, to his proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants to his general tendency to burnish his own maverick street rep by triangulating off conservatives, McCain just seems to relish breaking ranks too much.

But that raises an interesting and remarkably undiscussed question for McCain's detractors: Who are you really mad at?

Most of the criticisms aimed at McCain can be directed at President Bush himself. Campaign-finance reform is a great example. Most conservatives think McCain's effort to regulate political speech is an unconstitutional abomination. But in fairness to McCain, he doesn't think that. You know who does? George W. Bush. The president signed the McCain-Feingold bill though he admitted that he thought it was unconstitutional. But as a "uniter not a divider," Bush felt it wasn't his place to veto an unconstitutional law — his oath of office notwithstanding — that was very popular, particularly with independents, centrist Democrats and the New York Times crowd.

Amnesty for illegal immigrants? To be sure, McCain was a big player last year in pushing legislation many on the right detest. But the biggest player of all was, again, Bush. Whatever your disagreements with McCain on immigration might be, it's pretty much impossible not to have the same disagreements with the president who campaigned in 2000 insisting that "family values don't end at the Rio Grande." Indeed, before the 9/11 attacks, Bush wanted to make Mexico, not Great Britain, our No. 1. ally.

You can go on like this for quite a while. If you point to McCain's very conservative record on judges, his detractors will dismiss it, saying they don't trust his instincts. Didn't McCain say something about Justice Samuel Alito being too conservative? they ask. Well, didn't Bush's instincts guide him to naming White House insider Harriet Miers before conservatives revolted and forced him to choose again? McCain opponents note that while the senator talks a big game about cutting pork from the budget, he's still a big regulator and friend of activist government. This is fair, to some extent, but they forget that it was President Bush who pushed through the biggest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society with his prescription drug benefit — a plan McCain opposed and promises to scale back.

According to many pundits, McCain won the Republican Party's "anti-Bush" wing, made up of moderates and independents. But this is largely a media-driven narrative imposed on a somewhat different reality. There is, in fact, a much broader anti-Bush sentiment in the party. The "right wing" of the GOP is suffering from a deep buyer's remorse of its own.

In 2000, conservatives supported Bush despite his insistence that he was a "different kind of Republican" and his insistence that he was a bipartisan bridge builder. He wasn't like those mean conservatives of the Reagan-Gingrich period; he was a "compassionate conservative." Many on the right overlooked this stuff, believing it was unfortunate but necessary marketing for Republicans at the end of the Clinton years. After 9/11, disagreements with Bush were displaced by the need to support the commander in chief in the war on terror. Even now, conservative frustration with the pre-surge fumbles in Iraq remains very high, but muted. Indeed, many on the right who do support McCain do so precisely because he would have "surged" from Day One of the Iraq invasion.

Conservatives supported Bush in 2000 for numerous reasons, including the fact that he seemed the best candidate to win back the White House. But one reason for his success in winning conservative support was that he just seemed like "one of us." He carried himself like a conservative. He spoke like a conservative. He was an evangelical Christian and pro-life Texan, who reassured much of the base by telegraphing that he was on the right side of the culture wars. As political positioning, this was brilliant stuff. Aesthetically, he played to the hearts of the right while politically he promised to be something of a centrist, almost Clintonian, president without the seedy soft-core porn baggage.

In terms of body language, the contrast with McCain couldn't be more stark. Bush has always been the sort of politician who relishes being loathed by The New York Times. McCain simply loves being loved by the Times and the national media generally. It's his base.

But substantively, the differences between McCainism and Bushism are very narrow, and the question of who is more conservative is more open than many on the right are comfortable asking. Hence, projection and guilt might explain at least some of the venom toward McCain. A lot of powerful emotions can be conjured by the sentiment: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Everyone wants a change candidate this year. As the out-of-power party, Democrats have it much easier marketing themselves that way. But conservatives want change, too. And for many of them, McCain doesn't represent change but continuity. They just can't say so.

McCain is presented with a dilemma. How can he rally the conservatives to his flag without alienating the moderates and independents the GOP needs to win in November? As nothing in politics needs to be clear-cut, he will probably try to do both as best he can, much as he did in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. At CPAC and elsewhere, McCain insists he's an unchanging conservative. But he might do better with his right flank if he can make the case that with him, we might get a conservative in the White House, for a change.

Now that's an interesting argument, considering how Bush, McCain, and Edward Kennedy are often lumped together in comment threads attacking "shamnesty."

Still, Goldberg's argument seems a little abstract.

I would simply remind folks that McCain's conservative on the issue that's often most important for voters: keeping us safe. His apostasies shouldn't be taken lightly, but considering the alternatives, conservatives might lighten up when considering them (or wise up altogether) and hop on board the Straight Talk Express.

Antiwar Betrayal: The Democrats Screwed the Movement?

Did the Democratic congressional majority deliberately undermine the antiwar movement's drive to sabotage the Iraq war in 2007?

That's the thesis of a new article at Rolling Stone, "The Chicken Doves." Here's the introduction:

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party's energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn't fit Iraq into his busy schedule. "We have the presidential election," Reid said recently. "Our time is really squeezed."

There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control — that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. "We'll have a new president," said Pelosi. "And I do think at that time we'll take a fresh look at it."

Pelosi seemed especially broken up about having to surrender on Iraq, sounding like an NFL coach in a postgame presser, trying with a straight face to explain why he punted on first-and-goal. "We just didn't have any plays we liked down there," said the coach of the 0-15 Dems. "Sometimes you just have to play the field-position game...."

In reality, though, Pelosi and the Democrats were actually engaged in some serious point-shaving. Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation's leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. "Our focus is on the Republicans," one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. "How can we juice up attacks on them?"

The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what's to come if they win the White House. And if we don't pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there's still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.

It's an interesting thesis...if you like hare-brained theories.

The main argument here: The Democratic congressional majority's political agenda after their midterm victory was to APPEAR antiwar, so as to increase the party's electoral prospects for 2008.

The problem with the argument?

Well, even a cursory glance at Iraq war polling data in 2006 fails to demonstrate unequivocal public demands for a complete and immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Claims to that effect are more than left-wing myth-making, however: This is the antiwar movement's big lie of 2007.

It's a strangely malevolent thesis, in any case, and it forms the basis for radical claims of a Democratic mandate to bring the troops home. Pure bunk, though, if one really knows what's happening.

But here's more from Rolling Stone:

Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that "anti-war activism" became synonymous with "electing Democrats." Capitalizing on America's desire to end the war, they hijacked the anti-war movement itself, filling the ranks of peace groups with loyal party hacks. Anti-war organizations essentially became a political tool for the Democrats — one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans.

This supposedly grass-roots "anti-war coalition" met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat — changing the world is fun!

But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi "squeezed for time" mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. "There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans," a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced.

What the Post and the Times failed to note is that much of the anti-war group's leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes — whose partners, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In addition, these anti-war leaders continue to consult for many of the same U.S. senators whom they need to pressure in order to end the war. This is the kind of conflict of interest that would normally be an embarrassment in the activist community.

Worst of all is the case of Woodhouse, who came to Hildebrand Tewes after years of working as the chief mouthpiece for the DSCC, where he campaigned actively to re-elect Democratic senators who supported the Iraq War in the first place. Anyone bothering to look — and clearly the Post and the Times did not before penning their ardent bios of Woodhouse — would have found the youthful idealist bragging to newspapers before the Iraq invasion about the pro-war credentials of North Carolina candidate Erskine Bowles. "No one has been stronger in this race in supporting President Bush in the War on Terror and his efforts to effect a regime change in Iraq," boasted the future "anti-war" activist Woodhouse.

With guys like this in charge of the anti-war movement, much of what has passed for peace activism in the past year was little more than a thinly veiled scheme to use popular discontent over the war to unseat vulnerable Republicans up for re-election in 2008. David Sirota, a former congressional staffer whose new book, The Uprising, excoriates the Democrats for their failure to end the war, expresses disgust at the strategy of targeting only Republicans. "The whole idea is based on this insane fiction that there is no such thing as a pro-war Democrat," he says. "Their strategy allows Democrats to take credit for being against the war without doing anything to stop it. It's crazy."

Justin Raimondo, the uncompromising editorial director of Antiwar.com, regrets contributing twenty dollars to Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq. "Not only did they use it to target Republicans," he says, "they went after the ones who were on the fence about Iraq." The most notorious case involved Lincoln Chafee, a moderate from Rhode Island who lost his Senate seat in 2006. Since then, Chafee has taken shots at Democrats like Reid, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, all of whom campaigned against him despite having voted for the war themselves.

Read the whole thing.

I've noted previously the megalomania and political hatred of those on the antiwar left. But what's incredibly amazing is how little these folks understand the true nature of political power!

If anyone wanted to bring about an immediate surrender of America's project in Iraq it's Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. These two congressional leaders have made their purpose in power to demonize the administration, the military, and the war itself. It's all been an unmitigated disaster, to hear congressional pronouncements for the past 14 months.

Indeed, twice this weekend Pelosi declared the war "a failure" and how President Bush's troop build-up had failed to produce "the desired effect." (The new strategy, by the way, is discussed as the "surge" in the Rollling Stone piece, with the emphasis on the scare quotes as a delegitimization technique).

I offered an in-depth analysis of the Democratic Party's failed war strategy in a previous post: "Democrats Squandered Opportunities on Iraq."

I'd just like to suggest here that Rolling Stone's essay is nothing more than a nihilist screed. The author makes threats but offers no substantive direction for change. What will the antiwar folks do if they don't get their way on an Iraq withdrawal next year? Stomp and cuss their heads off, if this article's any indication:

How much of this bullshit are we going to take? How long are we supposed to give the Reids and Pelosis and Hillarys of the world credit for wanting, deep down in their moldy hearts, to do the right thing?

Look, fuck your hearts, OK? Just get it done. Because if you don't, sooner or later this con is going to run dry. It may not be in '08, but it'll be soon. Even Americans can't be fooled forever.

Truth be told, Pelosi and her radical Democratic hordes were stymied by incompetence and institutional vetoes. They were simply clueless on what to do with the reins of power.

Had they enjoyed a veto-proof majority coming out of 2006, however, U.S. infantry divisions would have been decamping stateside over the last year, the surge would have been strangled before getting on its feet, and ethnic violence would have reached proportions of unimaginably horrific violence.

This is what the antiwar base wants, and this is exactly what Democratic leaders hope to achieve. A brute numerical majority emerging out of this year's legislative races would certainly compensate for the party's governing incompetence.

I'd hate to be proven correct by the unfolding of events this fall.

Thus, the sooner the Republicans wrap-up their nomination fight and begin rallying the faithful in fundraising, voter mobilization, and rapid reaction strategies, the better off Americans and their foreign affairs will be.

Conservative Political Suicide

As readers know, I've been chronicling the collapse in power of "movement" conservatives this GOP primary season.

In my previous post, for example, I laid out the case that John McCain's now forging a new center-right coalition for the 21st century. Such trends - should they hold - may indeed reflect a fundamental shift the voting firmament of the American Republican street.

Ross Douthat, on the other hand, argues that in fact we're witnessing the very failure of the right-wing talk radio commentariat itself:

The failure of conservative voters to fall in line behind Mr. [Rush] Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, among others, reflects a deeper problem for the movement’s leadership. With their inflexibility, grudge-holding and eagerness to evict heretics rather than seek converts, too many of conservatism’s leaders sound like the custodians of a dwindling religious denomination or a politically correct English department at a fading liberal-arts college.

Or like yesterday’s Democratic Party. The tribunes of the American right have fallen into the same bad habits that doomed their liberal rivals to years of political failure.

In spite of his record as a maverick, John McCain has become the presumptive nominee by running a classic Republican campaign, emphasizing strength abroad and limited government at home, with nods to his pro-life record. His opponents in the conservative movement, by contrast, have behaved like caricatures of liberals, emphasizing a host of small-bore litmus tests that matter more to Beltway insiders than to the right-winger on the street.

Republican primary voters who turned to Mr. Limbaugh for their marching orders were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistently hawkish record — on Iraq, Iran, the size of the military and any other issue you care to name — mattered less to his standing as a conservative than his views on waterboarding. Or that his extensive record as a free-trader, a tax-cutter and an opponent of pork-barrel spending wasn’t sufficient to qualify him as an economic conservative, because he had opposed a particular set of upper-bracket tax cuts in 2001.

Similarly, religious conservatives who listened to James Dobson were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistent pro-life voting record was less important than the impact his campaign-finance bill had on the National Right to Life Committee’s ability to purchase issue ads on television 60 days before an election. Or that his consistent support for conservative judicial nominees, and his pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Sam Alito, mattered less than his involvement in the “Gang of 14” compromise on judicial filibusters.

Mike Huckabee signed a no-new-taxes pledge and campaigned on a (borderline-crackpot) tax plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and institute a national sales tax. Yet he found himself caricatured as a “Christian socialist” because he had raised gas taxes and cigarette taxes while governor of Arkansas. Merely acknowledging that some corporate chief executives might be overpaid and some working-class voters might be struggling was enough to get him dismissed by George Will as a “radical” who had supposedly repudiated “free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America’s corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity.”

The conservative critics of Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee weren’t wrong on every issue. But in their zeal to read both candidates out of the conservative movement, often on the flimsiest of pretexts, the movement’s leaders raised a standard of ideological purity that not even Ronald Reagan could have lived up to.

This sort of purism would have been folly in Mr. Reagan’s era, when conservatism was an insurgency with its greatest victories still ahead of it, and there were real liberal Republicans to slay along the way. It represents political suicide today.

Hmm...

Political suicide? I wonder how long until this point sinks in with the foot soldiers of the irrational right?

McCain Forging New GOP Coalition

One of the points I've raised here - a hypothesis, really - is that the GOP's hardline conservative base is demonstrating an increasing irrelevance to the future progress of the GOP. Indeed, "movement" conservatives now appear to be a minority in the Republican establishment of '08 .

McCain, the presumptive standard-bearer, is the key catalyst of such trends, with his maverick style and the most compelling political comeback of '08. But the changing underlying dynamics in this year's voting coalitions are the important measures by which to gauge group power within the Republican Party's ongoing evolution.

This week's U.S. News and World Report goes as far to suggest that McCain has indeed forged a new GOP coalition for 21st century politics:

McCain's victories last week, following other wins in South Carolina and Florida, came despite attacks from the likes of radio talker Rush Limbaugh and a raft of social conservatives, including influential evangelical leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family. They consider the senator a traitor to the conservative cause on issues including his support of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, his leading role in campaign finance reform, and his efforts on immigration reform that included a path toward citizenship for illegal aliens.

But by cobbling together support from the party's liberal, moderate, and somewhat conservative members, and in particular voters who said they value character and national security, McCain managed to put together a new GOP coalition, one largely without social conservatives who have long played starring roles in Republican elections. That coalition (with help from independent voters) not only allowed him to assert last week that he's ready to "wrap this thing up" but also raised questions about whether his success without the support of the far right represents a post-Reagan revolution or, at the least, a major realignment within a fractured and demoralized party.

McCain, never a warrior in the culture wars, though he opposes abortion, scoffed at the notion of revolution. "I have a very strong conservative record," he says, and he simply wants to bring Republicans back around to conservative principles, particularly on spending. "We basically alienated our Republican base that cares about fiscal discipline by the spending spree and the corruption over the last many years," he says. "We de-energized part of our Republican base." Some party stalwarts have suggested that a McCain presidency would look more like that of the first President Bush, with some moderates in decision-making positions but no leftward movement on issues including the war, abortion, and immigration.

Sure, this is just talk in the absence of hard data. Still, we're seeing more information coming out on McCain's winning coalition in this year.

The current Newsweek, which also features a McCain cover story, cites John Zogby arguing that McCain's ahead of the curve in political demographics:

According to surveys, McCain is competitive in head-to-head match-ups with Clinton and Obama, largely because he appeals to conservative Democrats and independents. Part of his pitch is that he can "reach out" (a phrase that Limbaugh, on his show last week, repeated disgustedly, imitating McCain's voice)....

McCain may, in fact, have a better sense of America's shifting political mood than his detractors. "More and more of us are independents," says pollster John Zogby. "More people are not wedded to a party, a candidate or an ideology." Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center says poll numbers show a small shift away from the GOP. About 34 percent of registered voters identified themselves as independents in 2007, up from about 30 percent in 2006, he says. That's the highest it's been since 1999, and almost all the slippage has been on the Republican side. Many in the Republican Party base, meanwhile, seem to believe it's still the same country it was a political generation ago—their country, in other words. "Conservatives are on the eternal search for a new Reagan," columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Washington Post last Friday. "They refuse to accept that a movement leader who is also a gifted politician is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon."

It would be foolish, of course, to argue that movement conservatives count for nothing in Republican Party calculations in '08 (if they sit out, they could indeed swing the election to the Democrats).

What does seem to be happening, though, is that the conservative movement's veto power on party nomination's has been revealed as more bluster than beef. Consequently, all the talk about backing Hillary Clinton over McCain is either a ratings grab by talk radio blowhards or true cognitive instabilities.

As I noted in an earlier post, Rush Limbaugh's power is "so 1990s," and for all the sound and fury of the talk radio fundamentalist right, McCain's moving toward his coronation in spite of the most virulent objections of the party base.

McCain's General Election Advantage

Remember when Kos lobbied Michigan Dems to cross over and vote Romney in January? The effort was futile in stopping the Straight Talk Express, but the episode helps to preview the abject fear of John McCain among the hard-left Democratic base.

As McCain's now the presumptive GOP nominee, look soon for some of the most vicious, radical anti-McCain smears to begin, especially after more and more reports emerge suggesting the Democrats enjoying no prospects of a slam dunk in November.

For an awesome primer on the Democrats' problem, check out John Fund at the Wall Street Journal, who nicely illustrates why McCain's the left's biggest nightmare this year (via Memeorandum):

The conventional wisdom is that Republicans start at a serious disadvantage in trying to hold the White House. A still-unpopular war and a softening economy certainly represent challenges. So far, most of the enthusiasm in the primaries has been on the Democratic side, with some 13 million voters casting Democratic ballots and fewer than 9 million picking a GOP one.

But despite these obstacles, John McCain will now begin to assemble his fall election team with surprisingly good poll results. The average of all the recent national polls summarized by RealClearPolitics.com show the Arizona senator leading Hillary Clinton by 47% to 45% and trailing Barack Obama by only 44% to 47%. Both results are within the statistical margin of error for national polls, so it's fair to say Mr. McCain starts out with an even chance of winning.

How could that be? The answer is that the same maverick streak and occasional departures from conservative orthodoxy that make conservatives queasy have the opposite effect on independents and even some Democrats. Mr. McCain's favorable numbers with independents exceed those of Barack Obama, who has emphasized his desire to work across party lines.

All of this plays out in the Electoral College map that is the key to victory in November. One candidate or the other must win at least 270 electoral votes. The assumption has been that Democrats have an advantage because they can supposedly win every state John Kerry took in 2004 plus Ohio, which has fallen on hard economic times and seen its state Republican Party discredited. That would give the Democratic nominee at least 272 electoral votes.

But Mr. McCain's rise to the GOP nomination throws that calculation out the window. He is the only potential GOP candidate who is clearly positioned to keep the basic red-blue template of how each state voted in 2004 intact and then be able to move into blue territory.

Let's assume that Ohio goes to either Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton. It's at least as likely that Mr. McCain could carry New Hampshire. The Granite State went only narrowly to Mr. Kerry, a senator from a neighboring state, and Mr. McCain has unique advantages there. New Hampshire elections are determined by how that state's fiercely independent voters go, and Mr. McCain has won over many of them in both the 2000 and 2008 GOP primaries. He spent 47 days in New Hampshire before this year's primary and is well-known in the state. If Mr. McCain lost Ohio but carried New Hampshire and all the other states Mr. Bush took in 2004, he would win, 270-268.

It's true that Democrats will make a play for states other than Ohio that Mr. Bush won. Iowa is a perennially competitive state that could go either way this fall. Arkansas polls show that Hillary Clinton might well be able to carry the state where she served as First Lady for over a decade.

But Mr. McCain's roots in the Rocky Mountain West complicate Democratic efforts to take states in that region. His fierce individualism and support for property rights play well in Nevada and Colorado, which were close in 2004. New Mexico, next door to Mr. McCain's Arizona, gave Mr. Bush a very narrow 49.6% to 49% victory in 2004. But Mr. McCain's nuanced position on immigration marks him as the GOP candidate who is most likely to hold the Hispanic voters who are the key to carrying New Mexico.

Mr. McCain also puts several Midwest battleground states in play. Should he pick Minnesota's Gov. Tim Pawlenty as his vice presidential choice, he might have a leg up on carrying both Minnesota and Wisconsin, which went narrowly for Mr. Kerry in 2004.

"The media markets in western Wisconsin get Minneapolis television and are oriented to their news--Pawlenty would be a plus there," says Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican. "McCain's independent stands would play well in that region--which is exactly where GOP presidential candidates have done poorly enough so that they lost statewide by 12,000 votes or so in both 2004 and 2000."

Mr. McCain can be competitive in other blue states. Michigan went Democratic in 2004 by only 3.4% of the total vote, and Oregon by just over 4%. The latest Field Poll in California puts Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton in a statistical tie. If Democrats have to spend valuable time and resources holding down California, it will make it more difficult for them to take states they lost in 2000 and 2004.

Mr. McCain could even make a foray into the Northeast, where his support from Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party's 2000 vice presidential candidate, could put Connecticut in contention. Ditto New Jersey, which Mr. Bush lost by only 53% to 46% in 2004.

Then there is Pennsylvania, which John Kerry carried by only 2.5% points in 2004. Michael Smerconish, the most popular talk-show host in Philadelphia, believes Mr. McCain has a real chance to carry the state. While Mr. Smerconish is a conservative who didn't support Mr. McCain, he thinks "the conservative blasting of McCain is good publicity around here." His independence and maverick status are exactly the qualities that could help him carry the tightly contested Philadelphia suburbs that voted to re-elect GOP senator Arlen Specter, a moderate, in 2004 but rejected conservative Rick Santorum in 2006.

I love this analysis!

I've noted many times that a runaway victory for the Dems this year is a fantasy.

Campaigns are always hard fought, and early polls end up being just snapshots in time.

I often cite the 1988 election as an example of what can happen, when we saw Michael Dukakis and the Dems resting on a nice double-digit lead heading into the fall campaign. The October Surprise that year was the decidedly evil mugshot of Willie Horton, an image that raised legitimate fears of the Democratic Party's revolving-door justice system in Massachusetts under Dukakis. G.H.W. Bush went on to beat the former Massachusetts Governor handily, taking 53.4 percent of the popular vote - and that's not mentioning the GOP's near Electoral College landslide, 426 to 112!!

Fund mentions the 1988 precedent, and throws in a little 2000 election data for good measure:

When you hear that the demise of the Republicans is a foregone conclusion, remember that when the campaign is joined this fall and voters will have to make real choices about the direction of the country, the result is likely to be close. Recall that pundits were ready to crown Michael Dukakis the winner of the 1988 election after he opened up a 17-point edge over George H.W. Bush. In 2000, they declared the race over around Labor Day after Al Gore opened up a clear lead over George W. Bush.

I identified the 1988 G.H.W. Bush/Dukakis comparison here.

Given this analysis, Republican partisans of all stripes - including those of the recently notorious irrrational right, see here and here - have all the more reason to unify and rally behind the McCain ascendency.

Time's a wasting!!

We've got a campaign to be won, and the stakes are too high for folks to stay home (a point the radical netroots hordes haven't forgotten).

McCain Estrangement Syndrome?

Have you heard the one about "McCain Estrangement Syndrome?"

Andrew McCarthy makes the case over at National Review:

Are John McCain’s supporters trying to drive conservatives away from their candidate?

Senator McCain is the inevitable Republican presidential nominee. He is headed, though, for a defeat of McGovernite dimensions if he can’t sway conservatives to get behind his candidacy. For their part, conservatives don’t want McCain, but even less do they want to spend the next four-to-eight years saying “President Obama,” let alone reliving history with another President Clinton.

In short, there are the makings here for a modus vivendi, however grudging. Yet, McCain’s admirers appear to think belittling the senator’s good-faith opponents is the way to go. Theirs is a case of the pot calling the kettle “deranged” — and it will prove duly futile.

Put yourselves in my shoes for a moment. I have not supported Sen. McCain. I admire his perseverance and love of country. Still, I don’t think he is a committed conservative, and his penchant for demonizing all opposition is, to me, extremely off-putting. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, there’s nothing delusional about that.

In fact, as between the two of us, it’s McCain’s supporters who are deluding themselves. I take them at their word, for example, that a hallmark of the senator’s politics is his tenacity on matters of principle. Consequently, I am skeptical of his assurances that he would appoint conservative judges who will apply rather than create law. Why? Because he has a recent, determined history of beseeching federal courts to disregard the First Amendment in furtherance of a dubious campaign-finance scheme in which he believes passionately. Conservative judges would (and have) rejected this scheme, just as they would (and have) rejected another signature McCain position: the extension of Geneva Convention protections for jihadists.

Now, the appointment of conservative judges is a crucial issue — one McCain posits as central to why we should prefer him to Obama and Clinton. Thus supporters breezily wave off such concerns, maintaining that McCain both promises there will be no issue-based litmus tests for judicial nominees and has conservatives of impeccable legal credentials advising him.

But for me to conclude McCain would surely appoint conservative judges, I also have to believe campaign-finance and the Geneva Convention weren’t all that big a deal to him after all — a possibility that runs counter to everything McCain’s fans tell us about his fidelity to principle. He’s fought tirelessly for years, in the teeth of blistering criticism, to establish campaign-finance regulations, and I’m now supposed to believe he’ll just shrug his shoulders and meekly name judges who’ll torpedo the whole enterprise — all in the name of upholding a judicial philosophy I’m not even sure he grasps? How exactly is it deranged to have my doubts?

Read the whole thing. McCarthy's piece is a rearranged litany of indictments against McCain.

We've heard it before.

But who does this help? Certainly not Mike Huckebee, who was the target of the irrational right around the time of his big win in the Iowa caucuses. Remember, Huck's the governor who wanted illegal aliens to attend college. Aghast, an open-borders recidivist!!

So what's McCarthy doing? He's turning the psychological tables.

Obviously, the arguments elucidating McCain Derangement Syndrome have been compelling, so the Malkin-tents and the Rush-bots need to fight fire with fire.

Sure, the GOP needs the base to win, but the anti-McCain forces seem to be the last ones to recognize it. So, what's it going to be for the Rush-bots: purity or victory.

That's what's at stake here. McCain's already conceded his faults and reached out to the party ideologues, with his speech last week at CPAC. Unfortunately, MDS is so chronic, many attending the convention can never look past the alleged McCain apostasies for the good of the party.

Is that smart, or clear-headed? Here's more from McCarthy:

There remains a rational case to continue rejecting McCain. We are, after all, electing a government, not just a president. I strongly suspect the conservative movement and Republicans in Congress would perform better if set against a Democrat president than in an uneasy alliance with McCain. Thus it’s not a simple matter of determining whether McCain is superior to Obama or Clinton; the question is whether he is so much better that we should tolerate the heavy cost of a movement and a party less disposed to fight a President McCain on the several flawed policy preferences he shares with Democrats.

That’s far from a no-brainer. But for me, the question must be resolved in McCain’s favor because of the war. Our troops in harm’s way deserve the best commander-in-chief we have it in our power to give them; the American people deserve the most vigilant protection against a rabid enemy we have it in our power to give them. For these purposes, McCain is measurably superior to Obama and Clinton. That doesn’t mean my reservations are any less real; they are just comparatively (and barely) less important.

So, that it? It's a no brainer that conservatives have a rational, principled position to take in continued oppostion of McCain? But in the next breath they have the easy out in backing the Arizona Senator because of the war.

Aha!! There it is, the Holy Grail!!

Base conservatives can continue to rail away at McCain's apostasies, while simultaneously they can concede that things must be resolved in favor of the war!

This is not estrangement, but further derangement. There's no such thing as the perfect Republican presidential candidate.

Reagan certainly wasn't.

Reagan amnestied 3 million illegals in 1986. Boy, that sure did improve the immigration situation, right? Conservatives don't talk so much about that. It's all McCain...

How about Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee? Kennedy's now the key swing vote on the Supreme Court, who for all intents and purposes is the larger threat to conservative judicial supremacy than a future McCain nominee.

No, the anti-McCainiacs aren't talking about all of this. They'll dig the knives deeper into McCain, in hopes of proving to the fanatical talk radio base that they've still got it - that they're not increasingly marginalized and irrelevent.

Consider this: The conservative base is, well, so "1990s."

That's right. Rush Limbaugh can claim true brilliance in helping the GOP come to congressional power in 1994, but now conservative talk radio and shock pundits like Ann Couter are increasingly seen as a conspiratorial fringe.

As Nicholas Confessore noted this weekend:

They [movement conservatives] still see themselves as indispensable kingmakers without whom no Republican can win the nomination, let alone the White House. As a result, Mr. McCain has emerged as a genuine threat. Should he win the nomination over their opposition after all, the kingmakers would be dethroned.

“What goes around comes around,” said Morris P. Fiorina, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University. “It’s a self-appointed establishment to a great extent, and I think all along they overestimated their own importance.”

Hmm...

Self-appointed, eh?

Whatever it is, pride, hubris, or delusion, the continued battle by the irrational right against John McCain damages the efforts of conservatives of all stripes to rally behind the GOP's presumptive nominee.

But maybe there's hope here, as McCarthy perhaps reveals the seeds of clarity in his argument. Perchance, with this prompt, anti-McCainiacs can start pumping up the benefits of a McCain presidency, while realizing that his conservative bona fides are just a strong as many of his great Republican predecessors.

Wait, don't get too excited about that prospect! See Michelle Malkin for more conservative battening down of the hatches.

Mike Huckabee Should Step Aside

Mike Huckabee's strong showing in the weekend's GOP electoral contests have raised the pressures for the McCain campaign to show it can hold down the conservative fort.

But what does Huckabee want?

He can't win the nomination mathematically. So by taking the primaries to the limit, does he strengthen his case to be a leader of the American conservative movement, or does he illustrate his party-pooper credentials, delaying the moment when the GOP can coalesce around its standard-bearer and ramp-up efforts for the November battle against the Democrats?

Time has a interesting analysis of Huckabee's predicament:

As the polls now stand, Huckabee is a dramatic underdog heading into the February 12 primaries in Virginia and Maryland, with McCain outpolling him by a margin of two to one. But the Huckabee campaign says it has its eye fixed firmly on the March 4 primary in Texas, where Huckabee could benefit from his southern appeal, and lingering conservative skepticism on McCain's positions on campaign finance reform and immigration. Whatever happens, Huckabee's strategists maintain without fail that the candidate will not be swayed by pressure from fellow Republicans to bow out before one candidate reaches 1,191 delegates. On Friday, Huckabee received a call from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, asking him to leave the race, according to someone familiar with the call. Huckabee told his fellow governor no. "We don't care. We're not about the party. We never have been," said Ed Rollins, Huckabee's national chairman, backstage at the Maryland rally. "To a certain extent this is about the people. They get their choice."

In an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press Sunday, Huckabee rejected as "nonsense" the notion that his continued battle against McCain could weaken the Republican party or drain resources from the general election effort. "If our party can't have a thoughtful discussion and some meaningful debate and dialogue about the issues important to us as a party, then we are really not prepared to lead," he said. He has also been quick to reject any notion that could perhaps be endangering his own, long-term political viability at the forefront of the conservative movement, drawing explicit comparisons between his candidacy and Ronald Reagan's in 1976 against the incumbent Gerald Ford. "[The establishment] had all begged him to get out of the race in '76 and not take it to the convention, but he had convictions, and he stood by those convictions," Huckabee told reporters this past weekend. "And now when you talk to Republicans, the Reagan name is the gold standard," he said.

All of which means that the "people", as Rollins describes them, get a few more weeks to hear from a enthusiastic candidate who seems to always see victory, even in the face of defeat. At a press conference Saturday morning, one reporter blurted out what has become for Huckabee a comfortable truth. "Governor, basically you have nothing to lose by staying in," she called from the back of the scrum. Huckabee paused. "Ah," he said, before smiling. "No. I don't guess I do."

Yes, and the longer he remains in the race the less he has to win.

I admire Huckabee's spunk. But if anything, the GOP campaign of '08 has demonstrated the power of circumstances on electoral fortunes. Had Rudy Giuliani not pulled out of New Hampshire, John McCain's victory romp there might have never happened.

Had Fred Thompson not played coy with conservatives excited about his entry into the race last year, perhaps he'd be the one dancing in the moonlight of more media time.

Nope, instead we have the good-hearted pastor from Arkansas hanging on for dear life.

But he's no Ronald Reagan. As Charles Krauthammer said last week, conservatives are eternally waiting for the next Reagan, even though the Gipper was a once-in-a-lifetime political hero.

Huckabee's not in the same league, with all due respect, and he needs to think about Governor Perry's call to step aside. He could really work some miracles then, in rallying his backers to support McCain in his campaign against the Democratic retreatists in the fall.