I rather dislike "wasting" my one-a-day diary on this, but it is the sort of important political news that should at least be archived. I was led over to Chris Matthews' Hardblogger at
to freep Matthews' poll of top contenders for the 2008 Republican nomination. I couldn't find the poll, but there is coverage of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference going on in Memphis. Scrolling down I found the following summary of Republican contenders by Democratic "political consultant" Bob Shrum (who, by this time, we have to conclude was a top GOP mole in the Democratic Party).
Probably the most newsworthy piece from Shrum is his noting that Mark McKinnon, Bush's media adviser, says he will work for McCain's campaign so long as Jeb Bush does not run.
And the GOP nonimee for 2008 is ...
It's all over but the conferences, the fundraising, the long, cold nights in Iowa and New Hampshire. McCain's it, the Republican nominee for President in 2008. The deal is already done for three reasons.
First, the Republicans always nominate who they're supposed to: the next in line, the structural frontrunner who has the name, the advantages in fundraising, and the sense that this is his turn. (So far, no hers need apply.) So they picked Vice President Nixon over Governor Rockefeller in 1960, even though the polls showed Rockefeller running a far stronger race against JFK. It was Nixon again in '68; after his kamikaze run for Governor of California, he'd spend years toiling in the GOP vineyards, trolling the rubber chicken circuit, refurbishing his image and burnishing his status of pre-eminence on national security. It was his turn again and so the "new Nixon" easily won the nomination, and then barely won the election. Ford held off Reagan's challenge in 1976 because Ford, however bumbling and befuddled, was already President; they were supposed to nominate him. Reagan in 1980, Bush the First in 1988, Dole in 1996: They were all next in line. Otherwise, why in the world would the Republicans have chosen a tired, lackluster Dole to run against Bill Clinton? Even Bush the second fit the pattern in 2000 - because of his name, the reassuring if only apparent pressure of his father's advisers, the aggrieved Republican impulse to reverse the defeat of 1992.
Now McCain's first in line. Like Nixon, Reagan, Bush the First, and Dole, he's run for President before and lost - but respectably. He's a national figure; Republicans haven't nominated a candidate who wasn't widely known two or three years before their convention since Wendell Wilkie. In McCain's case, endemic Republican behavior is reinforced not only by the fact of his political primogeniture, but also by the sense that he's more likely than some of his favored predecessors to go on to victory in the general election. This matters to a Republican Party increasingly fearful, reeling and even rebelling amidst the collapse of the Bush presidency.
Second, who else have they got? (Although even if they did, it might not matter; so strong is the power of presumption in the GOP process that even McCain, for all his popular appeal when he was the insurgent not the favorite in 2000, was ground down in a party determined to pick the second Bush.) There's no one to stop McCain now.
Giuliani has the name and his 9/11 halo; but he's pro-choice, and when his marriage broke up, he moved in with a gay couple. He flunks the social issues litmus test; McCain passes it, even if the religious right worries that he's a little soft and maybe more than a little angry at what they did to him in 2000. He'll reassure them; Giuliani can't. Rudolph Giuliani has about as much chance of being nominated by the GOP as Zell Miller does of being nominated by the Democrats. The fact that Giuliani is a no show at this weekend's Southern Republican gathering tells us how he'll show in the Republican Presidential field.
Bill Frist: destroyed by his ineptitude as the Senate Republican leader; incompetence is not the best recommendation for overcoming the ingrained Republican reference for the obvious favorite. Nor, for that matter, is incompetence a good recommendation for succeeding this George Bush. It's not clear that Frist is even a competent doctor following his quack diagnosis of Terri Schiavo on the Senate floor.
George Allen, Sam Brownback: too obscure, too implausible, too extreme. As a Democrat, my reaction is "bring 'em on." To paraphrase an old saying, we could beat these guys with a laundry ticket.
Chuck Hagel: slightly better known, but a redundant candidate, a McCain stand-in who can't win if McCain's standing.
Condoleeza Rice: won't run. Dick Cheney: Ditto.
So whenever you look at any of the alternatives, what you see is a McCain nomination.
The Bushies see it too: Mark McKinnon, Bush's media adviser, says he'll work for McCain, with a pro forma exception "if" Jeb Bush runs. McKinnon knows that won't happen for a simple reason: just what America wants - another Bush in the White House. But other Bush operatives, Republican funders and power brokers will follow McKinnon down the road to McCain.
The almost inevitable outcome is made even more inviting by a third factor. For Americans, 2008 will be a time for change - and to the electorate McCain looks like change. He was the anti-Bush in 2000; he's been a high-profile Bush opponent on issues like torture and global warming. But he helped rescue Bush's Presidency in 2004 by putting his arm around him and winking at the scurrilous attacks on John Kerry's military service, even though they echoed the smears of an earlier Bush campaign against McCain himself. So the Republicans can have their cake and eat it too: with McCain, they can give the voters "change" and give themselves the best chance to stay in power.
So McCain is not only the person they're supposed to choose; he is their best chance. I wouldn't hurt him by endorsing him; he's wrong on everything from health care, outsourcing and choice to Iraq and a foreign policy that could be even more unilateralist and bellicose than Bush's. The suddenly fashionable word in politics now is "narrative." But Democrats won't beat McCain on "narrative." Who has a better story than he does? We'll have to try to win the old-fashioned way -- on issues, penetrating the happy image that surrounds McCain and makes him appealing to independents and too many Democrats.
Where's Bob Dole when we need him? Why isn't the grand old man the one the Grand Old Party is supposed to nominate?