Any political junkies out there? Good!
Let’s do a pop quiz for fun.
Question: Why did Mitt Romney drop out of the Republican race this week?
A. He did it of his own volition because he loves America
B. He did it of his own volition because his campaign was broke
C. Other (please describe)
(Answer after the jump)
The answer would be "C. Other."
Romney dropped out of the race so that McCain could begin tacking toward the center for the general election.
Tacking to the center is, for US presidential politics, the quadrennial equivalent of the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano every spring.
And the winds for McCain were highly favorable this week.
Romney’s decision to drop out was not some personal whimsy. He was under enormous pressure from the GOP establishment, and when he agreed to take a dive, it was all highly choreographed with GOP image-makers.
The goal: enable our slack-jawed news media to assist in a brand-refreshing campaign you might call "John McCain: Moderate."
Consider the coverage you’ve heard on TV and radio all week of the CPAC convention sponsored by the American Conservative Union (or "NAMBLA").
Representative exchange:
Credulous Reporter: Why do hard core foaming-at-the-mouth conservatives hate John McCain so much?
Conservative Spokesperson: [wiping away foam] Well, gosh darn it, that John McCain is just so moderate! He co-sponsors legislation with liberal Democrats like Feingold and Kennedy! He doesn’t hate illegal aliens! He didn’t go along with our favorite deposed GOP Senators to ensure that the rabid fruitbats President Bush nominated for the judiciary got approved!
That McCain has a long way to go to show us true conservatives that he’s as extreme as we are! He’s just so, so, so... moderate!
Credulous Reporter: Well, I guess it’s a real question whether conservatives will support a guy that moderate in the fall...
Yeah, its hard to imagine all those wingnuts voting for the Republican candidate. Its hard to see the fundamentalist wackjobs going door-to-door and handing out flyers for a candidate so pro-life. Its hard to see plutocrats, in general, opening up their checkbooks for the GOP nominee.
Moderate McCain?
Make no mistake: McCain enters the race with a well-known "maverick moderate" branding, but McCain lines up comfortably with the most loony of right-wing positions, and even defines the extreme edge with some positions, like his stance on Iraq.
(By the way, have you ever noticed that the continuum for Republican candidates seems to run from "conservative" to "moderate", while the continuum for Democrats seems to run from "liberal" to "sell out corporate whore"? But I digress...)
But "no!" some might say – the antipathy of the right toward McCain is a real issue – why Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk have been savaging McCain for weeks!
Imagine for a moment that you are Rush Limbaugh. Set aside the craving for sex tourism and illegally obtained drugs, the mind-warping hypocrisy, and all the crushing insecurities, and ask yourself: "What is the downside of bashing John McCain? How would bashing John McCain hurt Republicans, their corporate owners, and their fundamentalist Christian shock troops?"
It won’t.
The right wing noise machine sees bashing John McCain as a twofer. On the one hand, it reinforces McCain’s positioning as a moderate – obviously the only chance Republicans have of winning the Presidency.
On the other, it riles up their troglodyte listeners, forcing McCain and his minions to kowtow and spout right-wing orthodoxy – actually leveraging McCain’s moderate branding to help reposition extreme politics as something even a "moderate" - like John McCain! - can be comfortable saying.
Luckily, we unified Democrats had our attack dogs out in force this week, pointing out the absurdity of all this kabuki theater, the absurdity of calling John McCain a moderate, and the inescapable fact that any Republican nominee will be completely beholden to hard-core extremists – they’re the only ones left with any power in the Republican Party.
Well, OK – so we were a little preoccupied with whether Obama or Clinton does better against McCain in idiot opinion polls. You know, as if this were some static question, and as if it wasn’t state-by-state electoral votes that matter (as opposed to some unweighted popular vote count).
For those too young to recall, some February 1988 polls showed Michael Dukakis beating George Bush senior by 10 points - solid affirmation that we picked the right candidate that year. Right?
Our own primaries are great fun, but we should make no mistake: the fall campaign has begun.
Huckabee will stick around for some more contests to help keep McCain in the news (Republican gossip suggests they’ve had a back-room deal for weeks). He will keep McCain in the news, that is, as (to paraphrase our media, again) the "moderate" candidate who, you know, only wins because of his appeal to reasonable, moderate, independent voters...
But the choreography this week around Mitt’s surrender shows that Republican infrastructure is already consolidated behind McCain, and in trim, fighting form.
For Republicans, its now all about November – about tacking back to the center.
And with the vast coverage this week given to John McCain’s "moderation" problem – completely uninterrupted by consideration of McCain’s far-right track record, and unopposed by any Democrats crying "bullshit!" – this was a week where we lost ground.