He can, you know. Against either Obama or Hillary. I don't mean he will; I mean it's a stronger possibility than most Democrats, liberals, and progressives are willing to consider.
Here's how he does it: he picks a Huckabee clone to be his veep--a rock-solid, one hundred per cent, "evangelical political movement" poster boy: and he can win.
(continued)
Here's why I think that could work. Remember that "shock and awe" feeling that swept the US when Kerry lost to GWB by about three million votes? Sure you do. The Dem voters emailing photos of themselves with "We're Sorry" banners and signs to foreign countries, the feelings in the pits of our stomach--you remember that.
Even the right was in shock, a bit. Their talking points that November and December were uncharacteristically careful--the word to the conservative troops was: "Don't dance on the Dems graves. Talk about the need for unity, for consensus, for a change."
That didn't last long, but that's what they did, for a few weeks, anyway. I think the reason they did that was because they were shocked, too. I think a lot of them expected Bush to lose to Kerry, and the victory--by a margin of three million--caught them off guard.
Another reason I think that is because conservatives who should be in the know were caught off guard. I recall reading the late William F. Buckley after the election. He was caught off guard, too. Even as late as the day of the voting, he wrote that he was being told by his sources that "it's Kerry." Needless to say, he was delighted that the exit polls and his normally reliable sources were wrong.
But that's not the point. The point was that few people saw what was going to make the difference: the religious right, the evangelical political movement (EPM), the social conservatives or "values voters"--whatever they prefer to be called. Millions of them, putting Bush well over the top--even after the revelation of "no WMDs", even after it was clear that Bush had lied, lied about everything, lied about the need for a new "pre-emptive strike" doctrine, lied about how the war was going, about "major combat operations" being over.
Bush had been courting the EPM throughout the nineties, and it had paid off for him again. There were millions of new Bush voters that almost no one had counted; the "sleeping giant" of evangelical voters was now awake, they were being directed, and Bush was their boy. He had kissed the right asses, and so he won by significant margin. To this day, you can turn on evangelical radio and hear their pundits describing Bush as a "godly man."
If McCain can "make the deal" and capture that support--he's viable; he can win. And I think he knows that; he is trying to make that deal, right now.
Top conservatives mixed on McCain
March 7, 2008
(Note: Dig that crazy headline. In the opinion of the editor who wrote it, the Council for National Policy (a secretive millionaire's club of the religious right) are now identical with America's "top conservatives." It's not too much of a stretch at all to claim that; I submit that the support of this organization is make-or-break for the modern GOP. That's why all of last year's top contenders for the GOP nod came on their knees to court its support. And now the story:)
By Ralph Z. Hallow - NEW ORLEANS — John McCain got mixed reviews today from some of the conservative movement's top donors and leaders after he addressed — then took questions from — members of the secretive Council for National Policy.
"We didn't lose the 2006 [congressional] elections because of Iraq but because of runaway spending," the putative Republican presidential nominee told the annual winter meeting of the CNP, some of whose members are skeptical of his claims to represent their views and goals in his bid for the presidency.
He drew cheers and applause when he said he would veto a spending bill that had earmarks and vowed to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to "make famous" the names of lawmakers who authored such pork-barrel spending measures.
Speaking without notes and without hesitation, he strode energetically back and forth across the stage, making his points and calling on people who had raised their hands, according to audience members.
However, for many social and religious conservative CNP members, he was a flop...
Good! I'm glad he flopped in his latest attempt to be anointed by the CNP. And conventional wisdom has it that McCain burned his bridges a long time ago, so far as the religious right was concerned. But three months ago, conventional wisdom also had it that John McCain's campaign was toast. (I'm one of the millions who believed that, before I left for India for a couple of months in December--when I came back, McCain had risen from the grave and captured the GOP nomination.)
So conventional wisdom isn't going to do it. If McCain can make that deal this spring, he's got a serious chance of defeating Obama or Hillary. And the CNP and its adherents understand how the deal could be made:
Asked if she and her organization will work hard to help elect Mr. McCain in November, (Janet Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a Dobson-sponsored organization) said, "I think most conservatives will support him because he is more conservative than the two choices — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — for the Democratic Party.
"On the other hand, he will not find an electorate that is inspired, that will plant signs in their yards, that will mobilize their neighbors and do everything they can to get him elected. They will go to the polls, and that is about it," she said.
Then she expressed a proviso that some other CNP members also shared.
Unless, she added, "he chooses a strong social conservative vice presidential candidate,"
Right you are, Ms. Crouse! The real questions now are:
- will McCain act on what he knows, and nominate a veep contender that is surefire with the EPM and its millions?
and
- if he doesn't, will the EPM and its millions (who made a huge difference to the GOP in 2000 and 2004) "sit this one out" and accept their worst nightmare: a liberal President Obama or President Clinton?
I don't think they will sit it out. For the players in the CNP, the Dobsons of America, it's about access and power. If they get "their" candidate in the veep slot, all their GOTV drives and massive media and panic rhetoric will begin to operate in McCain's favor. And they know that McCain is old and sick--an EPM vice president stands a pretty good chance of taking his place before his term is up, so there's the chance of that potential pay-off. At the very least, an EPM vice president gets into the national spotlight as an important member of the McCain White House--groomed as successor.
I don't think they can afford to pass up a chance like that, if McCain is smart enough to offer it to them. The CNP and its leaders don't want to be marginal, in a liberal America. They want to run America, and this may be their best shot; surely they feel that the future would look more bleak for them with a liberal president and a Dem congress. (And they have to "get out the vote" anyway, to preserve the congressional seats they do influence--why not get out the vote for McCain, too, if he puts an evangelical on the ticket with him?
Many people who care about politics like to think that results can be predicted on basis of voters recognizing their rational self interest when they got to the voting booth. Such people are regularly disappointed. The Dem candidates have some big advantages going into this fall: the economy is failing, the GOP candidate is a warmonger, there are tens of millions who passionately desire change in the White House, and real change in the country itself.
But are their enough of them to stop McCain, if he captures the support of the millions of irrational voters: the rank and file conservatives who vote for Republicans even when it costs them, the millions of CNP followers whose supernatural beliefs drive or even determine their voting?
Turn on the AM radio and tune in the "Christian" station in your local market. If you listen to their public affairs programming, you will get a mental picture of the audience: a paranoid audience that believes in the reality of Satan and demons, believes that the Bible is a "magic book" of inerrant prophecy, that the evolution of human beings is a lie promoted by a conspiracy of secularists, that gays have an agenda to capture our children, and that we are now in an "end times" type struggle with Islam. That audience numbers in the millions; that audience put GWB over top by three million votes in his run against Kerry. That's why all the major GOP candidates and players--including GWB and Dick Cheney--have courted the support of the Council for National Policy, whose members get that message out, every day.
I hope that there are enough rational voters in the US to stop the irrational voters.
But I know that there weren't, in 2006.
(One final observation: Before I went to diary this, I searched the Kos to see if it had "already been diaried." I was unable to find any Stories or Diaries that primarily dealt with McCain's trip to win over the CNP in New Orleans. I didn't find anything on the subject. I realize that people here are all caught up in the Obama/Clinton contest--but can it really be true that no one, not even the major players on the Kos, noticed that McCain is now actively courting the CNP, the Sith Lords of the evangelical political movement? If that's true, that's really bad. This struggle for the White House is kind of like a chess game; you can't be so obsessed with the status of your own pieces that you stop monitoring your opponent's. I hope the reason that "I found nothing on it" is that I'm just really bad at searching the Kos.)