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Dan
Calabrese
Read Dan's bio and previous columns here
March 6, 2008
Five Reasons John
McCain Will Be Our Next President
As
I watched John McCain address his supporters on Tuesday night after
clinching the Republican presidential nomination, I surprised myself by
turning to my wife and saying, “He’s going to win.”
This one speech moved me from thinking he has a good chance to being
convinced he’ll be the next president. Much of it had to do with his
calm demeanor and confident delivery. But it’s the root of these
attributes that lead to my sudden confidence in McCain’s ultimate
success.
My
wife, who if anything is even more conservative than I am, replied:
“People really hate Republicans right now.”
Overstated, perhaps, but I get what she’s saying. Much of the electorate
wants the ubiquitous holy grail of “change.” People think the economy is
bad because they listen to the media’s nonsense on the subject. A lot of
people still think we’re losing in Iraq.
And as this column has often lamented, Republicans had complete control
of the government from 2001 through 2006, and didn’t accomplish much.
People should be disappointed about that. I know I am.
But once the general election campaign starts, it won’t be about
Republicans in the abstract. It will be about John McCain, on his own
merits and in contrast to his opponent, whether that’s Barack Obama or
Hillary Clinton. Here’s why I am convinced he will win.
McCain Knows What He
Believes.
Now, some of what he believes is wrong, but the whole package is a lot
more right than Obama or Hillary. McCain is not a movement conservative.
He trusts his own instincts, which are conservative most of the time,
but are sometimes unconventional. That’s because he’s his own man. If
the North Vietnamese couldn’t get him to give up his convictions through
six years of torture in the Hanoi Hilton, some dopey focus group isn’t
going to either.
Contrast this with Hillary Clinton, who believes whatever her target
audience wants her to believe, and with Barack Obama, whose beliefs are
about as far left as you can get, which is probably why he prefers to
speak in platitudes like “change you can believe in” and “the audacity
of hope.”
Come November, voters want to get behind someone who is confident in his
beliefs.
McCain Is Ready To Be
Commander-in-Chief.
Did you notice how Hillary’s “3 a.m. phone call” ad worked? It matters
to the voters that the president is ready to handle a crisis. And
remember, these were Democratic primary voters, many of whom would be
just as happy if the president turned off his phone to anyone but union
officials and trial lawyers. The general electorate is even more
concerned about a president’s readiness to be commander-in-chief, and
there’s no way Hillary or Obama can touch McCain on this. Best of all,
if Hillary is the nominee, she will surely try to make the case that she
can be commander-in-chief because her husband was. And that won’t work.
McCain Will Win the
Iraq Debate.
Even if you think it was wrong to liberate Iraq, it doesn’t matter. That
won’t decide things in November. Obama’s argument on Iraq is that he was
against it from the start. Congratulations. Hillary’s taken every
position imaginable. She has no credibility on the issue. Only McCain
can say, “It was the right thing to do, and when the strategy wasn’t
working, I was the first to say so. And when my strategic
recommendations were followed, they worked. And now that we’re there, I
know what to do to ensure that we succeed.”
McCain will absolutely destroy Obama’s argument that we should simply up
and leave. It will be easy to demonstrate how disastrous that would be.
Elections are about the future, and the Iraq debate will be about what
to do now. McCain will win that debate easily.
Obama and Hillary Are
Exposing Each Other’s Weaknesses.
And no one is exposing McCain’s, no matter how hard the New York
Times tries. By the time he goes up against either one of them, it
won’t be hard to figure out how to attack his opponent. How do you
attack McCain? You can’t attack his personal background. You can’t
attack his experience. You can try to say he’s a George W. Bush clone,
but everyone can see that McCain thinks for himself, so that won’t fly.
In Presidential
Elections, Democrats Just Know How to Lose.
In the past 10 presidential elections, the Democratic nominee has topped
50 percent of the popular vote exactly one time – and just barely, Jimmy
Carter’s 50.1 percent in post-Watergate 1976 – while the Republicans
have topped it six times. Voting demographics change over time, of
course, but history has not shown there is a high ceiling on the number
of American voters who are willing to put a Democrat in the White House.
Even in 2004, when we had the highest turnout in recent memory, John
Kerry still couldn’t get to 49 percent.
You’ll never go hungry betting on Democrats to lose presidential
elections.
McCain still faces problems. Bad economic news would hurt him. The
conservative base is not excited about him. He does have a temper and he
could do or say something self-defeating. But all things considered, the
man I saw declaring victory last night is the one I envision doing it
again on November 4.
© 2008 North Star
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