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Dan

Calabrese

 

 

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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 Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

 

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