David

Karki

Read David's bio and previous columns here

April 28, 2008

Conservatives' Unease With McCain

In the space of one day, Sen. John McCain put on clear display for all to see the reason why so many conservatives are so unhappy with his candidacy, and why most of them will vote against the Democratic nominee rather than for McCain, presuming they can find it in themselves to pull that lever at all.

McCain first disingenuously criticized the Bush Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, in so doing cementing the liberal shibboleths that have come to be the “truth” on the subject. Not once did he mention the dereliction of Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco, or that President Bush was stymied by the latter in hurried attempts to get at least some personnel and supplies staged in Louisiana before Katrina made landfall.

Nor did he use that as an object lesson in why people should never depend on government. Nor did he even qualify his remarks with something indicating that with all the entourage a president must bring, staying out of the way might be the best way to help. (And that the Democrats almost certainly, if hypocritically, would have accused Bush of grandstanding and exploiting the tragedy had he visited.)

Given a chance to demonstrate some conservative bonafides and to break down a little of the myth around the Katrina post-mortem, McCain instead pandered to the worst liberal talking points.

He followed that display by criticizing a perfectly legitimate ad produced by the North Carolina GOP in advance of that state’s primary on May 6. The ad shows a photo of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Barack Obama, plays a clip of Wright's incendiary rhetoric and the narrator says “He's just too extreme for North Carolina.”

This is not exactly Willie Horton here, but that didn't stop McCain from insisting that the North Carolina GOP not air it and saying they were “out of touch with reality and the Republican Party.” As if he should be the one to decide what can and can't air. (Then again, he does have a history of trashing the First Amendment with McCain-Feingold, so it's not that surprising.) If anyone is out of touch here, it's McCain with the conservative rank-and-file.

And if the ad is so out-of-bounds, how are Wright and Obama themselves not? The ad is only telling the truth – playing Wright's own remarks and reminding voters of Obama's long association with him. The “outraged” response is, I think, simply because someone got too close to the truth for comfort. As Shakespeare said, methinks thou doth protest too much.

That McCain would actually go so far as to demand the ad be yanked and then insult its prodcuers is, on its face, inexplicable. The only plausible strategic reason, given by Jim Geraghty at NR's Campaign Spot amongst others, is that he knew his demand would be rejected, so he gets to look sensitive while simultaneously bringing national attention to the ad, the larger and longer hashing of which might keep it in the news and hurt his potential opponent this fall.

This might be believable if it were the first time, but McCain's track record makes this hard to take at face value. Perhaps if he hadn't spent most of the last decade happily moving left, I could more readily accept that this was a standard political shrewd move and not just pre-emptive surrender.

With moves like these two during this campaign, after years of sticking it to conservatives every way possible –you name the big awful liberal bill and he co-sponsored it – it shouldn't be shocking that conservatives have major misgivings about McCain. Nor that he and the GOP have found raising funds and volunteers difficult. You can't expect folks who have been betrayed and who continue to be treated poorly to be eager to give their money and time to those perpetrating the betrayal and mistreatment.

McCain is going out of his way to eschew and disdain the very people who ought to be his base. Whether this is out of over-eagerness to win over whichever subset of Democrats will inevitably be unhappy with their nominee, or out of sheer arrogance over the fact that conservatives have nowhere else to go, I do not know. And it doesn't really matter.

McCain is on the verge of losing conservatives altogether. Yes, Obama and Hillary Clinton are equally awful choices from our point of view. The argument that at least he's better than those two necessarily disappears when he's not substantively different from them.

In an election year where our choices consist of a liberal senator, a very liberal senator and the most liberal senator of all, the easiest way for McCain to stand out and to keep his right flank from leaking – if not hemorrhaging – is to say and do things that reassure conservatives he hasn't become the complete creature of the Beltway that, by all indications, it seems he has.

McCain is right to reach across the aisle. The problem is that it's not back to conservatives from the liberal position he now firmly holds. And his failure to do so stands to be fatal to his campaign.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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