You want
irony? This week's CBS News poll reported Congress' approval rating at
a dismal 29 percent, the lowest recorded number since 1996, right after
that Republican Congress, in a showdown with Democratic president Bill
Clinton, followed the unwise leadership of Speaker Newt Gingrich and shut
down the government.
In 2005, with ethically challenged House Majority Leader Tom Delay as
its face and petty squabbling its principal product, the conservative
Republican Congress could actually get needed rehabilitation from the
last-minute Senate compromise among seven Republicans and seven Democrats,
avoiding a potentially catastrophic shoot-out over judges.
The Ultimate Irony: The compromise, so potentially beneficial to the damaged
reputation of the conservative Congress, was fashioned in the Senate office
of the Republican whom Tom Delay and many conservatives so intensely dislike
-- John McCain of Arizona.
To hear the ratatat of right-wing attacks on the judges compromise is
to conclude that by his part in that deal, McCain effectively ended any
and all hopes his admirers might have held for the 2008 Republican presidential
nomination. With characteristic restraint, Pat Buchanan called the compromise
"a Republican Munich." Sounding like a capo from "The Sopranos,"
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council identified McCain by name
to Ron Fournier of AP and hinted darkly that "there will be repercussions."
Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family termed the deal "a complete
bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans."
Sorry, folks, but any political obituary on John McCain for 2008 is both
premature and wrong. Of course, if GOP primary voters in 2008 are looking
for a candidate who votes "right" for every possible tax cut,
advocates contradictory Big Government Conservatism and simultaneously
shelters our adolescents from the temptations of the Victoria's Secret
catalog, while saddling these same children with the burden of ever-swelling
public debt simply because we are too selfish to pay our own bills, then
McCain will never be the first choice.
He has actually voted against Republican tax cuts. He votes against spending.
In the considered judgment of the iconoclastic Marshall Wittman, his former
press secretary, McCain's a" neo-Goldwaterite," who, like his
fellow Arizonan, is "a limited government hawk with deep reservations
about the rising dominance within the party of the moral conservatives."
After Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court,
Jerry Falwell declared that every good Christian ought to oppose her nomination.
Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, a supporter of gay rights, responded,
"Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass." It is no
accident that John McCain today sits behind Barry Goldwater's desk.
Those who write off McCain as someone who can only win a Republican primary
when independents and Democrats can vote ignore South Carolina in 2000.Then,
in that undeniably socially and culturally conservative place where only
registered Republicans vote and where George W. Bush -- with unlimited
campaign funds -- had the all-out backing of the state and national party
machinery, McCain still won 43 percent of the vote.
In 2008, there will probably be a number of candidates with some support
from the religious right, including Sens. George Allen of Virginia, Sam
Brownback of Kansas and Bill Frist of Tennessee, but none will likely
command the overwhelming financial and political support Bush enjoyed
in 2000. It's a good bet that in a semi-crowded primary field, that 43
percent would be enough to win South Carolina.
The other GOP 2008 contenders will compete to be the favorite son of Wall
Street, or Easy Street, the home address of the taxaphobics, or Church
Street, where some oppose pre-marital sex because it could lead to dancing.
McCain will be the favorite of none of these.
His political base (outside of that part of the press corps who appreciate
his candor and guts) is on Main Street, where voters still value conscience,
independence and the strength to tell powerful interest groups to go to
hell.
That's what John McCain has spent his career doing. Whether he will do
the same in the White House is in large part up to the voters in the 2008
Republican primaries.
