June 24, 2008
Does John McCain Even Care About the Conservative Vote?
It's been said many times that McCain needs to do some "fence-mending" (or rather, "fence-building") to improve his standing with conservatives. Reconciliation ain't gonna happen on its own, and the only thing McCain's been doing to fences lately is running away from them.
Given McCain's actions since wrapping up the nomination, it's reasonable to infer that McCain thinks he can do just fine in November without the help of the disaffected conservatives. McCain seems to be much more interested in reaching out to the likes of La Raza and LULAC than he is in reaching the Republican base, as if he can make up for missing Republican votes by playing extra sweet with La Raza. Ronald Reagan pulled in 37% of the "hispanic" vote. Think the Maverick can best the Gipper? Good luck with that. In a recent letter to McCain, Tom Tancredo asks:
Senator, given your past sponsorship of amnesty legislation, [your] statements raise troubling questions. Are you planning to break a promise you made in February to postpone all other immigration reform legislation until we have first secured our borders?I'm thinking the answer to that question is: "Si!" but I'll reserve final judgment pending a response (or lack thereof) from McCain.
For her part, Michelle is resigned to the idea that the GOP nominee pretty much sucks big time:
adding another Beltway political strategist to the McCain camp isn’t going to fix an un-fixable ... problem. It’s not fundamentally flawed messaging, it’s a fundamentally flawed candidate. The sooner Republicans reconcile themselves to that, the better.
Ace is still puzzled by the whole thing:
I don't know how the fuck we wound up with this guy.And then there's John Hawkins of Right Wing News, who announced, not too long ago, the withdrawal of his support for McCain:
Not only is he not a conservative, he may have done more damage to the conservative movement than any other Republican over the last few years.As near as I can tell, John McCain could pretty much give a damn what the conservatives think. He got where he is without much help from conservatives, and may not think he'll be needing much help from conservatives in the future.. McCain may really believe that a big flood of "hispanic" McCainiacs will make up for low turnout among pro-border Republicans. I really don't see that happening, but what do I know?
