Home > The Barr Code > Archives > 2008 > February > 13
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Conservative cred elusive for McCain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I spent three days last week in Washington, D.C., where, like a recovering alcoholic, I am not infrequently drawn for sustenance and comfort. Part of my time on this latest trip was spent at the 35th annual Conservative Political Action Conference, known among political junkies and media hounds by its acronym, “CPAC.”
CPAC this year attracted a record number of participants — nearly 7,000 conservative activists of all ages, from mid-teens to octogenarians and beyond. However, most of the time the constant rush of young people charging through the all-too-narrow corridors of the huge but still inadequate Omni Shoreham Hotel made it seem like everyone there had overdosed on Red Bull. Still, it was a most interesting experience in this year in which the nation is poised to elect its 44th president.
Noticeably absent this year were a handful of presidential wannabees who had generated such excitement at last year’s event. Nowhere to be seen was “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, who last year had sought to soothe continuing concerns over his liberal philosophical bent by sharing his personal conclusion that no other single human being on the planet was his equal in defending America from the scourge of terrorists. Apparently voters had, in the interim 12 months, reached a quite different conclusion.
Also silent was former Sen. Fred Thompson’s booming voice and TV-crafted persona, although reruns of “Law and Order” might still soothe the yearnings of his fans, who had tried in vain to inject a dose of adrenaline into his energy-deficient campaign. Mr. “Tough on Immigration” Tom Tancredo’s one-trick pony gave out long before CPAC 2008 rolled around, as did Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback’s evangelical express. Duncan Hunter, the congressman who’d hoped to ignite a dark-horse candidacy at last year’s conference, was nowhere to be seen, apparently still in the dark.
Notwithstanding the far smaller number of presidential candidates at the 2008 event, the excitement was even more pronounced; but the responsibility to kindle it was left to a foursome of commander in chief hopefuls — John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. And of these, one (Romney) announced he was dropping out while speaking to the convention. Even more interesting, however, was that Romney, Paul and Huckabee all received arguably warmer and more enthusiastic responses than the front-runner, McCain.
And therein lies a serious problem for the senator from Arizona. Even those speakers who came to his defense — conservative journalists Robert Novak and George Will, for example — were treated to repeated booing at points during their defensive deliveries. Even as Novak, Will and other conservative pundits who’ve attempted to rally conservatives to McCain’s camp have ticked off reason after reason why he really should be considered sufficiently conservative to be elected by conservatives as a conservative, many conservatives become more, rather than less, skeptical of his conservative bona fides.
The skepticism is based at least in part on the fact that a rule of thumb in politics is that if you have to spend your time trying to convince voters that you are not something, you probably are. Shakespeare once again had it right — he “doth protest too much, methinks.” Of course, McCain’s problem also has to do with the fact he authored the law bearing his name that is among the most, if not the most, anti-freedom, anti-participatory legislation of the modern era — the McCain-Feingold “Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act.” The simple truth is, when your ability to convince voters of the validity of your message is hampered by the very law you authored, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Still, all is not lost for the elder statesman from Arizona. In every election, at least some Republican voters have shown themselves as willing as their Democrat counterparts to lay principles aside for electoral victory. Unfortunately for McCain, the number of conservative voters predisposed to do this again this year, after the disappointing experience of the last eight years, is unlikely to be sufficient for him to overcome his considerable ideological baggage, especially since many of those voters already have tasted of much more exciting and principled candidates like Paul and Huckabee.
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
