John McCain – Possible Trouble with the Base

The GOP is comprised of a diverse demographic – independents, so-called Reagan Democrats, moderate Republicans, Conservatives and then, there is the “Right Wing” aspect of the party. The “Right Wing” are those conservatives, most often wrongly tagged as the “Religious Right”, that embrace zero-tolerance on immigration, and have a criteria that not one politician alive (or dead for that matter) can match. Power groups within the GOP, such as the Conservative Club for Growth, originally backed Mitt Romney (go figure), setting up a smear campaign against Mike Huckabee, and discounting John McCain entirely. Pundits, from Sean Hannity to Laura Ingram were firmly in the Romney camp, the big Christian Church leaders planned to sit this one out as they managed to find fault with every candidate. The combination of these three factors (GOP conservative pacs, television and radio pundits and the Christian Conservative Leaders) gave John McCain a boost. John McCain is the least conservative Republican available, but to his credit, makes no apologies for his left-of-center ideologies, and can be seen as a moderate conservative. The problem McCain now faces is a relentless campaign of apathy mixed with anger from those on the “right”. What are the numbers? It is estimated that the extreme right, those religious and conservatives who have made the difference for the GOP since the sweep of Congress and the Senate during the Clinton presidency, number upwards to 20 million voters. Should this group not come to terms with an imperfect McCain, there will be a Democrat in the White House in concert with a like-minded house and senate. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that Republicans either support McCain or pick the candidate that is the most moderate of the two remaining Democrats. Suggestion: Get over the fact that McCain is the least conservative Republican or get over the fact that Hillary Clinton happened to be married to Bill Clinton. In other words, choose the least frightening of the three remaining candidates and give that person the support.

Email excerpt received today from a Massachusetts conservative group showcasing an article by Pat Buchanan.

4. Will the Right Sit It Out?
by Patrick J. Buchanan

If John McCain wins the presidency, his comeback -- after the bankrupt
debacle his campaign had become in the summer of 2007 with his backing of
the amnesty bill -- will be the stuff of legend.

And as nominee, he is entitled to conduct his own campaign and be cut slack
by a party whose brand name is now Enron.

That said, McCain seems to have decided to win by love-bombing the Big Media
and putting miles between himself and the base. Continued

Consider his "Forgotten Places" tour of last week.

It began in Selma, Ala., where McCain went to Edmund Pettis Bridge to hail
John Lewis and the marchers night-sticked and hosed down by the Alabama
State Troopers on the Montgomery march for voting rights.

Now that was a seminal movement in the fight for civil rights.

But this is not 1965. Today, John Lewis is a big dog in the
"No-Whites-Need-Apply!" Black Caucus. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is
sermonizing White America. The Rev. Al Sharpton is trying to shut down the
Big Apple. And the fight for equal rights is being led by Ward Connerly.

With no help from McCain, Connerly is trying to put on five state ballots a
Civil Rights Initiative that declares white men are also equal and not to be
denied their civil rights because of the color of their skin.

And where does McCain stand?

From Selma, McCain went to the Gee's Bend Quilters Collective, where black
ladies make the famous blankets. The stop could not but call to mind the
hundreds of thousands of textile and apparel jobs in the Carolinas and
Georgia lost after NAFTA and Most-Favored Nation for China, both of which
McCain enthusiastically supported.

McCain's next stop was Inez, Ky., where LBJ declared war on poverty. But
LBJ's war was a politically motivated scheme to shift wealth and power to
government, which led to a pathological dependency among America's poor, his
own abdication and Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign against Big Government that
ushered in the Conservative Decade.

McCain then went to New Orleans to backhand Bush for failing to act swiftly
to rescue the victims of Katrina.

But the real failure of New Orleans was of the corrupt and incompetent
regime of Mayor Ray Nagin and the men of New Orleans, who left 30,000 women
and children stranded in a sea of stagnant water.

No doubt Bush hit the snooze button, but why the piling on?

Then McCain headed up to Youngstown, Ohio, to tell the folks their jobs are
never coming back and NAFTA was a sweet deal.

But why, when America's mini-mills and steel mills are among the most
efficient on earth -- in terms of man hours needed to produce a ton of steel
-- aren't those jobs coming back?

Answer: It is due to the free-trade policies of Bush and McCain, which
permit trade rivals to impose value-added taxes of 15 percent to 20 percent
on steel imports from the United States while rebating those taxes on steel
exports to the United States. We are getting it in the neck coming and
going.

An America First trade and tax policy could have U.S. steel mills rising
again, while those in Japan, China, Russia and Brazil would be shutting down
as uncompetitive in the U.S. market.

But we no longer put America first.

The U.S. government burns its incense at the altar of the Global Economy.
The losers are those guys in Youngstown McCain was lecturing on the beauty
of NAFTA. And the winners are the CEOs who pull down seven-, eight- and even
nine-figure annual packages selling out their country for the corporation.

Does McCain think $6 trillion in trade deficits since NAFTA, a dollar
rotting away and 3.5 million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush was all
inevitable? Does he think we can do nothing to stop the deindustrialization
of a country that used to produce 96 percent of all it consumed?

Why should those guys in Youngstown vote for McCain?

So the feds can teach them how to shovel snow?

Even Hillary, whose husband did NAFTA with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole's
help, now gets it.

Then McCain took a time out to denounce the North Carolina GOP for ads tying
the Rev. Wright to Obama, and the pair to two Democratic congressional
candidates. To their credit, the North Carolinians told McCain where to get
off and are running the ads.

What does a McCain victory mean for conservatives?

Probably a veto on tax hikes and perhaps a fifth justice like Antonin
Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito or John Roberts, to turn two pair into
a full house. Fifty years after Warren, it could be game, set, match for the
right.

But McCain may also mean more Middle East wars, more bellicosity, more
manufacturing jobs lost, malingering in the culture wars, and more illegal
aliens and amnesty.

In Pennsylvania, thousands of Republicans re-registered to vote Democratic,
and 27 percent of the GOP votes went to Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. McCain
may just stretch this rubber band so far it snaps back in his face.

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Hillary Clinton is asking that the delegates from Michigan and Florida be seated at the DNC Convention form here. Should those delegates be counted, as well as the popular vote be counted, she would stand a better chance of becoming the DNC nominee. Suggestion: Ask!