POLITICS
Let's Hear It For The Underdogs
By Stump Connolly
I take a perverse pleasure in watching the 2008 Republican candidates vie to take up the banner George Bush has left them after eight years in office. It’s a little like watching people volunteer to lead a suicide squad.
Eight contenders have emerged for the honor, but the mainstream media are treating them like also-rans. The more meaty dish of whether Hillary, Barack or John Edwards will outwit the others to lead the Democrats back to the White House is, frankly, far more tasty.
To be sure, the Republican candidate who grabs the nomination has a long uphill trek ahead. He will not only have to prove he is more popular than the current president – whose approval ratings are hovering around 30% -- but able to win over 21% of the remaining electorate to the notion that he can lead America in a new direction. Sisyphus had an easier task.
Just last week, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll showed a majority of Americans now believe the economy is on the wrong track. That is the highest no-confidence vote in five years. Sixty-five percent say they have not benefited from the Bush tax cuts, and 60 percent say they favor repeal of some tax cuts to fund one of the Democratic proposals for more federal health care. Add in the discontent over Iraq and general Bush fatigue, and it’s shaping up to be one tough year to be a Republican.
But what I like about the Republican side of the race is that, unlike the Democrats who have to decide who best represents the party, the Republicans have to decide what the hell the party stands for. Without Karl Rove around to mediate the conflicting interests, it’s anyone’s guess.
Front-running Rudy Giuliani epitomizes the problem. The former New York mayor won his first (and only) public office by being an un-Republican: a tough-talking federal prosecutor, he wooed the normally Democratic voters of New York city with pronouncements that were strongly pro-choice on abortion, lenient on gay marriage and vociferous on the need for gun control laws.
His tenure in office was marked by a crackdown on petty crime and austere fiscal measures, both trademarks of Republicanism, but also light-hearted appearances in drag at social events and a messy divorce and remarriage, neither of which fall into the category of Republican family values.
His presidential candidacy is propelled by his response as “America’s Mayor” to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. But aside from his determination to fight the war against terrorism on foreign shores, he has come up notably short on original ideas for how to win it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or wherever else it is sure to break out.
Far more suited to the Republican mantle is Mitt Romney, the management consultant turned Republican governor of Massachusetts (another Democratic stronghold). His family values credentials are straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting – if Rockwell had painted Mormons -- and his trust in sound business practices to solve America’s social problems would make Calvin Coolidge proud.
But like Giuliani, he hails from what used to be called the Eastern Establishment (or Rockefeller) wing of the party, which has been a waning force since the ascension of Barry Goldwater in 1964; and he is proving to be more of a flip-flopper than John Kerry, or what you'd call a Republican John Kerry without the war record.
The power base of the Republican party lies in the South, the western plains and a dozen or so key Midwestern states. But they are sparsely represented in the race this year. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher, is a likeable enough candidate in this mode.
If his organization were stronger, he might have garnered more support from the religious right and been right in the thick of things. But fearful that he didn’t have enough popular appeal for the task, the Christian conservatives searched for other alternatives, luring Law & Order actor Fred Thompson into the race.
The hope was that Thompson could be another Ronald Reagan. He is not. He shares Reagan’s ability to deliver a good conservative line, but only when it is written out for him.
Reagan honed his message wandering in the desert of conservatism for two decades before he brought his crusade to Washington. Thompson, for all practical purposes, lives there. The primaries for Thompson are an out-of-town tryout tour of backwater stages, but his act doesn’t improve from one to another. As down home as he tries to be, he leaves the locals with the notion he would rather be somewhere else.
John McCain and Ron Paul also hail from the Goldwater wing of the party, McCain as Goldwater's successor in the Senate from Arizona, Paul by virtue of his previous presidential run as the Libertarian party candidate. But neither seems to be benefiting from it.
Okay, so Paul was a long shot to begin with and his call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq is heresy to the current party leaders. But what, pray tell, is wrong with John McCain?
It was not that long ago that McCain himself was the frontrunner in the race. He’d mended fences with the president, reached out to Jerry Falwell with an olive branch of peace and briefly led the Republican fundraising sweepstakes.
A top-heavy campaign staff did little to capitalize on that lead (and blew through most of the money) so earlier this year McCain trimmed his sails and reverted to the “one truthful man” campaign tactics that worked so well for him in 2000. But that is what makes him so appealing.
McCain is dogged by the fact the religious right has not embraced his campaign. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, was largely credited with delivering four million evangelicals to Rove in 2004, thus cementing President Bush’s re-election. Primed to do the same in 2008, he early on rejected McCain as not in tune with his movement.
McCain, however, is apparently not the only candidate who hasn't met Dobson's high standards. Dobson has gone on to reject Giuliani for his liberal social views, Romney for his Mormonism and Thompson for his lack of substance. Of late, Dobson, 71, has taken to talking about a third party as the only way to carry on his crusade.
But it’s unclear who will follow him. The religious right is a fractured political force this year. In a Sunday New York Times magazine piece this week, David Kirkpatrick points out that Dobson’s influence is waning. Younger mega-church leaders like Rick Warren in California and Bill Hybels in suburban Chicago have a broader, less ideological approach to carrying out God’s mission. For the first time in a decade, toeing the religious right’s line on social issues may not be the litmus test of Republicanism.
If that proves the case, McCain has as strong a claim on Republican values as any of the other candidates. Perhaps more. He’s been a clear advocate of fiscal responsibility in federal spending – and more, an effective legislator in making government more efficient.
He spearheaded campaign finance reform and, when his McCain-Feingold reforms came under attack, wasn’t afraid to admit the errors while at the same time explaining how compromise with resistant senators brought them about.
If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination because of her seven years experience in the Senate, McCain can trump her on a dozen fronts with his 21, most of it spent working both sides of the aisle to make the federal government work better.
Of all the Republican candidates, he is the only one who has taken a principled stand on Iraq. He favored toppling Saddam Hussein; he criticized Bush for the inept way he did it; he said the United States needed to commit more troops to the cause; and when Bush did -- in the form of Gen. Petraeus’s "surge" -- he staked his candidacy on its success.
Right or wrong, you know where John McCain stands –– and stood over the last five years of the Iraq War.
He is also, it bears repeating, a war hero –– the premise behind John Kerry's failed campaign in 2004. After being shot down as a Navy pilot in Vietnam, he stoically suffered five years of excruciating torture as a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war.
While Mitt Romney (who skipped that war on a deferment) waffled this month on whether waterboarding actually constitutes torture, McCain had no such reservations. Been there, done that. It’s torture –– and unacceptable in a freedom-loving nation such as ours.
McCain has a way to go to work himself back into Republican contention. The disarray in his campaign organization forced him to all but forego the Iowa caucuses. But a better than expected showing in New Hampshire –– which he won in 2000 over a Texas candidate named George Bush –– could jump start his campaign. That makes him viable in South Carolina, where the military vote matters, and with a good showing, peaking just in time for the February 5 Giga-Tuesday primaries in 20 states.
I don’t suppose the fate of John McCain will garner much attention among political reporters now focused on whether Hillary can run the table February 5. But let me repeat (see A Brokered Convention?), one if not both parties are headed to a convention where none of the contenders has the nomination sewn up.
In the Republican case, they will have to decide who will stand in the presidential debates to defend the principles of the party. They could do a lot worse than to make John McCain that man.
