Subscribe by RSSWill John McCain divide the Republican Party?
Nzpudding asked an interesting question this week in the forum, “Are Conservatives a dying breed?” I do not think that conservatives are a dying breed, we just need to do some house cleaning. Peggy Noonan this week in her column and also in an interview with Laura Ingram on the O’Reilly Factory, in so many words stated that conservatives need to sacrifice in order to realign.
This is an excerpt from her latest column
“On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party. It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it!”
This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.
And this needs saying, because if you don’t know what broke the elephant you can’t put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can’t trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.”
Wow, there written on the page were the words that I have been afraid to mutter and to ashamed to admit. If George W. Bush was not elected in 2000 would the conservative party be stronger. Certainly it must. Would we have the internal chaos that plagues are party and continues to divide us while the democrats watch us unravel like a poorly knitted sweater? After reading her latest column in The Wall street Journal, I’m left with so many questions, but one overrides all of them. Could it be that we conservatives need to worry about our own party and sit this one out? Is it time to hand the rains over to democrats for the next four years so that we can fix our party structurally from with in?
I have a theory, yes it is a bit out there but what am I to think when Rush Limbaugh announces that the first time in his life he does not know if he will be able to vote for a GOP candidate? The theory is this: will the conservatives of the Republican Party float a third party candidate? I would never image not voting on Election Day. As long as there is a God in Heaven I will never vote for a democrat. So what’s one to do? Will conservatives be content with a Vice President such as Fred Thompson?
Update
Have you seen the article out today that John McCain had serious thoughts back 2001 to switching parties, from republican to a Democrat. He spoke with Tom Daschle the former senator and minority leader of the senate. “Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCain’s case, they said, it was McCain’s top strategist who came to them.” You see I’m not crazy when I say he does NOT stand for Republican values. He all but jumped ship. That’s Traitor territory.
I say good riddance.
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According to the newspaper, McCain returned to Jacksonville in 1973 after more than five years as a prisoner of war to find that his wife was a different person. Carol McCain, once a model, had been badly injured in a car wreck in 1969. The article recounts that her injuries “left her 4 inches shorter and on crutches, and she gained a good deal of weight.”
By 1979, McCain was concerned that his Naval career was not advancing and pondering his future. He met Cindy Hensley, an attractive 25-year-old woman from a wealthy Arizona family. McCain courted her and married her in May 1980 — a month after getting a divorce.
Less than a year later, the McCains moved to Arizona where Cindy’s family runs one of the country’s largest Anheuser-Busch distributorships. A year after that, McCain ran for an open congressional seat and won. He was on his way.
You won’t find an account of this period on McCain’s Web site.
He already has. It’s a sad year for the Republican party, and for America. By fall Iraq will be less an issue and since Iraq is McCain’s only strong point, he hardly has a chance.
Conservatism is far from dead in this country. The Republicans, particularly Bush, made a few key mistakes in the past five years that cost them Congress in ’06 and will probably cost them the White House this year. However, the platform itself remains widely accepted.
If the conservative coalition is indeed broken, it has yet to be replaced, neither in terms of actions nor ideology. The Democrats have yet to develop a coherent, unifying platform other than “We hate George Bush.” On the subject of Iraq, they have no new or specific ideas of what to do. Even when it comes to withdrawal, they dare not label specific timetables, making their arguments somewhat meaningless. What has the Democratic Congress done after a whole year in office? Nothing.
At this point, I believe that John McCain is the sole hope for the Republican Party, even though I personally like Huckabee’s platform better. McCain is the only candidate who’s moderate enough, with a strong platform of fiscal responsibility, to dodge the anti-Bush fire. In the wake of Bush, I doubt that moderates and liberals will find Huckabee or Romney—icons of the Religious Right and Corporate Evil, respectively—acceptable in the general election. In addition, the fact that the Democrats will field either one of two types of unconventional candidates (black or female) makes the white, male, experienced war hero automatically more electable.
The Republicans are not out just yet.
Wouldn’t it be better for America if more people were in the middle somewhere rather than far left or far right?
I get the impression McCain’s somewhere in the middle with a right leaning and Obama is the same with a left leaning, wouldn’t that be better all round for the majority of Americans?
I personally have a problem with McCain masquerading as a republican and saying he’s reaching across the isle, when really he’s a democrat in republican clothing. Red flags go up all over the field when a republican co-authors a bill with the likes of Kennedy and Feingold. The man is just as likely to be a conservative as Ted Kennedy is to be prosecuted for manslaughter for killing his secretary well driving off a bridge under the influence of alcohol. I should mention that there is no statue of limitations on manslaughter in Massachusetts.
I see Sean Hannity came out and endorsed Mitt Romney. Lets hope that this endorsement will through him over the top.
The Only Reason McCain is winning is because Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are splitting up the more conservative republicans. If we don’t want McCain, and we don’t, we must choose between Mike and Mitt, Romney currantly has a way better chance at winning. So the voters got to assume that mike is out and vote for Romney
If you journey to Washington D.C and talk to people who live and work there, you’ll hear a different story about the Party lines than the mass media. To them, many of these issues of divides are sensationalized.
The goal– ideally– for Congress is to pass legislation that will benefit the people of the United States. I do not think that working with people from different Parties constitutes a lack of integrity, if the main purpose of being in Congress is to write good legislation. It’s one thing to critique the content of the legislation, another to attack the bi-partisan work on the basis of bi-partisanship. It is great to have distinctive ideals and values, but it is another to allow these to divide us into different ‘blocks’ from which we can never emerge.
I understand that it takes a great deal of bureaucracy to get the job done in Washington. I interned with a state legislature and witnessed firsthand the legislative process, and what it takes to draft bills and get the votes needed to pass those bills. It’s very much a game of give and take. You have to look at the bill and determine what is best for your district, or in McCain’s case, the country.
Sometimes an issue that is important to your constituents will force you to compromise and step across the aisle. However, in this case, John McCain wanted to hop the fence completely in 2001. He had serious thoughts of becoming a part of the Democratic Party. When somebody votes you into office under a certain political party, they expect you to uphold party principles. In this case, McCain choosing to become a Democrat would surely violate the ideologies under which he was elected.
McCain is doomed to lose the general election even if he wins the nomination, unless you really think there are enough “independents” out there to elect him by themselves.
Those who are fiscal conservatives cannot, in good conscience vote for McCain.
Those who are worried about the economy cannot vote for McCain.
Those who are social conservatives will remember his idea of campaign finance reform and wonder if their particular issue will be next on his chopping block.
Those who are foreign policy conservatives will remember that there is documentation of his terrible temper and his overreaction to a perceived slight and will not want to give him responsibility for a nuclear arsenal.
Those familiar with issues of aging will remember all of the times on the campaign trail that he didn’t respond at all to the currant discussion, but rather seemed stuck on a certain idea or phrase. They won’t want to take the chance of having a puppet president.
Then there are the Huckabee supporters who may feel sold out after what happened in West Virginia today. Who could blame them for taking their ball and going home after discovering their candidate isn’t so much running for president as running for McCain for president.
Indeed, by throwing his hat in with Huckabee, McCain has likely offended that part of the Republican party that holds religious freedom as an inviolate right of every citizen. Can McCain win without those folks? It will only get worse if McCain chooses Huckabee as his running mate, thus dooming his campaign further.
Then there will be all the stuff, accurate and inaccurate, true and false, thrown his way by the Democrats and their supporters. How many independents will he lose when the real mud starts to fly?
I reiterate, McCain has already lost the general election.
The only question for conservatives is: If McCain gets the Republican party nomination, do we unite behind some conservative candidate we all can agree on? (Though I did not support Fred Thompson, I would suggest him as a possible compromise candidate, If he would accept it. But there may be others.) If we do, our voices still can be heard this election cycle, if not, we are irrelevant.
I completely agree! I was a huge “Friend of Fred’s” so making him the conservative candidate is just fine by me. If the conservative party doesn’t float a candidate I will be forced to write myself in!
I have always been for Romney, but Fred was always my second choice. I have wondered how many other folks also had him in mind if their first choice didn’t make it. I think he, or someone like him, stands a chance of running a very competitive third party campaign if McCain gets the Republican nomination. And remember, in a three way election you only need 34% of the electors to win.
“And remember, in a three way election you only need 34% of the electors to win.” Excellent point. Today I heard that 45% of conservatives voted for Mitt Romney. I know I did. So whats next? I’m sure there was collaboration today between the Talk Radio Gods on which candidate to float on the Conservative ticket.
I am not following you guys here. So your argument is that if it is a contest between John McCain and a Democrat (either Clinton or Obama), these fiscal conservatives will prefer a Democrat elected? The social conservatives will do the same?
I really do not think so. I think the conservatives will bite their lips, grumble and complain, and vote the Republican ticket. It’s either that or a Democratic one with John Edwards as Attorney General, probably Joe Biden as Secretary of State, and a probably Bill Richardson as VP.
Look, with in conservative rings people are not happy with John McCain, some may swallow hard and vote for him, but there are many who will not. I am one. Unless Johnny Boy puts forward a Conservative VP I will not support him. Its that simple. Do you really think someone like Rush will vote for McCain or a democrat, no, he would be a hypocrite to say the least. I cannot emphases enough that the Republican Party needs to sacrifice the presidency and clean house. Starting with the president and working its way down to the house and senate. There is way to much scandal that has rocked our party in the last eight years. Lets get our brooms out and clean up the mess.
What a mess. We need to clean house.I wish we could vote them all out and start over. If the Democrats have full control we are going down a long road of taxes, taxes, and more hidden taxes. Recession is knocking at our door.