Being best buds with the likes of Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Barrack Hussein Obama might buy you a few Independent votes, but it won’t do much for your core conservative constituents. McCain’s buds think Joe Lieberman is a right-wing extremist and worked to defeat his re-election…
Nobody in America has worked harder to avoid a McCain nomination than I have. But despite all the efforts of 62.4% of Republicans who voted against McCain in the Republican primaries, he is looking more like the RNC nominee every day, as candidate after candidate leaves the GOP race and throws their support to McCain.
Now, with only 37.6% of the Republican vote, some of which isn’t actually Republican, coming instead from liberal Democrats and Independents in open primary states, it seems McCain will have an up hill battle to the Oval Office. Instead of reminding voters how well he has worked with liberals in the past, he might consider coming up with a few reasons why Republicans should vote for him.
A Call to Unite
McCain clearly has liberal and moderate Republicans wrapped up, which apparently accounts for approximately 37.6% of the Republican Party. No candidate can win a national election with only 37.6% of his own party behind him. So all RNC efforts are now focused on telling the other 62.4% of the party that they must unite behind McCain in opposition to an alternative worse than McCain, Hillary Clinton, or worse yet, Barrack Hussein Obama.
But the 62.4% of Republicans who voted against McCain in the primaries seem to be saying, “Not so fast Senator McAmnesty!” When Republican stalwarts like Rush or David Limbaugh and Ann Coulter vow to fight McCain all the way to November, you know you have a serious problem on your hands.
The need for Republicans to unite in order to defeat both Clinton and Obama is so obvious that it hardly deserves mention. But that being the case, the RNC should have allowed a stronger Republican candidate to emerge so that all Republicans could vote FOR that candidate, instead of just against Clinton and Obama.
Core Conservative Principles Stand in the Way
Much has been written about the many shades of gray that now make up the Republican electorate. Those at the base of the party, who still believe in those old conservative founding values of Life, Liberty, Freedom, Sovereignty and Security, are often now referred to as only an extreme right-wing fringe faction of the party.
Yet, this allegedly small faction of so-called extremists makes up a large portion of the 62.4% of the party who voted against McCain; - maybe even the majority of that group. The fringe faction may not be as small as alleged by RNC friends in the MSM.
It is these folks who are now being accused of threatening the McCain campaign and the future of the Republican Party, on the basis that they are all hung up on their conservative values and principles and fail to grasp the notion that the Republican Party is more important than all of those values combined. They refuse to “calm down” and get in line and it is driving the party powers insane. Desperate times call for desperate measures I’m afraid.
Principles Can Either Unite or Divide
At the moment, the Republican Party is divided down ideological lines. On one side are those who believe in some, but not all conservative principles and values. These folks call themselves moderates, usually due to their liberal social stances.
On the other side are those who hold all founding conservative principles and values dear, be they fiscal, security or social. They make no distinction between social, security and fiscal conservatism, seeing them all as interconnected and inter-dependent. These folks call themselves conservatives and they are willing to go to the mat in defense of those principles.
Core Republicans are unhappy with McCain’s history. McCain has a history of working across the political aisle, often at odds with his own constituency. Engaged Republicans are aware of this reality and they do not have confidence in McCain as a result.
It’s not right-wing extremists who stand between McCain and his quest for the White House. It’s the fundamental values of the Republican Party, which McCain has too often found himself at odds with. This will have to be resolved if the party is to unite behind him in the fall and the RNC can no longer expect voters to hold their nose and ignore those values. They’ve accommodated that request in the past and have paid a heavy price.
McCain will have to Meet them More than Halfway
To be fair, McCain is conservative on many issues. (per On the Issues)
• Opposes - Abortion is a woman's right
• Favors - Teacher-led prayer in public schools
• Strongly Favors - Privatize Social Security
• Strongly Favors - Death Penalty
• Strongly Favors - Mandatory Three Strikes sentencing laws
• Strongly Favors - Absolute right to gun ownership
• Opposes - Repeal tax cuts on wealthy – Even as he recently voted against making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.
• Strongly Opposes - The Patriot Act harms civil liberties
• Favors - Expand the armed forces
• Strongly Opposes - US out of Iraq
• Strongly Favors - Drug use is immoral: enforce laws against it
• Strongly Favors - Allow churches to provide welfare services
But to be honest, he also has some severe problems with more than 60% of Republicans on some other very important issues of our time.
• Favors - Replace coal & oil with alternatives – He has bought hook, line and sinker into Al Gore’s Global Warming Scam, which is little more than a poorly veiled attempt to bring America to its economic knees.
• Favors - Stricter limits on political campaign funds – Considered by many Republicans to be a direct assault against free political speech.
• Strongly Favors - Support & expand free trade – Missing however, the vital ingredients of “fair” free trade aimed at benefiting Americans more than third world dictatorships, and expanding fair free trade without relinquishing national sovereignty or security.
• Favors - Illegal immigrants earn citizenship – This one earned him the nickname Senator McAmnesty. He says he now understands that we must close and secure the border first. But Amnesty for those already here is an idea he has not given up on.
• Favors - More federal funding for health coverage – He supports increased welfare in the form of federal socialized health care, just not complete government controlled socialized medicine like his Democrat buds.
• Favors - Same-sex domestic partnership benefits – which means, he supports giving homosexual’s equal moral, social, legal and economic status with the foundational moral fabric of any successful society, the traditional family unit.
Perhaps the two most important issues McCain must find a way to unite with conservatives on is national sovereignty and security.
Convincing conservatives that he is serious about winning the war against international terrorism and defending the safety and sovereignty of the United States is all but impossible at this point.
So long as he remains firm in his position in favor of open borders and legalized illegal immigration, and refuses to recognize that the only people on earth who can tell us when and where the next 9/11 will happen MUST be interrogated by any means available, because we are “at war” with people who seek to kill millions of innocent American citizens and bring America to its knees, convincing conservatives will remain impossible.
Being tough on terror in Iraq is one thing. But refusing to be tough on terrorists at home is quite another.
Party Unity Over American Principles, at Any Cost?
Republicans, conservatives in particular, have been told to sit their principles and values aside and do what’s best for the party many times in the past and the result has always been the same. A more gradual slide into the leftist abyss of Democratic Socialism with more social spending, more deficits, more taxation without representation, and less freedom, liberty, security or national sovereignty for the governed. In short, more federal power and less personal freedom.
These are the very values conservatives are no longer willing to compromise on, even in the name of party unity.
To be sure, both Clinton and Obama would indeed be worse than McCain in all regards. There can’t be any real doubt about that in the mind of any informed Republican.
In the past, before two Bush Presidents turned on conservatives after the election and the Republican controlled congress failed to act any different than a Democrat controlled congress, this alone might have been enough to get conservatives into the booth for McCain.
Today, It Will Take More
Republicans spent 40 years as the minority party in congress. It took Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America to convince American voters that finally, somebody was serious about representing the true will of the American majority and the minute they were convinced, the nation rallied around that idea and placed Republicans in control of both houses of congress for the first time in 40 years.
Of course, once Newt was gone, it took liberal and moderate Republicans only twelve years to convince those same voters that they were not really up to the task, and Republicans allowed Democrats to take both houses back in 2006 as a result.
Now it is twice as hard to convince conservative voters that Republican candidates, especially like McCain, mean anything they say. The highest priority for all pro-American voters in 2008 must be keeping both Barrack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rotten Clinton far from the Oval Office. But it will take more than that to get conservative voters into the booth for McCain.
A Contract with McCain is in Order
Styled after Gingrich’s Contract with America and based on the same pro-American values, McCain is going to have to make a Contract with Republicans based on all conservative values, if he hopes to gain their support by November.
It is no longer enough to toss out rhetorical promises easy to break after the election is over. Frankly, Hillary is facing much of the same challenge with Democrats that McCain faces with Republicans. Both have a career long resume full of broken promises with their constituents. Obama is favored right now simply because he has no resume at all, therefore, no resume of broken promises yet, with the emphasis on yet…
If McCain is serious about becoming President, he will have to come up with a realistic means of convincing the majority of Republicans who voted against him in the primaries, that he is serious about representing the same principles and values that they believe in, or they will have little or no reason to vote for him in November.
McCain needs to come up with a solidly unapologetic Contract with Republicans, much like the Gingrich Contract with America, and soon.
His campaign and the RNC can wrestle the nomination away from all conservatives through the primary process, but that is no way to get those same voters behind you in November.
In fact, the more screwed the Republican electorate feels through the primary process, and believe me, they are feeling more screwed by the minute, the more difficult it will become to get them into the booth in November.
McCain MUST do something tangible and he must do it fast. If he fails to grasp the severity of his problem, he will suffer a landslide defeat in November and America will be at the mercy of one of the two most unqualified individuals to ever seek the Oval Office.
The ball is really in his court. If he wants the party to unite, he will have to do something real to unite it…
