The McCain express
McCain Takes the GOP Lead
By JACKIE CALMES and ALEX FRANGOS
For the first time in a presidential campaign already a year old, Republicans have a clear front-runner in Arizona Sen. John McCain. By nearly all accounts, he is the candidate many Democrats least want to face, the one who would best remake his party’s battered image and draw independent voters needed to win in November.
But Sen. McCain still confronts a problem both in the remainder of the nomination race, and, if he wins, in the fall: He is simply loathed by many fellow Republicans, often for the very bipartisanship and maverick streak that attracts independents. His biggest, and perhaps final, test comes Tuesday, when 21 states hold contests — most of them open only to Republican voters.
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Even if Sen. McCain gets the nomination — as “the last man standing,” in his own words, in a flawed Republican field — he could be hobbled in the general-election race if his party fractures over his candidacy. Conservatives may stay home, or even seek a third-party alternative, offsetting whatever independent votes the senator might get.
For all the criticism among conservatives, Sen. McCain is no liberal — and he has modified some of his stands during the campaign to make himself more palatable to the Republican base; he now favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent, after voting against them in 2001 for being too skewed to the rich. Like mainstream Republicans over the decades, Sen. McCain favors lower taxes, smaller government and a strong military.
Sen. McCain has long battled against the maverick rap in a party that prizes orthodoxy — except when he’s reveling in it or exploiting it. During his Florida victory speech, Sen. McCain painted himself as the true Ronald Reagan conservative that Republican voters are pining for, an original soldier in the 1980s “Reagan revolution.” (more…)
As most analysts are pointing out, it is his appeal to independents that has really helped him make up some of his deficit with conservatives. I think that once Democrats pick their candidate, more conservatives will eventually come around and support him–while holding their nose.
