John McCain Makes a Risky Move

Filed under: 2008 elections, John McCain, United States — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on April 25, 2008 @ 4:00 pm CEST

Senator John McCain ‘took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared the handling of the disaster “terrible and disgraceful” and pledged that it would never happen again,’ the New York Times reports.

Mr. McCain ticked off a long list of mistakes by the current administration, saying there were “unqualified people in charge, there was a total misreading of the dimensions of the disaster, there was a failure of communications.”

Although it should be quite obvious to anyone that McCain is right, it’s a risky move nonetheless; the conservative base won’t like it one bit.

Now, if McCain didn’t have a problem with the conservative base, he could criticize Bush all he wants to. But the situation is somewhat different; conservatives weren’t and aren’t happy with his nomination. He needs their support and enthusiasm, however, if he wants to win in November. He knows this, and this is why he has moved to the right in recent months. He has tried to calm the conservative base, basically arguing that although they may have had their differences and problems in the past, he’s really one of them.

But he isn’t one of them, and a hardcore conservative will most likely not be able to win in November. The Republican nominee always has to move somewhat to the center in election time. George W. Bush did so in 2000, McCain has to do so now.

The difference is, however, that Bush wasn’t and isn’t a centrist; he moved to the center for political opportunistic reasons, and American conservatives knew it. Which is why they didn’t protest too loudly when he did. But with McCain it’s an entirely different story. Everybody knows that McCain is not a traditional conservative; he doesn’t move back to the center out of opportunism, he moved to the right out of political considerations.

Conservatives know this, and worry about. As such, McCain’s in quite a dilemma: if he doesn’t move back to the center, he can’t win in November. But if he does move to the center, he confirms the worst fears American conservatives fear, and it may very well be that many of them will stay at home in November. In such a situation too, he can forget about winning.

Unless he comes up with a new coalition, of course.

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1 C Stanley

April 25, 2008 @ 4:42 pm CEST

I don’t know, this doesn’t seem that risky to me because it’s not about an issue that hardcore conservatives feel that a conservative principle is at stake. It’s a lot like McCain’s criticism of the Bush administration’s execution of the Iraq War; as long as he’s criticizing Bush’s job perfomance and not taking a different stance on ideology, I can’t imagine that the GOP base is going to have a problem with it. Surely some pragmatism to attract centrist and crossover votes is expected, and surely even the hardcore Bush devotees see that McCain is toast if he doesn’t distance himself from Bush in some way.

I think immigration, taxes, and campaign finance are the areas where he has to be most cautious.