Posted by
on Friday, March 02, 2007 4:07:17 PM
How I wish we were at CPAC this year. Not just to see Rudy, but to meet former Speaker Gingrich, former Governor Huckabee, and fellow bloggers in the Blogger's Corner. (Strange that CPAC calls it a corner because as Captain astutely points out, it is not a corner, but rather a row.) But enough on semantics. That is not why i decided to do this post. No, I decided to pick up on something that Captain Ed posted about the AWOL John McCain:
It's not often I disagree with my friend John Podhoretz at The Corner, but today's post on John McCain and CPAC struck me as rather odd. In response to a post by Kathryn Jean Lopez that scolded McCain for skipping both NRI and CPAC, John said that McCain was right to stay away:
If I were a McCain adviser, there's no way I would recommend he attend CPAC. The stakes are simply too high. It's a total sandbagging opportunity for people who want to derail him. The last thing he needs is a headline like "Conservatives boo McCain," and you know people attending CPAC know it and would love nothing more than to provide that headline. Anything less than a performance that wowed his enemies on the Right would only do him injury.
I understand John's analysis, but all this does is confirm that McCain has no business running for the Republican nomination. McCain has gone out of his way to stress his conservative credentials, especially on hot-button topics such as abortion and the war. If that's true, then what does he have to fear from a conference of conservatives predisposed to his positions? In fact, if he claims to represent conservatives, why should he fear speaking in front of a group of them?
We debated this quite a bit on Blogger's Corner yesterday (which is somewhat misnamed, since we occupy a row and not a corner, but that's another story).Someone made the point that the eventual nominee needs the people in this conference to act as foot soldiers in the general election. What does it say to those foot soldiers if that nominee is too afraid to face them because he might get booed -- a slim possibility in any case? How does that nominee inspire loyalty in those he explicitly spurned out of the gate?
If McCain wanted to win the nomination as a straightforward Rockefeller Republican, his snub would make sense. It makes none if he wants to convince us that he's more conservative than Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, two men with spottier records than his but two men who had the intestinal fortitude to appear before conservatives to make their case. John is usually spot-on in his analysis, but he's off the mark here.
UPDATE: Another blogger here at the BC reminds me that Arlen Specter showed up here yesterday and gave a speech, and no one booed him -- and the conservatives have more reasons to boo Specter than McCain.
Indeed, this is a bad message for John McCain to send to the base, and anyone who states that CPAC does not represent the base is sadly mistaken. Thomas and I have made no attempts to obfuscate our distaste for John McCain. We have watched him closely in recent years, and as he is the senior senator from Arizona, we felt it necessary to keep an eye on him. His pratfalls in recent years have raised the ire of conservatives across this nation. He knows that.
But it would seem smarter of him to appear before those who dislike them in an attempt to persuade them. He will not win friends or supporters by snubbing the same people he needs on his side to win. And that is precisely what he did with CPAC. Of course, after his snide comment about "wasting" the lives of troops over in Iraq during his Letterman appearance would not have endeared him to those at CPAC. And yes, he might have been booed by those there. But in the end, he still should have appeared. After all, Newt Gingrich showed up, and he still has not announced his candidacy. (I am sure that many at CPAC congratulated him for his his statements on Hillary Clinton; not that we needed a reminder of her shameless tactics.)
This was, in my opinion, not a snub by McCain. This was an outright retreat from the base. I would also like to note that Slate's John Dickerson did a story about how McCain plans to handle the Rudy momentum. (A word to the rest of the GOP candidates out there--he will use the same tactics against them, as well.)
McCain also trails Rudy Giuliani by almost 20 points in the latest Time and ABC/Washington Post polls. For now, the McCain team is taking a measured approach to the widening gap. Their principal strategy is to wait and let Giuliani fall of his own weight. Once conservatives learn about Giuliani's pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay-rights positions, McCain aides expect, their rival's support will diminish considerably. Giuliani's commitment to conservative judges took a knock Thursday, and Giuliani supporter and former solicitor general Ted Olson went right on the air to rebut the charges to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. As Giuliani's own research suggests, the press is also likely to cover his three marriages, business dealings, and experience during the Vietnam War. The McCain campaign will make no Clintonlike efforts to draw their rival off-sides, at least for the moment. They will hope the press does their work for them (sometimes with their guidance).
He is relying on his so-called, self-defined "base." He believes the press is his base, but fails to understand that should he obtain the nomination, the press will turn on him the way a rabid dog turns on it's owner. His base should be conservatives--the same ones at CPAC. He opted out of this event; with his spokesman at CPAC covering for him talking about how he had planned events already on the books. Regardless of his "booked" events, he should have at least made a small appearance at CPAC. It is the only way he could shore up the base, and reinforce his conservative principles.
Before I sign off, I would like to add this addendum, courtesy of K-Lo @ NRO's The Corner:
Romney's addressing CPAC now and oh boy is this different than the disappointing speech he gave in late January at the NRI conservative summit. A few red-meat lines: "It's time to take government apart and put it back together." Wants to make it "simpler, smarter, and smaller." He said, "I will fight to repeal McCain-Feingold." Talking about the marriage fight he said "It is the people who are soveriegn in America, not a few folks in black robes." He talks confidentally about the war and has a good line about how Pelosi and read shouldn't be dictating frontlines strategy. He's gotten a ton of applause and has kept a steady beat. This is a speech — ending on a forceful, adament, ticked-off but optimistic about the future note. "Our traditonal values" are on the line, we're under attack, and the government is a mess and he's not going to stand for it, dammit.
This is the speech he should have given in January at our summit. This is the speech he should have given when he launched the campaign. This speech — this is a rallying speech.
I hate to say it, but it sounds like the "victory" at CPAC goes to Mitt Romney rather than Rudy Giuliani, as Dean Barnett addresses:
In the scheme of things and even in the very limited scope of judging this afternoon’s speech, the Matthews faux pas was a tiny thing. But it was revealing. The entire speech didn’t work. The whole thing was off. It was boring. Rudy entered the hall welcomed as a rock star. He then put the crowd to sleep as his lack of preparation became a glaring weakness.
Marcie