Why the McCain Meltdown?
by Ryan Sager
Mon, 9 Apr 2007 at 12:49 PM
updated Mon, 9 Apr 2007 at 12:50 PM
"Henry Clay, the great 19th-century senator, once said, 'I'd rather be right than be president.' Sadly for McCain, the odds are growing that he'll be neither." — Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, April 16, 2007, issue
That's the conclusion of the big Newsweek, "McCain's Meltdown," story. The issue John McCain is supposedly going to be wrong about is Iraq, and that is supposedly what's going to cost him the Republican nomination.
This is the new narrative that is quickly emerging in the press as to why Mr. McCain's candidacy is faltering. There are two things wrong with this: 1) Mr. McCain's not quite so down-and-out as the press wants to paint him, and 2) Iraq is an unlikely reason for Mr. McCain to be doing poorly with Republican primary voters.
I'll just take these briefly here, though I suspect they'll deserve a longer treatment...
So, more on 1): Second place in a field with a vulnerable frontrunner (Rudy Giuliani) and a flaky third(or fourth)-runner (Mitt Romney), isn't the worst place in the world to be. His support tends to fluctuate up and down much less than the others'. He's still well-situated to pick up conservatives "coming home" after flirtations with the other candidates. He's been around a while. Republicans don't love him, but they know him. The money problems can be fixed; the organization is strong.
And another couple words on 2): Not only do I not believe Iraq is hurting Mr. McCain with Republican primary voters, I'd go so far as to say that Iraq is the only reason Mr. McCain is still even a viable candidate on the Republican side. Mr. McCain has engendered a tremendous amount of ill will among Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, during his career. Campaign-finance reform, attacks on the religious right, the campaign against President Bush in 1999-2000 (and lingering hostility thereafter), being the darling of the "liberal" media — none endeared him to the base.
But standing by the Iraq war when the going has gotten tough, that speaks to a lot of Republican primary voters. It's not as if the anti-war senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, has been taking off. And it's not as if Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Romney has been running away from Iraq, either. The people who are mad at Mr. McCain over Iraq are people like ... Jonathan Alter. And the rest of the media.
Losing the support of the media, and of Democrats and independents, could make Mr. McCain a less attractive general-election candidate. In fact, I would stipulate that it does. But that doesn't have anything to do with his lack of success so far in the Republican primary. That, I would argue, reflects the fact that Mr. McCain has a very deep hole to dig himself out of with primary voters. He may not be able to dig fast enough. But not for the reasons reporters think.
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