McCain: Those grumpy conservatives
Posted: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:49 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Per excerpts of his remarks today, McCain will say: “Annapolis holds a special place in my life… But witnesses to my behavior here, a few of whom are present today, as well as a nagging conscience, have a tendency to interrupt my reverie for a misspent youth, and urge a more honest appraisal of my record and character here. In truth, my four years at the Naval Academy were not notable for exemplary virtue or academic achievement but, rather, for the impressive catalogue of demerits I managed to accumulate. By my reckoning, at the end of my second class year, I had marched enough extra duty to take me to Baltimore and back seventeen times -- which, if not a record, certainly ranks somewhere very near the top.”
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More: “If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy, I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country’s trust… The most important lesson I learned here was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime it would be necessary for me to have the honor of serving something greater than my self-interest. When I left the Academy, I was not even aware I had learned that lesson. In a later crisis, I would suffer a genuine attack on my dignity, an attack, unlike the affronts I had exaggerated as a boy, that left me desperate and uncertain. It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Academy in its venerable and enduring way had labored to impress upon me. It changed my life forever. I had found my cause: citizenship in the greatest nation on earth.”
The Wall Street Journal finds more conservatives who are still grumpy over the McCain as the GOP’s presumptive nominee. "Polls suggest the conservative leaders are dragging their feet more than most of the public. A survey of registered Republican voters taken in late March by the Pew Research Center said 64% of respondents thought the party would ‘unite solidly behind McCain,’ up from 58% a month earlier. The percentage of respondents who said the party will be divided fell to 22% from 32%."
James Dobson, in particular, is sounding downright anti-McCain; here's a statement he released to the WSJ on McCain: "I have seen no evidence that Sen. McCain is successfully unifying the Republican Party or drawing conservatives into his fold. To the contrary, he seems intent on driving them away. To my knowledge, he has not reached out to pro-family leaders or changed any of the positions that have troubled them. He still believes, for example, that federal money should be allocated for laboratory experiments with tiny human embryos, after which they would be killed when they are no longer useful. He continues to favor allowing each state to create its own definition of marriage, potentially giving the nation 50 different legal interpretations. It would create chaos within families."
The Wall Street Journal, in fact, is just full of bad news for McCain today. This piece focuses on the fact that he's trailing Clinton and/or Obama in fundraising with some key GOP groups. "Of seven major industries that have been the most reliable Republican resources, Sen. McCain has beaten Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama in only one, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization. Even that one, transportation, is a close call."
More: "Employees of financial-services, insurance and real-estate companies so far have donated to Sen. Obama over Sen. McCain by almost two-to-one -- and favored Sen. Clinton by even more. Health-care and pharmaceutical firms have given three times as much to each of the two Democrats as to Sen. McCain. Defense firms put Sen. McCain ahead of Sen. Obama, but behind Sen. Clinton. Energy, construction and agribusiness firms have given more to both Democrats."
The Washington Post looks at how the economic downturn could hinder McCain, particularly with a few of the people he's surrounded himself with. "Former senator Phil Gramm, with his aw-shucks Texas drawl, may at first blush have little in common with Carly Fiorina, the telegenic former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. But they share a bond: Both are leading economic advisers of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and both have reputations as the kind of aggressive capitalists that may be sliding from favor as the nation's economy edges toward recession.”
“Democratic opponents are already plotting attacks on two advocates of what Robert Reich, a former Clinton labor secretary, described as ‘dog eat dog capitalism,’ an economic philosophy that works well when the economy is on the upswing but may not play so well in a trough. ‘McCain is counting on people having very short memories and not connecting some pretty obvious dots here,’ said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, summing up a growing liberal critique of McCain's economic team.”
“To economists across the political spectrum, much of the criticism is unfair oversimplification. But even some advisers close to McCain said they wonder if such lightning-rod public figures should be so closely identified with his candidacy. ‘I, for one, have thought about it a lot,’ said one McCain adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ‘And that's all I will say.’”
The Boston Globe delves into the 100 Years controversy: “The presumptive Republican nominee says that his Democratic rivals are distorting his views. He explains that he never favored such a long war, but rather envisioned an open-ended military presence of peacekeepers, similar to US military commitments in Korea and Bosnia and even Japan and Germany. But some academic and political analysts say McCain's argument fails to distinguish between other US occupations and an extended presence in a disputed, volatile flashpoint. One historian who opposes the war said yesterday that the Arizona senator's analogy has no true precedent in those earlier conflicts.”
