Earlier this week, a TPM Cafe writer had a very amusing item, urging Obama’s and Clinton’s most fervent supporters to “drop out of the race.” Noting that both have become “incredibly annoying,” the writer argued that “anything” is preferable to “your insistent and continual droning on and on about how perfect your candidate is.”
It struck a chord for obvious reasons — the candidates’ most enthusiastic backers can get rather grating. But I’d just add that even more annoying than Obama and Clinton loyalists are conservative activists who continue to insist, “If John McCain doesn’t make us happy, he’ll lose.”
For example, L. Brent Bozell, a conservative media critic and former head of the Parents Television Council, has a lengthy item in the Washington Post today, explaining how and why the Republican Party’s far-right base holds McCain in low regard — a familiar subject, to be sure — and what the senator can do about it. On the latter point:
McCain must present a strategy to defeat the threat of radical Islam. He needs to call on the United States to rebuild its military infrastructure, so devastated by the Clinton administration. […]
He … should pledge to end the estate tax and lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. In fact, he should call for an overhaul of the tax system. The flat tax or the fair tax — either is preferable to the monstrosity that is the Internal Revenue Service. […]
He should champion private retirement accounts and health savings accounts. McCain should place the left on notice — now — that if elected, he will not tolerate congressional obstructionism of his nominations to the federal judiciary.
Our culture is decaying from within, and most Republicans have been shamefully AWOL on this issue. McCain could begin a national conversation about parents, not the state, taking responsibility for their children and their communities. He should call on the entertainment industry to stop polluting America’s youth with its videos and its music and on the Internet. We wait to hear him call for the United States to honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage and family, and to return God to the public square.
I have to say, all of this sounds kind of familiar.
For one thing, the notion that Clinton “devastated” our military infrastructure is quite silly, given what Bush has done over-stretch our forces. For another, McCain already supports eliminating estate tax and lowering the corporate tax rate to 25%.
But the rest of this is pretty much Bush boilerplate, from the last two presidential elections, isn’t it? Bozell’s recipe for success, in other words, is for McCain to not only emulate Bush, but to run on his platforms.
Dems should be so lucky.
It’s kind of irrelevant, but Bozell’s piece also includes a rather creative look at recent political history. As he sees it, the only way for Republicans to succeed on the national stage is to avoid moderation at all costs.
In 1996, a new crop of conservative leaders presented themselves as presidential candidates, but again the party establishment would have none of Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm or Dan Quayle. Instead, they pooled their resources behind Dole, who offered nothing to energize the conservative base while the professional class confidently clucked that conservatives had “nowhere else to go.” Again we stayed home. There was no enthusiasm for volunteer action. Again the moderate candidate was routed.
How disgruntled was the conservative base? Two years later, the GOP lost five seats in the House, the first time since 1822 that a party not in control of the White House had failed to gain seats in the midterm election of a president’s second term.
Hmm, I recall those cycles pretty well, and it seems to me that Clinton won in 1996 because the economy was booming, not because Dole was insufficiently right-wing. And Dems excelled in 1998, not because of two-year-old dissatisfaction with Dole among conservatives, but because the country was disgusted with Gingrich-DeLay and a misguided impeachment crusade.
But I digress. Bozell’s point is that the right is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. If McCain doesn’t offer conservatives what they want to hear, he’s through.
I don’t buy it. Far-right lawmakers who loathed McCain in January are endorsing him now. Fred Barnes recently argued that McCain needn’t worry, because “while they love to grumble and grouse, conservatives tend to be loyal Republicans who wind up voting for their party’s candidate.”
I hate to agree with Barnes too often, but on this, Bozell sounds like he’s tilting at windmills.