Is McCain facing a platform fight at the Republican convention?

July 7, 2008

The official national Republican platform is 100 pages long, and 91 of those pages reference George W. Bush. Not only will the party want to downplay the unpopular president’s role in shaping the party’s agenda for the future, but it will obviously be necessary to start promoting John McCain as the party’s leader.

But the prospect of re-writing the Republican platform is ripe with opportunities for intra-party conflict.

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September’s Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party’s official declaration of principles.

McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush.

“There is just no way that you can avoid anticipating what is going to come. Everyone is aware that McCain is different on these issues,” said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. “We’re all kind of waiting with anticipation because we just don’t know how he’s going to thread this needle.”

As a rule, fights over party platforms are rare and dull. A party’s presidential candidate generally reflects the policy agenda of the party’s voters, and while competing factions might want specific provisions and/or language included in the platform in a certain way, the squabbles are behind the scenes and largely inconsequential in an otherwise choreographed event.

But this year, it appears Republicans are starting from scratch and there are ideological differences between the party’s base and the party’s nominee.

The result could be rather entertaining.

The battle may not be avoidable…. McCain is “really out of step with the strong majority of his party,” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes McCain’s positions on climate change. “He might get what he wants. And he might get a change. But I don’t think it’s going to sit well with a lot of Republicans.”

Officials in the Republican National Committee and in McCain’s campaign say they have much in common with conservatives. They say their conversations as they approach the convention suggest there will not be a nasty platform fight. […]

Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a former Ohio secretary of state, said he does not expect a “bloodletting” in the platform committee. He predicts that conservatives and McCain will be reasonable and stay focused on a November victory: “I don’t think you are going to see any radical departures or inflammatory demands for change in one direction or another.”

Those assurances are not enough for activists such as Echard, who have been on the front lines of GOP platform fights for years. She will be traveling to Minneapolis-St. Paul, site of the Sept. 1-4 convention, for two weeks in August, with the primary goal of making sure the 2008 platform reflects conservative principles.

So, what might they fight over? McCain apparently wants a less conservative approach on immigration, and Republican activists don’t. McCain wants some acknowledgement of the need for government action on global warming, and Republicans don’t. And McCain initially promised voters that he wanted to change the party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. He’s since broken that promise, but party activists have vowed to raise hell if McCain tries to change so much as a syllable of the party’s anti-abortion-rights language.

Stay tuned.

Are you challenging McCain’s integrity?!

  • Seems to me this could actually work out well for Republicans as it goes some distance toward rebutting the charge that a McCain administration would be equivalent to a third Bush term. It probably won’t alienate the base any more than it’s already alienated and may make McCain more palatable to independents.

  • Nobody pays attention to this stuff; it’ll have zero effect on the election. The main function is to give the GOP’s right wing base something to scream about in the lead-up to nominating one of their old enemies as presidential candidate.

    There’s an old notion that in Hell, the torture doesn’t come from fire or brimstone; it comes from the fact that you spend eternity with a bunch of complete assholes. If we want to see this model in action here on Earth I think we need look no further than the modern Republican party.

  • With Rove’s acolytes at the helm, this will be minor. Rove cobbled together the coalition that got W close enough to steal it twice, and they will try for three.
    With Diebold, the Corp Media, and the fearmongers out there, actual substance like this won’t even hit the radar.

  • Not that I expect it to happen, but if the Republican platform DOES get rewritten to have rational stances on things like climate change, immigartion and stem cell research, it’ll emasculate the inbred “Republican Base,” the resulty of which should be nothing short of hilarious. They will then become even MORE shrill and extreme, which will marginalize them further.

    Pushing the bigots and crazies to the gutter where they belong would actually be good for the Republican Party, and good for America. Won’t stop ME from voting for Obama, but it’ll be progress.

  • When I was expressing my disdain for Obama’s FISA statement of support I was told by many progressives and even heard in the media that Obama would welcome the challenge from the left because it bolsters his centrist credentials.

    So, for consistency’s sake, wouldn’t those same people also think that a challenge from the right helps McCain? Voting record aside, if he’s seen at the convention arguing about “global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance,” won’t that look good for him, regardless of his actual views or success in changing the platform?

    I hope jimBOB is right and no one pays attention because it’s just smoke and mirrors meant to inflate McCain’s media made maverick image.

  • That’s the difference between Obama and McCan’t.

    Obama is the head of the Democratic Party. He’s taken control of the DNC and there is no doubt he’ll get what he wants in the party platform.

    McCan’t is NOT the head of the Republican’t Party. He can’t control the RNC (or any part of the party, as the North Carolina Republican’t Party Committee demonstrated) and it looks like he’s not going to control his own platform.

    As for BuzzMon’s point, the fact is that McCan’t is comprising just to keep the election polls close enough (down by no more than ten I suppose) that they can LIE 48 hours before the election that the polls are close and closing, then steal the election on Election Day. They just have to produce some fake polling data for Faux Spews to vomit out.

    And talk a lot about the Bradley Effect.

  • I don’t see the problem. McCain has flip-flopped on every single one of those potential problem issues multiple times. He’ll tell the extremist religious-wingers what they want to hear, and that will be the end of it.

    Until the next time he flip-flops, that is. But by then the platform battle will be over.

  • Are you kidding me? Come on. McAce will be lock-step with the conservatives. He’s sold his soul for this nomination and will do and say what he is told. Their only problem will be how he says it. If he becomes confused and dazed (not a certainty but a definite possibility) when delivering their hogwash then they are in deep poo. But to think he would cross the same ideologues who placed him into this race, you are dead wrong. McAce is a safe lemming to the neocons and will remain one to the end. The title of his memoir : “I did it their way”

  • Every radical action on the part of the right should enlighten a few undecideds as to how nuts today’s conservatives really are. If McCain goes along, he abandons his previous positions and maverick image. If he doesn’t the radical elements scream and shout. So either way, this looks to me like a no win for McCain.

  • I hope the janitorial staff bring hoses, mops and hip waders to clean up after the convention. Not only are they going to spew a lot of bulls**t, it’s going to be a bloodbath.

  • Not that I expect it to happen, but if the Republican platform DOES get rewritten to have rational stances on things like climate change, immigartion and stem cell research, it’ll emasculate the inbred “Republican Base,” the resulty of which should be nothing short of hilarious.

    If by “hilarous” you mean “scary dangerous as all get out” then I’d have to agree with you.

    Unfortunately, we’re seeing a group of people who already believe that the “government” (often in the form of black UN helicopters) is out to get them personally – these are folks who can argue with a straight face that Christianity is somehow “under threat” in the US. These are also people who stock up on guns – lots of guns – because they’re afraid those black UN helicopters are going to come and take them away in the middle of the night.

    The last time this group got marginalized at the polls we ended up with the militia-filled ’90s. Those crazy nutbars are still out there – they’ve been quiet for the last 8 years because “their guy” is in office. In a few months they’re going to wake up and realize that 1) “their guy” isn’t in power, 2) “their guy” actually set things up so that the “new guy” has more secret authority than any modern President has ever had and 3) the “new guy” is a black dude. Of all the things I’m looking forward to next year, the freakout of the far right is not one of them – dreading is more like it.

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