For the better part of the year, John McCain’s campaign was in free-fall, so much so that the rest of the Republican field felt entirely comfortable ignoring him altogether. His money was gone, his staff had quit, and his poll numbers had sunk to near second-tier status. There just wasn’t much point in challenging a candidate who was losing.
Now, after months of media hype about an alleged McCain “comeback,” the Arizona senator actually seems to be on the upswing. In Iowa, he’s still just about done — he’ll be lucky to finish fifth — but in New Hampshire, he’s suddenly a strong second, with the gap narrowing all the time.
How legitimate is the McCain threat? It’s serious enough for Mitt Romney to start going after him.
A Mitt Romney campaign event Friday night offered a taste of the coming rumble in New Hampshire with Senator John McCain now emerging as Mr. Romney’s main rival in the state’s upcoming Republican primary.
Mr. Romney challenged Mr. McCain directly for the first time in months in the state, pointing out before an audience of about 100 people here while talking about his belief in tax cuts that Mr. McCain had voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001.
“President Bush did a pretty courageous thing,” Mr. Romney said. “At a time when our economy needed a boost, needed a stimulus, he said, ‘You know what, we’re going to lower taxes.’ And not everybody agreed with him. One of my friends is Senator McCain. He voted against the Bush tax cuts. I think the Bush tax cuts were a great thing for our country. I support them. I want to make them permanent and I want to add to them.”
He added: “I want to kill the death tax once and for all. We had a chance to do that by the way. Senator McCain also voted against that.”
I’d bet that for most Republicans in the audience, this was the first time they’d heard any of this, because McCain was relegated to an afterthought. But Romney’s probably right — McCain has a tough record to defend to the GOP base — if he’s not too late to stunt McCain’s growth.
I’ve long believed Romney was making a mistake not laying this groundwork sooner. It’s an easy sell:
* McCain joined with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to pass sweeping campaign-finance reform that conservatives generally hate.
* He joined with former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) to support a Patients’ Bill of Rights, which conservatives generally hate.
* McCain joined with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to support an immigration-reform measure that conservatives generally hate.
* McCain voted against Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
* McCain voted with Dems to keep the estate tax in place.
* He voted against the anti-gay constitutional amendment last year.
* In March 2004, asked on national television whether he would consider joining the Democratic ticket as John Kerry’s running mate, McCain said, “John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years. Obviously I would entertain it.”
* A month later, in April 2004, just as the national Republican campaign was beginning in earnest, McCain said, “I believe my party has gone astray…. I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy.”
It’s exactly why most of the Republican base doesn’t trust McCain right now. If there’s a genuine McCain “comeback” underway, I suspect we’ll hear quite a bit more about this record over the next two weeks.