{"id":10239,"date":"2007-03-17T12:05:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-17T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10239.html"},"modified":"2007-03-17T12:05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-17T16:05:00","slug":"why-john-mccain-will-never-win-the-republican-presidential-nomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/why-john-mccain-will-never-win-the-republican-presidential-nomination\/","title":{"rendered":"Why John McCain will never win the Republican presidential nomination"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was skeptical about John McCain’s chances in the GOP primaries before, but now I’m convinced — he’s going to lose. What convinced me was a chat McCain had with reporters yesterday aboard his campaign bus, which eventually turned to the distribution of taxpayer-subsidized condoms in Africa to fight the transmission of HIV. What followed, the NYT’s Adam Nagourney explained<\/a>, “was a long series of awkward pauses, glances up to the ceiling and the image of one of Mr. McCain’s aides, standing off to the back, urgently motioning his press secretary to come to Mr. McCain’s side.”<\/p>\n

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”<\/p>\n

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”<\/p>\n

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”<\/p>\n

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”<\/p>\n

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”<\/p>\n

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. [Speaking to Press Secretary Brian Jones], would you find out what my position is on contraception — I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”<\/p>\n

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”<\/p>\n

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me [Sen. Tom Coburn’s] thing, ask [senior adviser John Weaver] to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Jonathan Chait noted<\/a>, “A twelve second pause is an incredibly long time in conversation.”<\/p>\n

It is, indeed. It’s also indicative of a candidate who might as well drop out now, because it’s only going to get worse.
\n
\nFirst, on the substance, McCain comes across as a bumbling fool. He doesn’t know if he believes condoms are effective in preventing the spread of HIV? He’s been a member of Congress for 24 years, has participated in thousands of policy hearings, and has voted on hundreds of bills relating to public health. Now that he’s running for president, McCain literally has no idea what he thinks about something as simple as condoms and HIV? Please.<\/p>\n

I was particularly fond of the “I have to find out what my position was” remark. Someone can ask him an extremely simple question, but before he answers it, McCain wants to check to make sure he believes what he thinks he believes. “Would you find out what my position is on contraception?” Here’s a wacky idea, senator, why don’t you just tell us what you actually think?<\/p>\n

Which leads us to the second problem — he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think anymore. McCain is so embarrassingly desperate, he’s utterly lost when it comes to basic questions like these. It’s almost certainly what he was doing with those 12 seconds of silence, thinking over what James Dobson might do if he acknowledged that condoms can play a role in stopping the spread of HIV, and what the media might do if they find a dozen examples of him supporting broader public access to publicly-financed contraception.<\/p>\n

So the poor, sad man says nothing. McCain can’t tell the truth, he can’t share his opinions, and he can’t remember what he thought before he sold out. It’s so genuinely pathetic, I almost feel sorry for the guy.<\/p>\n

And why is this evidence that McCain is going to lose? Because he’s going to have to deal with a year of these questions, and he has no idea how to answer them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was skeptical about John McCain’s chances in the GOP primaries before, but now I’m convinced — he’s going to lose. What convinced me was a chat McCain had with reporters yesterday aboard his campaign bus, which eventually turned to the distribution of taxpayer-subsidized condoms in Africa to fight the transmission of HIV. What followed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}