{"id":14410,"date":"2008-01-30T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14410.html"},"modified":"2008-01-30T11:00:42","modified_gmt":"2008-01-30T16:00:42","slug":"anxiety-overcomes-conservatives-as-mccain-solidifies-frontrunner-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/anxiety-overcomes-conservatives-as-mccain-solidifies-frontrunner-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Anxiety overcomes conservatives as McCain solidifies frontrunner status"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, not too long after John McCain was declared the winner of Florida’s Republican primary, National Review’s Michael Graham wrote an item called, “It’s all over<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Assuming there is no shocking revelation or health issue, the GOP nomination is over. Conservatives need to start practicing the phrase “Nominee presumptive John McCa….”
\nSorry, I can’t say it. Not yet.<\/p>\n

But it’s true. When the campaign comes here to Massachusetts on February 5th, I’ll proudly cast my vote for any option on the GOP ballot other than You-Know-Who. But it will be a futile gesture. Mr. “1\/3rd Of The GOP Primary Vote” is going to be the nominee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was easily one of the more grounded responses from a conservative blogger in response to McCain’s success. The War Room’s Alex Koppelman did a great job pulling together<\/a> some of the “greatest hits” from the far-right last night, all of which, with varying degrees of subtlety, reflect a conservative base that considers the Arizona senator an absolute disaster for the party and the conservative movement.<\/p>\n

Given this, I can’t help but notice just how feckless the hard-right wing of the Republican Party looks today. The anti-McCain contingent of the GOP, at least at first blush, looks<\/i> like it should be a force to be reckoned with. Rush Limbaugh, Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, most of the Fox News crowd, most of the right’s talk-radio hosts, and nearly all of the leading conservative bloggers consider John McCain completely<\/i> unacceptable.<\/p>\n

And yet, here we are, looking at a political landscape in which McCain is the undisputed frontrunner for the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n

I think it’s a disaster for the far-right for more reasons than one.
\n
\nThe obvious, of course, is that they’re about to get stuck with a candidate they hate, and there’s apparently not a whole lot they can do about it. McCain has demonstrated an ability to win without this contingent, and he’ll owe them almost nothing moving forward. It’s a message that’s hard to ignore: this crowd lacks the power they like to think they have.<\/p>\n

But I’m also left with the feeling that the hard-right conservatives are also slowly realizing that they also lack the ability to threaten<\/i> Republicans to stay in line. As a Dem, I’ll gladly concede that McCain has clearly moved to the right over the last couple of years, but at the same time, consider some of these truths:<\/p>\n

* McCain broke with his party on taxes, immigration, an anti-gay constitutional amendment, judicial nominations, environmental policy, and campaign-finance reform;<\/p>\n

* He’s best buddies with the media establishment;<\/p>\n

* He considered leaving the GOP altogether in 2001 and talked about joining John Kerry’s ticket in 2004.<\/p>\n

And he’s still<\/i> the Republican frontrunner.<\/p>\n

When there’s a key political dispute in DC, the hard-right wing of the party likes to threaten: “Play ball or your career’s in jeopardy. We’re the Republican base and we’re calling the shots.”<\/p>\n

Except, with McCain’s ascendancy, these guys look like a paper tiger, who wavering GOP lawmakers may take a little less seriously in the future.<\/p>\n

No wonder they’re going crazy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, not too long after John McCain was declared the winner of Florida’s Republican primary, National Review’s Michael Graham wrote an item called, “It’s all over.” Assuming there is no shocking revelation or health issue, the GOP nomination is over. Conservatives need to start practicing the phrase “Nominee presumptive John McCa….” Sorry, I can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14410","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=14410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}