{"id":7206,"date":"2006-04-21T15:03:52","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T19:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7206"},"modified":"2006-04-21T15:03:52","modified_gmt":"2006-04-21T19:03:52","slug":"people-are-beginning-to-notice-the-new-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/people-are-beginning-to-notice-the-new-mccain\/","title":{"rendered":"People are beginning to notice the new McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been volumes of blog posts, op-ed columns, and news items of late about [tag]John McCain[\/tag]’s efforts to impress the Republicans’ far-right base, but I’ve been wondering: are we the only ones who’ve noticed?<\/p>\n

By that I mean, political observers have no doubt watched with some interest as [tag]McCain[\/tag] has cozied up to [tag]Jerry Falwell[\/tag], endorsed a harsh anti-gay ballot initiative in Arizona, expressed his support for South Dakota’s abortion ban, backed [tag]Bush[\/tag]’s handling of the war in Iraq, etc. But most people don’t read blogs or peruse newspaper columns. Have McCain’s recent antics reached the electorate at large?<\/p>\n

Maybe. The Pew Research Center released its latest report<\/a> this week with plenty of interesting polling data to chew on, but the numbers on McCain stood out for me.<\/p>\n

Arizona Sen. John McCain’s standing is down from 74% favorable in October to 68% today, while his unfavorable rating has risen from 26% to 32%. […]<\/p>\n

McCain has a lower positive rating among [tag]Republicans[\/tag] (70%), but gets much higher marks among [tag]independents[\/tag] (68%) and [tag]Democrats[\/tag] (66%). However, McCain’s ratings among independent and Democratic voters have declined since October (by 12 and 10 points, respectively).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most political figures’ favorability ratings have remained largely consistent over the last several months, but McCain’s have dropped more than a little. McCain’s support among Republicans was weaker than that of Rudy Giuliani and Condoleezza Rice anyway, but a sudden, double-digit drop in support among Dems and independents doesn’t just happen by accident. People have seen what they perceive as a shift in McCain — and they like the old McCain better.<\/p>\n

In this sense, the “cult of authenticity” that Mark Schmitt described so well<\/a> yesterday is losing members. The veneer of the independent-minded “maverick” is fading as McCain intentionally scrubs it off to make primary voters happy.<\/p>\n

McCain’s latest move is necessary, if he wants to be president, but it’s awfully daring. Live by the cult of authenticity, perish by the cult of authenticity…. I assume that McCain’s gamble is that he has so strongly established the “straight-talk express” brand with the general electorate that he can perform the ritual obsequies of the Republican nominating process and still emerge with his reputation intact. But he can’t. [There are] too many Republican activists who simply aren’t going to stomach his nomination, and he can’t spend two years in his current mode and expect the independent moderate voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere to remember what they kind of liked about him for a period in 2000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given the Pew research, they’re already starting to forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been volumes of blog posts, op-ed columns, and news items of late about [tag]John McCain[\/tag]’s efforts to impress the Republicans’ far-right base, but I’ve been wondering: are we the only ones who’ve noticed? By that I mean, political observers have no doubt watched with some interest as [tag]McCain[\/tag] has cozied up to [tag]Jerry […]<\/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-7206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7206","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=7206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}