{"id":8161,"date":"2006-08-09T14:29:48","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T18:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8161.html"},"modified":"2006-08-09T14:29:48","modified_gmt":"2006-08-09T18:29:48","slug":"is-mccains-gop-mojo-on-the-wane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/is-mccains-gop-mojo-on-the-wane\/","title":{"rendered":"Is McCain&#8217;s GOP mojo on the wane?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I noted earlier, Rep. Joe Schwarz lost a GOP House primary in Michigan yesterday, punished in large part because of relative centrism in the Republican caucus. I think it&#8217;s worth noting, however, the role Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had in the race.<\/p>\n<p>McCain not only backed Schwarz, in July, he traveled to the Michigan district to appear on Schwarz&#8217;s behalf, calling him &#8220;a tremendous asset to the Republican Party.&#8221; Republican voters disagreed; Schwarz lost yesterday to a far-right rival by six points.<\/p>\n<p>It got me thinking: this seems to happen quite a bit.<\/p>\n<p>In June, McCain backed <a href=\"http:\/\/pressherald.mainetoday.com\/news\/state\/060610emeryadwatch.shtml\">David Emery<\/a>, one of three Republican candidates for governor in Maine, and even narrated Emery&#8217;s top campaign TV ad. Emery came in a fairly distant third.<\/p>\n<p>A month earlier, McCain threw his support behind Rep. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journalstar.com\/articles\/2006\/05\/01\/local\/doc44565df97a5c9572730051.txt\">Tom Osborne<\/a> in Nebraska&#8217;s Republican gubernatorial primary. Osborne lost, too.<\/p>\n<p>In late June, McCain backed a series of Republican candidates in down-ballot GOP primaries, many of whom <a href=\"http:\/\/hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com\/archives\/2006\/06\/surrogate_wars.html\">came in third<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I realize that McCain is the presumptive favorite for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, but if McCain&#8217;s a powerhouse, why do his candidates keep losing GOP primaries? Or is this just a sign that endorsements don&#8217;t mean much to primary voters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I noted earlier, Rep. Joe Schwarz lost a GOP House primary in Michigan yesterday, punished in large part because of relative centrism in the Republican caucus. I think it&#8217;s worth noting, however, the role Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had in the race. McCain not only backed Schwarz, in July, he traveled to the Michigan [&hellip;]<\/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-8161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161","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=8161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}