|
McCain puts right foot forward in giant step backward
(Blade, The (Toledo, OH) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 21--SAY IT ain't so, Johnny. Say all of us radical centrists out here weren't duped by your "Straight Talk Express."
Say the whole maverick reputation you cultivated wasn't just for show.
Say you didn't play independent voters, who saw you as their last best hope in 2000, for fools.
I'd like to stay in denial about Sen. John McCain morphing into the radical conservative some say he has always been, but the Arizona Republican doesn't make it easy. The man is obviously positioning himself for a 2008 presidential run. He's on a mission to make friends and influence the GOP base.
First he has to soothe hurt feelings from 2000. He's doing that by putting his right foot forward with the hard-core wing of his party. A leader in the Iowa religious right movement said just the support of the conservative Christian constituency won't guarantee the presidency to anyone, but no Republican can win the White House without it. So Senator McCain is courting conservative activists in Iowa.
In 2000 he skipped the state's leadoff caucuses to make his first stand in New Hampshire. The strategy paid off for the candidate but threw a glitch into preordained GOP plans to make the nominating process a coronation for the governor from Texas. Spoiling the arranged accession made the moderate Republican a marked man with conservative operatives, who mobilized to destroy his candidacy.
Republicans vow not to speak ill of each other but they still know how to slime their opponents by fueling nasty rumors and innuendoes. Before the South Carolina primary, whispers began to circulate about the temperament of Mr. McCain and whether his experience as a Vietnam POW might have left him emotionally and mentally unstable to assume the highest office in the land.
The smear campaign, with all the trademark calculations of a Karl Rove or a Ralph Reed, came right out of the late Lee Atwater's playbook of dirty tricks.
The senator and his family were undermined by a variety of "anonymous" accusations spread in an avalanche of leaflets and through telephone "polls" in the state. The slanderous assault included tales that the lawmaker fathered a black child out of wedlock, that his wife was a "drug addict," and even that he committed treason during his long imprisonment by the North Vietnamese.
The political bruising was the beginning of the end of the McCain presidential bid. But afterward everybody kissed and made up and the Straight Talk Express became the Spin Talk Express. The defeated candidate, who refused to describe his rival's campaign as "honorable," stumped on the trail for him.
Four years later the senator was at it again, supporting the Bush re-election campaign with all the conviction of a true believer. Two years hence, as the next presidential election looms in the distance, the erstwhile straight talker is the new double-talker, speaking out of both sides of his mouth in true political fashion.
While insisting that he remains an independent thinker, the "maverick" politician has folded like a cheap suit on a whole range of issues from supporting the President's tax cuts after opposing them, to currying favor with religious broadcasters whom he once called evil influences on the Republican Party and agents of intolerance.
On May 13 Mr. McCain will speak at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Today the McCain in sheep's clothing also declines to criticize the infamous Falwell contention that "the ACLU, feminists, and homosexuals" were to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Today, unlike yesterday, the senator who would be president has softened his earlier opposition to key conservative priorities, from teaching creationism to endorsing a federal amendment banning gay marriage and accepting a Supreme Court ban on abortion.
In his drive to become ideologically agreeable to Bush partisans, John McCain has disappeared under a mantle of political expediency. There's no denying the fait accompli.
He has morphed into a God-fearing, deficit-growing, nothing-is-too-extreme real deal in exchange for votes.
In the all-important swing state of Ohio, Mr. McCain recently sidled up to the biggest panderer of the religious right as Kenneth Blackwell campaigned ahead of the GOP gubernatorial primary.
But not all in the conservative Republican establishment are swayed by the senator's new image. They can't trust it to be true.
Like many independent voters disillusioned with the senator's strategic shift, right-wingers see the maneuver as political opportunism, too.
Now John McCain is just like every other politician selling his soul for career advancement. If only it weren't so.
Marilou Johanek is a Blade commentary writer.
Contact her at: mjohanek@theblade.com
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West, September 16-18, 2008. Los Angeles, California.
