Three Winners From Last Tuesday
John Fund goes looking for winners beyond the surface of last Tuesday’s election, and finds three: the California public employees’ unions, John McCain, and Mark Warner. Here’s Fund on McCain:
Mr. McCain’s basic message is that if Republicans still face a hostile political environment in 2008, they must find a candidate who transcends partisanship. He says the public is fed up with “fight gang” politics and wants bipartisan solutions, such as the agreement that 14 senators, including Mr. McCain, made last May not to filibuster judicial nominees except in “extraordinary circumstances.”
The senator says his approach–which includes co-sponsoring global warming legislation with Sen. Joe Lieberman and pushing for campaign finance reform–is a political winner. He points to his own approval ratings in Arizona, where, despite grousing from many conservatives, nearly two-thirds of Republicans like the job he’s doing. He also sports an approval rating of nearly 50% among Democrats and over 60% among independents.
But such numbers may count for little in the hothouse world of Republican primary politics, which is dominated by activists. “McCain has one big problem in winning the nomination,” political handicapper Charlie Cook told me. “Conservatives hate him for everything from voting against tax cuts to opposing English-only laws.”
Yep, that’s a big, big problem, all right.
Warner, however, is clearly the biggest beneficiary of recent events:
Mr. Warner has suddenly become the Democratic Party’s rock star. He is touted as a presidential candidate by members of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council who fear Sen. Hillary Clinton may be too polarizing.
Mr. Warner’s sales pitch–which he will carry to New Hampshire this Thursday for a “conversation with voters”–will be that he has picked the lock on GOP dominance in the South. In 2001, he impressed party insiders by courting Nascar enthusiasts and gun owners and winning in a state that hasn’t gone Democratic for president since 1964. In office, he focused on issues such as education and traffic congestion and built enough popular support to persuade a GOP Legislature to raise taxes. Then, barred from seeking a second term, Mr. Warner successfully helped Tim Kaine, his lieutenant governor, score a decisive six-point victory to succeed him in the governor’s mansion.
…His success in Virginia has some party activists already sold. “I’ve never met the guy, but he ought to be our nominee in ’08,” Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told Knight Ridder. “If Democrats around the country don’t wake up and take notice, we’re going to go down the same road we went down in ’04.”
Mr. Warner may still be a long-shot for the Democratic nomination–only 1% of Democrats in an October Marist poll picked him as their favorite–but he is clearly the new frontrunner among “anybody but Hillary” Democrats. Even if he stumbles in the primaries, don’t be surprised if the New York senator woos him to join her ticket in hopes of snagging Virginia for the Democratic column.
Warner’s odds are improving by the day…and that’s not a good thing for Republicans. He will make a formidable candidate in 2008.
In fact, the GOP really only has two candidates who could beat Warner: McCain and Giuliani. Warner would clean up against any bona fide social conservative, and all the purists who loathe folks like McCain (though McCain is not a social liberal in the slightest) may be handing the White House back to the Dems.
Warner?
Please.
No foreign policy experience. Period.
Maybe a veep spot is available, after Foreign Policy comes off the top three issues of our time in another 20 years.
Bush had none, but then he also had Cheney. The thought of Evan Bayh, or Joe Biden playing in the number two spot in the Dem rotation(to this guy) is laughable.
He is a clone of Edwards. Even if he is the Veep, GOP would take VA. He might make it close at the top spot, but at number 2, the results would be the same.
The dems are pounding Bush on Foreign Policy, but it also exposes their own weaknesses.
Fox news has Bush at 36%, but some internals in the poll they ran have some juicy numbers…
33% approval for Dems, 34% for Republicans.
How are they going to do an about face on Foreign Policy, where they generally trail the gop by 20pts, by nominating a guy with ZERO FP credentials?
Let’s be sure to nominate someone with FP credentials ourselves, then. Does Allen have any? I hope not. Rudy has the 9/11 thing but I don’t know if that’s enough.
McCain?
If we’re looking for foreign policy credentials, we have precisely two legitimate candidates: Rice and McCain. And Rice would be a disaster.
I will continue to try to convince my fellow Republicans that they have two choices to keep the White House in 2008: Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.
Warner is one of 2 Demorats that will win if the the GOP does not nominate either of them. The 2nd Demorat shall go nameless here.
I know that both Rudy and McCain have major problems with large sections of the base. But let me pose this question to the diehards: Is losing on principle worth a Democratic POTUS replacing John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the SCOTUS?
I submit that it would be worth electing Chuck Hagel POTUS if it meant keeping the Democrats from 2 SCOTUS noms. It was never meant to be this way, but the reality of politics in the US in 2008 is that controlling the SCOTUS is the fight to be won at all costs.
Rudy or McCain or President Clinton or President Warner? The ball is in our court.
Just to clarify my last post. HRC is NOT the 2nd Demnocrat I refused to name earlier.
You don’t have to have FP at the top of the ticket, just at least, in the #2 spot.
(See Bush /Cheney 00)
Rice is worth putting in the running for #2.(I am leery about the top spot though.)
Stevens is gone in 07, or maybe 08…would love to see the dems argue Marbury Madison if it goes late….
Ginsburg remind me of my great aunt, my 97 year old great aunt.(They eat nothing, look like birds, and after 15 years of thinking they are a goner, you give up.)
Warner looks good now, because he is a dem in a red state. His problem hit when he gets his marching orders from NY and CA, moveon, naral, paw, etc…
The plan for the gop should be looking for a team candidacy. HRC will never win, I have seen her speak, -I’d rather listen to Robert Plant sing ‘Tip toe thru the Tulips’-at least the china would be safe. She can’t handle questions, she doesn’t have a good grasp of any policy outside talking points, and her greatest asset is also her biggest detriment, WJC.
She will be the nominee, but her negatives are greater than her positive ratings.
Scandal?
She’ll be answering for every pardon her hubby gave out-for which the Clinton library got some new paint and a condom dispenser-and Bill got to keep the change. Her brother’s payoff of 500,000 for his legal work on a pardon? This thing called 08 is in the bag…
look at these numbers-
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/Hillary%20Meter.htm
29% definitely for, 43% definitely against.
40% favorable, 45% unfavorable.
These numbers are attrocious. Her husband got 42% his first time around, and 49% the second. She is no Bill. Her peak might be 42%, but that would be optimistic.
Odds that she passes out on stage or at public appearrance during camapaign?
90%. She lacks the stamina for a run.
Her ace in the hole? Bill has a heart attack everytime her numbers dip. Kinda like raising the threat level.
John McCain wasn’t a winner in California, not that it mattered or will ever matter. He supported Arnold and redistricting by judges instead of legislatures. Moderates won’t win anything in California for a long time. Same for Ohio. McCain looks good on TV, the media loves him, and he plays well with other Senators, but I don’t see him getting nominated by Republicans.
California Public Employees Unions spent $150 million to oppose 4 propositions where the proponents spent $50 million. They may have won this election, but having to spend $3 for every $1 of opposition is not a long term sustainable strategy. The propositions will be back if for no other reason than to make the unions spend their money.
Mark Warner looked good on “Face the Nation” yesterday, but he sounded a lot like John Edwards. Bashing President Bush may get him the Democrat nomination, but it won’t resonate with middle America and moderates in 2008. Regardless of what happens for the next three years, the majority of Americans know President Bush is honorable, if not always competent. Americans also respect Presidents who hold office for eight years. All of the Democrat hopefuls have a fine line to navigate in regards to how and how much they criticize President Bush.
The next President will be the candidate who articulates a vision that addresses the weaknesses of the Bush administration without bashing President Bush, just as candidate Bush did in 2000 with President Clinton. I agree with President Bush on immigration, but I think his position will be challenged by the successful candidates in 2008. I’m not sure any of the front runners have a comprehensive and coherent position on immigration yet.
McCain and the California Public Employees Union will not be President in 2009. I doubt Warner will either. He may have popped his head up just a little too early.
Rove to Chris Matthews:
Warner’s teeth are fair game.
-MTl
Has your aunt had chemo for colon cancer? Because Ruth Bader Ginsburg has. She is very ill and could go at any time.
Yes colon cancer treatment in 92.
Breast cancer with full mastectomy in 89.
She showed me the stitches, my vision has never recovered.
An interesting question to me is whether Hillary in 2008 will feel obliged to protect her right flank or her left. Assuming she gets the nomination, the conventional wisdom seems to be she’ll nominate some red stater like Bayh or Warner to solidify the whole “I’m really not a fire-breathing commie” camapign that she’s been pushing. However, she seems to have been fairly successful over the past several years in convincing many moderates of that already. After all, she hasn’t joined the “Bush Lied!” chorus, and she’s avoided most controversial stuff since the health-care fiasco.
But now we’ve got the leftists in the party cracking the whip about the war. She may wind up in the unenviable position of choosing a perceived moderate and then facing some Naderish challenge from the left that’s just enough to sink her, or choosing a perceived lefty to forestall such a challenge, but then worrying all those people who have been led to believe she’s a middle-of-the-roader at heart.
I’ve also come to believe Giuliani and McCain are probably the only two Republicans who can win in 2008, or at least win comfortably enough that I don’t have to stay up to the wee hours on election night. I know this irks some conservatives, and for legitimate reasons. But I think that just as the left has slowly been learning that the country is more conservative than they care to admit, the right needs to learn that it’s not quite that conservative.
OBTW,
Ginsburg’s chemo was 5 years ago. She was dxd in 99. If she looks old, chemo does that.
Sorry to hear that MTL. My uncle died of colon cancer 2 years ago. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
no harm.
Life and death are equally humorous, if you can laugh at both.
Hi Dennis,
There are many Republicans and many Democrats who could get elected if they could get nominated. McCain almost certainly would win a general election if he was nominated, but that’s not going to happen.
McCain will have an early advantage because there will be a whole boatload of Republicans running to the right splitting votes. He also has Lindsey Graham to help him in South Carolina. However, once a center-right Republican emerges, after the pretenders have abandoned their campaigns, McCain won’t win another primary. There are a number of center-right Republicans who will do very well in the general election.
Giuliani could make the Republican nomination much more interesting. If McCain and Giuliani both run, the lesser right and center-right Republicans may stay in the race longer than if there was just one moderate running causing the nomination to be in doubt much longer as well. If McCain doesn’t run, Giuliani has a chance to move more to the right and get the nomination. However, I can’t imagine McCain not running.
The Democrat obstacle course will be much more difficult. There has not been a Democrat to get more than 50% in the general election since Jimmy Carter. Al Gore got 50% running un-apposed as a centrist. The Democrat who will be nominated in 2008 must run to the left in the primaries and then back to the right in the general election. There is no trend in America that would indicate a candidate could get elected with a serpentine strategy unless the Republican candidate is Bob Dole or a facsimile thereof.
The 2006 election won’t telegraph a winner either. If the Democrats can’t take the house in 2006, it is not likely they can take the Executive in 2008. If the Democrats do take the house in 2006, the Republican Presidential candidate will have another villain to run against. My money is on the Republican regardless of who is nominated and I am almost certain it will not be John McCain.
“If McCain doesn’t run, Giuliani has a chance to move more to the right and get the nomination.”
Yup. Rudy needs to make McCain an offer he can’t refuse.
Hi Knemon,
Rudy can get votes that are not easy to categorize due to intangibles. I lean way right, but I can’t help but like Rudy and depending on who else is on the ballot, I might vote for him. I’m not counting on the race lasting until California, but you never know.
DMS – keep hope alive!
Rudy needs to come in third in Iowa (though better than that would be nice) and first or a *close* second in NH, and at least second or a tied third in SC. Anything less than that will probably end it.
If he does respectably but not great in SC, IMHO, he’s made it through to the next round. He presumably wins big-state (blue-state) primaries …
The X factor in all of this, obviously, is McCain. Those two need to sit down together sometime after the 06 elections and realistically assess which one of them has a better chance, and the other needs to stand down.
Of course, these are politicians we’re talking about, i.e. egos with legs, so this might be unrealistic.