The McCain surge

John McCain’s recovery is astonishing in so many ways it is hard to know where to begin. He was written off by everybody just months ago, a staff meltdown on his hands and no money to buy his way back up the polls. Money is everything in American politics, right? Romney had it all and McCain was flat broke. He was no textbook conservative, and the Republicans were obviously going to insist on that. He had little or no appeal to the evangelicals, either, yet another disqualifier. And get ready for this: he formed an alliance with Ted Kennedy—Ted Kennedy!—and sponsored an amnesty for illegal immigrants. That measure provoked a national outcry and was killed stone dead in Congress. And this man was running for the Republican nomination? Who was he kidding?
      Well, he is not quite there yet. Giuliani is gone but Mitt Romney and his checkbook are not giving up. Super-Tuesday is the real test. Nonetheless, winning Florida makes McCain the front-runner, and whatever happens now, that is remarkable in its own right.
     How on earth to account for it? It was crucial of course that none of the Republican contenders struck the party as an ideal choice. McCain had his drawbacks, all right—but so did all the others. Fred Thompson was the best the party could come up with for the textbook-conservative heir-to-Reagan slot, and he turned out to be a terrible campaigner who barely even seemed to want the job. I am still puzzled, I have to say, by the stunning failure of the Giuliani campaign. (Maybe one of the clichés of US horse-race politics was correct, after all: momentum acquired in the early primaries, which Giuliani downgraded in his planning, really counts.) At any rate, McCain appeared to command respect in way that Giuliani does not. And nobody could accuse him of being inauthentic, a charge that Romney cannot get away from.
    So for all the things they dislike about McCain, Republicans seem to like his character. And above all, of course, they like his electability. They may be a divided party, but they are united on the need to stop the Democrats—and above all, of course, Hillary Clinton—from gaining the White House. McCain could give Hillary a run for her money, and that seems good enough for the conservatives, evangelicals and immigration hard-liners who would find so much to dislike in President McCain. That is something for Democrats to ponder as they weigh the choice between Hillary and Obama.

Comments

Here's what happened:

1. Romney, McCain and Giuliani received the lion share of attention early and received mild enthusiasm leading to the entrance of Fred Thompson, who quickly became a sideshow.
2. Brownback dropped out and Giuliani, and McCain abandoned Iowa leaving Mitt Romney all alone in the corn fields of Iowa. Huckabee picked up Brownback's modest support and decided to challenge Romney in Iowa. His message of a boy coming from no where and caring about his home state was the perfect message to run against Romney.
3. McCain staked it all on NH. The NH vote was seen as a contest between Romney and McCain. Romney's ads here in my home state were over the top and immigration isn't a big issue in NH. McCain was able to recapture some of the energy he brought with his 2000 campaign.
4. Michigan and Nevada were sideshows.
5. McCain was able to win in South Carolina while condemning the Confederate Flag and not pandering too broadly to evangelicals. Huckabee was tagged by the media as unfit to be commander in chief by this point.
6. McCain had momentum (and "Joementum") heading in to Florida. Romney was seen as unelectable by some and McCain benefited from a fairly old electorate. Giuliani imploded.

I wish I bought McCain futures when he was listed at a 6% chance of winning the nomination. He had a lower chance of winning than Ron Paul!

Posted by Robert | January 30, 2008 7:35 PM

I'm glad Obama made this point in Denver today. Hillary Clinton is the John Kerry of 2008. Her obvious flip-flops are ignored by the party faithful and will become THE issue in November.

And all the "liberal" positions McCain has taken coupled with a unifed party and no real substantive difference in HRC and McCain's voting on Iraq will push Independents to the guy they like better.

I hope people start to realize this.

But as long as "the snub" is actually a topic of discussion, I doubt that they will.

Posted by Rhoda | January 30, 2008 9:35 PM

I think the thing that kept him going most after New Hampshire was the electability argument. Once McCain got back on the radar, republicans had to take an honest look at who can beat the opposition, and McCain has been the only one who stood up to them in the national polls for the past month and a half or so.

Now as for a Guiliani endorsement as he dropped out, I think that's a clear request for the VP spot if/when McCain grabs the nomination.

Ideas exerpted/paraphrased from:
http://www.politicalmaelstrom.blogspot.com

Posted by Jesse | January 30, 2008 9:49 PM