6 February 2008
Moving On
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: Presidential Election 2008 .
For those of us here who support Governor Romney, our work is cut out for us but it does not look as bleak as it looked last night. I bolded the two most important points in the article below:
February 6, 2008 — FOR Republicans, the story from Super Tuesday seems to be that John McCain, while still the frontrunner, has a tremendous amount of work ahead of him uniting the Republican base before November.
Last night’s early results produced no serious threat to McCain’s frontrunner status. But McCain did underperform, while Mike Huckabee did better than expected.
Indeed, it may not be too much to ask whether - should both Romney and Huckabee stay in until the end - there is the chance of a Stop McCain ticket being formed by the candidates who have so far split the anti-McCain vote across the country.
So far, it’s been largely the fractured nature of the race that keeps McCain in the lead.
McCain’s strength, early on in the night, manifested itself most clearly in the northeast, where he racked up his first sound victories - that is, ones where he was able to break the 50-percent mark.
States like Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois and New York gave the Arizona senator comfortable margins of victory over his nearest competitor in the region, Mitt Romney.
But these states don’t represent the heart of the Republican Party - they hardly ever end up painted red on election nights these days. They may represent delegates in the primary process, but they don’t tell us anything about the senator’s ability to rally the base.
In the southern states, which do make up the heart of the Republican Party, McCain found himself slogging it out with Evangelical candidate Mike Huckabee last night.
As of this writing, Arkansas had been called for Huckabee (the hometown boy, by a lot), as had Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee (by smaller margins).
The results down South once again showed McCain’s weakness with the base. In Georgia, for instance, exit polls found McCain losing conservatives (67 percent of the primary electorate) to Huckabee by 21 percent to 38 percent. In fact, McCain was third among conservatives, with Romney garnering 37 percent of their votes.
We can see that Senator McCain’s wins in the Northeast will likely not be a factor in a general election so this is important in educating people regarding his strength against Hillary or Obama. Next, we can see that Romney is stronger in the south than McCain. We have a shot at the brokered convention.
10 Comments so far...
Cameron Says:
6 February 2008 at 11:13 am.
Rush is saying basically the same thing. McCain’s wins are in states that will go blue in Nov. What I am afraid of is that McCain will pick Huckabee because without the south he can’t make it.
Matt Says:
6 February 2008 at 11:34 am.
Just like E.E. said, I have been thinking a lot about what to do if McCain gets the nomination. I can’t do it. I can’t help move our party left. If I bow under the pressure they will do more of this in the future. How else can I tell them not to bully us? How can I say my values matter to me? When I read this article I decided I won’t let McCain gather me under his wing. I hope so many people stand up against him that we send the Republican Establishment a message.
Analysis: McCain aiming for GOP unity
He took the first step Tuesday night, when he declared victory in a carefully written, why-I-am-a-Republican speech. McCain said he hopes to draw Republicans together in the manner of Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the modern-day GOP.
“I am as confident tonight as I have ever been that we can succeed in November by uniting our party in our determination to keep our country safe, proud, prosperous and free and by again making a persuasive case to independents, and to those enlightened members of the other party, that the great Ronald Reagan claimed for our party,” he said.
Cavetrollhead Says:
6 February 2008 at 11:50 am.
That is right Matt.
A vote for McCain is a message to the republican party that says, “It is OK to nominate a candidate who is a threat to the constitution and a threat to conservativism.” Our only chance to save the party is to send the opposite message, “We will not vote for such a man. Go conservative or go to Heck” (The Heck was for you Joy)
Therefore we should not vote for McCain in the General no matter what. If we do, we conservatives will lose the only political power we have had, by losing the republican party to the moderates.
Cameron Says:
6 February 2008 at 12:02 pm.
Right Matt and CTH. We can’t lose our political power. And in the meantime we have to try and not throw up when we read things like the article below. McCain is so freakin arrogant he is pretending he already has the nomination. What doesn’t he get about the election process?
McCain appeals for GOP unity
WASHINGTON - Boosted by his big night, John McCain asked his loudest conservative critics Wednesday to “calm down” and support his Republican presidential candidacy, as Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton girded for more rounds of their protracted struggle for the Democratic nomination. Obama dared claim a “big victory” because he came from so far behind, but the spoils were closely divided and the bragging rights, shared.
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McCain was referring primarily to radio talk show hosts and other pundits of the right when he appealed for unity now that he has a leg up in the nomination race.
“I think they’ve made their case against me pretty eloquently,” he said, adding wryly, “if that’s the right word.” He asserted that the pundits’ conservative hero Ronald Reagan — and his — reached across the aisle to Democrats just like he wants to do as president.
“I do hope that at some point we would just calm down a little bit and see if there are areas that we can agree on for the good of the party and for the good of the country,” he said. The critics argue he’s too liberal for the party.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080206/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_rdp
Mac Says:
6 February 2008 at 12:03 pm.
I just heard McCain say on the radio news that he will unite the people under conservative principles. Sorry Cameron. I don’t think I can help but puke.
Cavetrollhead Says:
6 February 2008 at 12:14 pm.
As far as the Brokered convention goes, can Huckabee throw his delegates to McCain in order to get the VP nomination? If so, how many can he give to McCain? Scary thought.
Cameron Says:
6 February 2008 at 12:57 pm.
I’m afraid that is what would happen. On other sites all the talk is about the possibility of Mitt and Huck teaming up. Huck would never do it. They are wasting their time. This election is all about hate. If we protestants don’t stop hating the Mormons so much, we are going to cut our own throats. We reap what we sow.
Matt Says:
6 February 2008 at 2:07 pm.
This article is called “When Will the Wounds Heal” but I would call it “The Great Divide”.
Sen. McCain may have won enough states yesterday to carry him to the nomination, but he hasn’t earned sufficiently large margins to claim a partywide mandate.
To some extent, of course, these divides are natural and predictable, and hardly unprecedented in a primary season. The question both parties face is whether the wounds the primary season is inflicting are superficial or deep, and whether they can be healed by November.
Among Republicans, the split that is becoming both more obvious and more nasty is between the party’s core conservatives, who often are distrustful, if not disdainful, of Sen. McCain, and more moderate party members who often are enamored of him.
It has gotten personal. Mr. Romney has come to attack Sen. McCain as not just an ersatz conservative, but one whose claims to be an heir to the Reagan legacy are dishonest. Sen. McCain has returned the favor, implying Romney policy reversals show he isn’t to be trusted. The results are visible in voting patterns: In the bellwether state of Missouri, Mr. Romney beat Sen. McCain by about 10 points among self-identified Republican conservatives, while Sen. McCain bested Mr. Romney by about 15 points among self-identified moderates. It has also become obvious that neither Sen. McCain nor Mr. Huckabee particularly likes Mr. Romney.
Now as the dust settles from Super Tuesday, the question for Republicans will be whether Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee fight on, in which case the wounds figure to grow deeper. Even if Sen. McCain is on his way to prevailing, the damage has been done.
In both parties, the question is what the ultimate nominees do about it — and how much the party’s rank and file actually wants to come together.
For the first steps in that direction, look for the speculation, now certain to grow, about what kind of vice-presidential selections might heal which wounds. On the Republican side, Sen. McCain and Mr. Huckabee seem to have developed a kind of mutual-admiration society, which is bound to lead to talk they may join on a ticket should Sen. McCain prevail. That surely would help Sen. McCain rebuild ties with social conservatives who still aren’t quite sure whether to trust him.
But the task for Sen. McCain still would be considerable. His strength as a candidate is his ability to reach beyond the party’s base to independents and conservative Democrats. But before he can do that, his first task will be to try to reunite and ultimately claim a conservative base that is somewhere between suspicious and hostile.
The reuniting task for Democrats ultimately may be easier. Racial divides can be particularly nasty, of course. But the best salve Democrats have to heal their wounds is simple: It is their intense, almost obsessive desire to win in a year when they think full political control of Washington is finally within their reach.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120227245795447049.html?mod=election_special_coverage=yhoofront
Cameron Says:
6 February 2008 at 2:10 pm.
Beat me, Matt. So what they are saying is that if Romney doesn’t give up now, the wounds will be too deep to heal. Then they say we don’t really want to heal. We want to tear ourselves apart. Give me a break.
Cavetrollhead Says:
6 February 2008 at 2:48 pm.
What is being wounded here is conservatism and the constitution. I am not leaving the republican party. The republican party is leaving me.
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