When it was first announced that George W. Bush, Governor of Texas,
had decided, or was persuaded by friends, to seek the Republican
nomination for President in the November 2000 election, many
conservatives were not terribly excited. In fact, that announcement
brought forth a whole bunch of formidable candidates for the nomination,
including Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, Elizabeth Dole, Orrin
Hatch and Senator John McCain of Arizona.
My own preference was for Steve Forbes, who seemed to have the best
conservative program and the ability to articulate it extremely well. I
didn't know very much about McCain except the fact that he had been a
prisoner of war in Hanoi for five and a half years. He was a military
hero, but not known as a movement conservative. At the beginning, he
seemed to have about the same chance of getting the nomination as Orrin
Hatch.
But then something happened. He began to score big with independents
and disaffected Democrats, and he attracted a press following that found
his frank and salty rhetoric much to their liking. They liked his
military background and his strong stand on campaign finance reform. And
when he won big in the New Hampshire primary, his backers were sure that
McCain could roll over the rest of the Republican candidates and upset
the George Bush applecart.
Meanwhile, conservatives began to look more closely into McCain's
record. He was one of the most vociferous of the hawks in the matter of
Kosovo, advocating a land invasion with American troops. That didn't sit
well with many conservatives. There were also rumors about his nasty
temperament from his colleagues in the Senate. And his campaign finance
reform bill would have deprived conservative advocacy groups of their
right to free speech in election campaigns.
But it was the South Carolina primary in which McCain showed his true
colors: his intense dislike of the religious right, a constituency
representing one third of the Republican Party. He bashed Pat Robertson,
Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones University as bigots. He insinuated through
phone calls to potential voters that George Bush was anti-Catholic
because he had spoken at Bob Jones University.
That's when it became obvious that McCain was bad news for the
Republican Party. He was creating religious conflict where none had
existed, he stressed class conflict in his tax reform program, and he
equated Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell with Al Sharpton and Louis
Farrakhan.
It was enough to make any good conservative sick. The mystery is,
whatever made McCain think he could win the Republican nomination by
tearing the party to pieces, by creating religious and class conflict
and smearing respected members of the religious right? The backlash came
fast and furious on Super Tuesday, and gave George Bush the solid
backing of conservatives who began to see in him a man who could handle
the likes of a John McCain and prove that he had the temperament to be
president.
There is no doubt that it is McCain's temperament that did him in.
His treatment of Michael Reagan on the latter's talk show revealed an
inability to be gracious and cooperative with someone who tended to
favor him. His curt dismissal of Maria Shriver as she tried to get a
word out of him again showed that he lacked the temperament necessary
for a president. She had asked him how he felt after his defeat on
Tuesday. He could have replied with a simple "I feel fine." After all,
she was giving him an opportunity to reach millions of TV viewers with a
simple, optimistic statement. Instead, he chose to be rude.
It's easy for a conservative to make a list of McCain's negatives:
war-mongering over Kosovo, promoting a flawed campaign finance reform
bill, voting in favor of fetal experimentation, creating religious
conflict between Protestants and Catholics, denouncing good leaders of
the religious right as bigots, smearing George Bush as anti-Catholic,
denigrating a great fundamentalist Christian university, appealing to
class conflict, revealing a vindictive temperament and an inability to
control a hot temper. Clearly, John McCain has alienated just about
every conservative in the Republican Party. And the vote on Tuesday made
that very clear.
Nevertheless, some of his strongest supporters are suggesting that he
bolt the Republican Party and run as an independent or on the Reform
Party ticket. But we can't believe that he would be foolish enough to do
that.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush looks better every day. He is plain-spoken,
calm, gracious, and acting in accordance with his religious convictions.
In this respect, he is quite different from his father. For the time
being, that's enough to mobilize conservatives to his cause. Some say he
can't beat Gore. But he beat Ma Richards in Texas, and Mollie Ivins has
warned liberals not to underestimate George Dubya. And we haven't even
begun to list Gore's negatives. It should be noted that Clinton was
never elected by a majority of the electorate.
Will we be faced in November with the specter of a three-way race?
And will John McCain's "crusade" make that specter a reality? We shall
see.