Ross on the Republican Reformation

Ross Douthat, Atlantic blogger and one of my favorite bloggingheads, wrote an Op-Ed for today's NYT (h/t Colecurtis):

. . . After being denounced as a tax-and-spender and a pro-life liberal, Mr. Huckabee won four primaries in four Republican strongholds, including Alabama and Georgia. Mr. McCain split the frequent-churchgoer vote with Mr. Romney, and eclipsed him among evangelical Christians, even though the religious-conservative poobah James Dobson has promised to sit out the November election if Mr. McCain becomes the Republican nominee.

The failure of conservative voters to fall in line behind Mr. Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, among others, reflects a deeper problem for the movement’s leadership. With their inflexibility, grudge-holding and eagerness to evict heretics rather than seek converts, too many of conservatism’s leaders sound like the custodians of a dwindling religious denomination or a politically correct English department at a fading liberal-arts college.

Or like yesterday’s Democratic Party. The tribunes of the American right have fallen into the same bad habits that doomed their liberal rivals to years of political failure.

In spite of his record as a maverick, John McCain has become the presumptive nominee by running a classic Republican campaign, emphasizing strength abroad and limited government at home, with nods to his pro-life record. His opponents in the conservative movement, by contrast, have behaved like caricatures of liberals, emphasizing a host of small-bore litmus tests that matter more to Beltway insiders than to the right-winger on the street.

Republican primary voters who turned to Mr. Limbaugh for their marching orders were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistently hawkish record — on Iraq, Iran, the size of the military and any other issue you care to name — mattered less to his standing as a conservative than his views on waterboarding. Or that his extensive record as a free-trader, a tax-cutter and an opponent of pork-barrel spending wasn’t sufficient to qualify him as an economic conservative, because he had opposed a particular set of upper-bracket tax cuts in 2001.

Similarly, religious conservatives who listened to James Dobson were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistent pro-life voting record was less important than the impact his campaign-finance bill had on the National Right to Life Committee’s ability to purchase issue ads on television 60 days before an election. Or that his consistent support for conservative judicial nominees, and his pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Sam Alito, mattered less than his involvement in the “Gang of 14” compromise on judicial filibusters. . . .

There is indeed something very un-conservative among those whose dissatisfaction with McCain lead them to a stance of in all-or-nothing results, forgetting as they do that politics is the art of the possible rather than the commanding of ideals. As Thomas Jefferson put it to his cousin John Randolph in 1803:

". . . Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish."

Is Irrational Arrogance a Conservative Principle?

Kathleen Turner in "The Audacity of Compromise" writes of those who would sacrifice the next four or more years to the Democrats in order to spite McCain:

To be sure, political cannibalism makes for interesting dinner conversation, but the winner eventually starves to death.

It isn't necessary to love everything McCain has done to vote for him should he be the nominee. But it isn't possible to argue that there's no difference between McCain and Clinton (or Barack Obama), as some Republicans insist.

A form of irrational conservatism has taken hold when being true to oneself or to the party is viewed as more important than, say, turning over the country to people who want to raise taxes and impose socialized health care.

Principles shouldn't be so inflexible that strict adherence elevates a worse alternative.

McCain, it's true has taken some positions that are unorthodox to conservatives:

These are positions with which conservatives would naturally argue. And perhaps they are right that McCain is more moderate than conservative, but so is the nation. Alternatively, McCain's maverick lawmaking might be viewed as principled compromise -- or at least an earnest attempt to inject humane ethics into the mix.

Serious people don't really believe that the U.S. government is going to round up 11 million or 12 million people and ship them back to wherever they came from. It isn't going to happen.

Government parceling of free speech via McCain-Feingold, a portion of which has been found unconstitutional, can't otherwise be justified unless you figure, as McCain does, that purchased speech isn't free. When some people have greater access to "free speech" by virtue of their deeper pockets, then one could fairly argue that less prosperous people are denied free speech.

McCain's fire-breathing opponents, meanwhile, disregard his support of other positions Republicans hold dear. He has a strong pro-life voting record (except for supporting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research), has opposed wasteful spending, and has been steadfast in supporting the war. But, stepping outside the GOP box, he opposes torture, including waterboarding.

How dare a man who was tortured for five years in a Vietnamese prison depart from the party line?

Anti-McCain rage for many comes down to personality. He doesn't play nice and his independence annoys those who prefer the team player mentality.

But Republicans' obstinance in claiming to prefer Clinton to McCain is arrogance of a Clintonian order. To wit: Hillary Clinton has said that as president she would not listen to generals in Iraq and would withdraw troops no matter what . . .

Californians Find Themselves in McCain Territory

It looks like McCain struck gold all across the State - from San Diego to San Fransisco to Sacramento to Del Norte.

Take a look at these maps - only three counties went for Romney, and in over a dozen counties the margin of victory for McCain was in the thousands. Romney's biggest margin of victory was 662 in Shasta County.

Of course, the delegates are awarded by congressional district, not by counties - but it seems McCain is ahead in 51 out of 53.

So out of California's 170 delegates, McCain will win about 164.

And this in a closed primary, McCain's statewide margin over Romney is 8 percent.

The CNN exit poll indicates, surprisingly, that McCain only carried one-third of Lations, but almost two-thirds of Asian-Americans. I would have expected McCain to do better among Latinos than among the general population of Republicans, but this doesn't seem to be the case. However, McCain did still place first among Latinos, and Huckabee came in second. Among Asian-Americans, Giuliani - who dropped out of the race last week - did better than Romney.

Less than half of California Republican primary voters believe in deporting illegal immigrants. Three-fourths of the primary voters were White non-Latinos, and they didn't flock to Romney's anti-"amnesty" position. San Diego and Imperial, right on the border, went for McCain - dashing Romney's hopes of cashing in on his embrace of the Tancredo wing of the party in a place he might of expected resentment toward immigrants. Even as conservatives rightly are concerned about the rule of law, it seems that - right here on the border - most are not driven by the hate that characterizes the rhetoric of pundits who live far removed from the problem.

Huckabee steals middle-class southern evangelical votes from rich northern Mormon?

It's driving me nuts. The MSM keeps repeating the same old trope. Apparently, they still believe that Christian conservatives are uneducated and easy to command. And the Romney camp and his pals at Clear Channel are feeding this idea to the media, suggesting that Huckabee supporters are just stupid fodder for McCain's campaign and ought to rally around their annointed resurrected Reagan, Mitt Romney.

I just saw on CNN Anderson Cooper asking Democratic strategist Donna Brazille if Huckabee's presence in the race is hurting Romney's chances in the South. (As though this liberal Democrat has some special insight into the minds of the conservative Republican electorate?) She of course gave the oft-repeated conventional wisdom without any real data top back it up.

But I keep wondering - how many people do these media political elites even know who is voting for Huckabee? Of course they probably don't know any because Huckabee's stronghold is not in the D.C. beltway and the Manhattan press offices. These are the people who couldn't imagine in 1980 that anyone was voting for Reagan because of course they didn't know anyone who was voting for Reagan. Well as long as we are peddling in anecdotes, I know a number of people who are Huckabee supporters and none of them are excited in the least about Romney.

Folks, there isn't just some abstract "conservative" vote out there that Romney and Huckabee are splitting. All four of the GOP candidates are conservatives of one stripe or another. Ron Paul is a paleolibertarian Robert Taft conservative. McCain is a progressive traditionalist - a conservative in intuition and values rather than ideology - a virtue warrior rather than a culture warrior. Huckabee is a reformist anti-globalist social conservative. And Romney is a white bread technocrat institutionalist conservative. The conservatism of Huckabee is in spirit at least as different from the conservatism of Romney as it is from McCain or Ron Paul.

Medved notes:

To believe that Huck and Mitt are dividing conservatives, you have to believe that Huckabee is a conservative --- which Romney, Limbaugh, Igraham, and countless others have been denying (stridently and strenuously) for months. . . Either the elite commentators were wrong when they labeled Huckabee a “liberal populist,” or they are wrong now when they say he’s stealing conservative votes from Romney. The only other alternative is that they view conservative voters as just too stupid to see Huckabee for what he really is.

Patrick Ruffini writes:

The Romney campaign’s February 5th math is simple: move all the voters from the Huckabee pile onto theirs and claim a majority of conservatives. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple.

To this Brainster replies:

What do you mean, not simple? Just move the pile! Now note what's not said at all; what the Huckabee pile is going to receive in return; one suspects that it's the chance to help Mitt Romney over the hump. Now of course, it should come as no news to anybody that Mike Huckabee isn't interested in this game. He has on many occasions expressed his admiration for Senator McCain, and his disdain for Mitt Romney.

And it's not just Huckabee who prefers McCain to Romney. Huckabee supporters seem to feel the same way. These numbers show three-fifths of Huckabee voters having a favorable view of McCain, while less than two-fifths have a favorable view of Romney.

Ruffini also notes the cultural and geographical difference in the Romney and Huckabee vote:

The problem with this analysis is that I’ve seen no evidence that Huckabee voters would go to Romney. On a county level, the Romney and Huckabee votes are negatively correlated, with Romney representing the conservative side of the Chamber of Commerce/Rotary Club vote and not really showing outsized strength with Evangelicals.

I've been looking at this sort of county level results at my new political geography blog. In states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina, Romney has done his best in the more urban areas, and Huckabee has done best in rural areas. McCain has done well in both urban and rural areas, among both lower and upper middle class, among both young and old. On a demographic level, it appears that McCain actually bridges the constituencies of the older and white-collar Romney voters and the younger and blue-collar Huckabee enthusiasts.

If we had excluded Huckabee from this race, its possible Fred Thompson could have gained some real ground in the Bible-belt deep South. But to expect that this would be the case for Romney is only slightly more realistic than the idea of Mormons voting en masse for Huckabee.

Is John McCain's nomination inevitable? No, it's not. It's possible that Romney will win the largest share of California's delegates. But McCain has locked up the Northeast (sans Massachusetts), and Romney looks like he's behind both McCain and Huckabee in every state south of the Mason-Dixon line or with a central time zone. Romney's road to the nominattion depends on a few closed caucuses along with his support from Money, Mormons, Michigan, and - maybe - Massachusetts. It's not impossible , but- as Anna Marie Cox points out*- it requires a bit of mental gymnastics.

*h/t ENHQ

The Party of Hate vs The Party of Lincoln

Neal Boortz calls Hurricane victims "parasites" (- but oh, I'm sure he's not meaning to imply anything racial)

Glenn Beck is calling a war hero a traitor while simultaneously implying the same of Mexican-Americans when he calls him "Juan McCain"

For myself, I'll take Juan McCain, or Jean McCain or even Ivan McCain or whatever you want to call him, for the future of America, and to salvage and renew the Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan from narrow-minded pseudo-conservative xenophobes.

(Is calling them xenophobes instead of just racists too generous?)

Medved & Tucker discuss McCain vs. the dittoheads

(h/t Tony GOPrano)

McCain: Defender of the Free Speech Rights of his Right-Wing Rabid Radio Detractors

I was just about to bring up something great about McCain's credentials as a conservative and a man of decency that seems to have escaped the general attention of conservative audiences. But Medved just beat me to it.

Let’s say you’re attacking someone every day, criticizing some perceived enemy in a tone that is bitter, highly personal, spiteful and relentless. Now imagine, for the sake of argument, that at the very climax of your over-the-top abuse, the object of your assaults makes a point to defend your right to continue to slime him.

Wouldn’t it be appropriate to interrupt your derision for a few moments at least, to acknowledge the other guy’s courage and integrity—and to salute his support for the First Amendment?

Why, then, no acknowledgement by the most prominent conservative talkers on the radio of John McCain’s principled – and appropriate – efforts to block Democrats who seek to reinstitute the awful Fairness Doctrine?

. . . THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE WOULD BE A DEVASTATING ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH; McCAIN-FEINGOLD, FOR ALL ITS FAULTS, WAS NOT . . . It matters far more, in other words, that McCain continues to battle the Fairness Doctrine (that would seriously damage political debate in the media) than that he cosponsored a silly and ineffective piece of legislation (that left vigorous debate vigorously intact).

Keeping the Florida Victory Strong: Reaching out and defending reality

The Florida win is thrilling. Just two months ago the idea that McCain would even be a viable candidate at this point seemed all too remote. Now it seems that even if he doesn't win enough on Super Tuesday to lock the nomination, he will be far ahead and very well positioned going into the rest of February. I'm very much looking forward to the being able to vote for John McCain in Virginia's primary on Feb 12th. The fact that I will even be able to do that is exciting in itself.

So it's looking good, but as McCain said in his speech last night:

This was a hard fought election, and worth fighting hard for, but I've been on the other side of such contests before, and experienced the disappointment. I offer my best wishes to Governor Romney and his supporters. You fought hard for your candidate, and the margin that separated us tonight surely isn't big enough for me to brag about or for you to despair.
. . . My friends, in one week we will have as close to a national primary as we have ever had in this country. I intend to win it, and be the nominee of our party. And I intend to do that by making it clear what I stand for. I stand for the principles and policies that first attracted me to the Republican Party when I heard, in whispered conversations and tap codes, about the then Governor of California, who stood by me and my comrades, and who was making quite a reputation for standing by his convictions no matter the changing winds of political thought and popular culture. When I left the Navy and entered public life, I enlisted as a foot soldier in the political revolution he began. And I am as proud to be a Reagan conservative today, as I was then. I trust in the courage, good sense, resourcefulness and decency of the American people, who deserve a government that trusts in their qualities as well, and doesn't abrogate to its elf the responsibilities to do for the people what the people can and want to do for themselves.

This is exactly what the McCain campaign and those who support it need to be about right now. Although it's very tempting - and sometimes all too easy - to deliver personal attacks on Mitt Romney, it's wrong to kick a man when he's down. I believe that somewhere deep down inside that empty suit is a basically decent guy. I feel sorry for the guy - he's wasted so much money and even a good deal of his reputation in a futile pursuit of the Presidency because he just hasn't been able to see that he's just not what our nation needs right now. And meanwhile, we need to recognize that we will need Romney and his devotees come the general.

Can McCain win a general election without the support of Romney? I do tend to think so. But the more we can bring Republicans together the better. Far better to have a 55-60 percent win than another close call like we've had the past two presidential elections. Do we need the support of the Hewitts and the Limbaughs and the Malkins and Tancredos and Coulters out there? No. But we do need to convince enough of the people who have listen to them that John McCain is indeed authentically conservative enough to earn their trust. There's so many misconceptions and outright lies that the shockpundits have been putting forth - it's incredible that some pro-life Republicans have bought into the nonsense that McCain is somehow worse than Rudy or even - Hillary?!!

Though Romney does have his strong points, I think the vast majority of people have come to recognize that Romney isn't as great a presidential candidate as he was talked up to being - at least not at this stage. There are some who would vote for him merely as a vote against mostly false ideas they have about McCain or Huckabee. No we are not going to convince all of them, but we need to let the truth be known. Playing offense is a good strategy at times, but we need to play defense too - because sometimes an olive branch and a compelling defense is what's really needed.

At the NRO symposium on McCain as front-runner, Reagan-alumni Alvin Felzenberg writes:

The time is at hand for both Senator McCain and conservative leaders to come to the realization that they need each other. McCain as the presumptive nominee needs to continue stressing his conservative credentials of decades standing. He also needs to let conservative leaders know that he recognizes that some of them do not look kindly upon his nomination, that he understands their reasons, and that he is willing to work with them.

Unless you are intent on viewing graphic depictions of the advanced stages of Anti-McCain Derangement Syndrome, you'll want to skip Mona Charen and Hugh Hewitt. The rest at the NRO symposium have worthwhile contributions. From Victor Davis Hanson*:

I pray that John McCain can rally the base — since whatever anger conservatives hold toward him should pale in comparison to the specter of 16 years of the Clintons or Barack Obama’s European-style democratic socialism (with John Edwards as a possible attorney general). His acceptance speech seemed designed to do just that by references to tough judges, magnanimity shown his rivals, the evocation of conservatism, and a promise to stick to its principles, and I expect that will continue.

As a long time fan and supporter of John McCain, I expect it as well.

*update: more relevant brilliance form VDH: "Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory"

The Pundicrats vs. McCain cont'd: Ideology vs. Virtue

Here's TPM's Josh Marshall with some clips and commentary



Michael Medved recently named right-wing talk radio the biggest loser in South Carolina's primary -

For more than a month, the leading conservative talkers in the country have broadcast identical messages in an effort to demonize Mike Huckabee and John McCain. If you’ve tuned in at all to Rush, Sean, Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and two dozen others you’ve heard a consistent drum beat of hostility toward Mac and Huck. As always, led by Rush Limbaugh (who because of talent and seniority continues to dominate the medium) the talk radio herd has ridden in precisely the same direction, insisting that McCain and Huckabee deserve no support because they’re not “real conservatives.” A month ago, the angry right launched the slogan that Mike Huckabee is a “pro-life liberal.” More recently, after McCain’s energizing victory in New Hampshire, they trotted out the mantra that the Arizona Senator (with a life-time rating for his Congressional voting record of 83% from the American Conservative Union) is a “pro-war liberal.”

Well, the two alleged “liberals,” McCain and Huckabee just swept a total of 63% of the Republican vote in deeply conservative South Carolina. Meanwhile, the two darlings of talk radio -- Mitt Romney and, to a lesser extent, Fred Thompson—combined for an anemic 31% of the vote.

And in spite of Rush's dire warnings about the death of conservatism, Benjamin and Jenna Story write at the Weekly Standard why John McCain's resurgence is good for conservatism's future:
(h/t Donald Douglas)

SOME OF THE SHARPEST minds of conservative punditry have lately been whetting their knives on the candidacy of John McCain. The trend of these arguments is disturbing, because it indicates conservatism may be drifting far from its roots. The ire against McCain contains elements of two of the greatest fallacies of modern political thought: the notion that ideology can replace virtue as the mainstay of a decent regime, and the cynical assumption that virtue is not real but vanity in disguise.

The main current of opposition to McCain faults him for departures from strict free-market ideology. McCain's decisions about tax cuts, campaign finance, and greenhouse gas caps may be prudent or imprudent, and it is important to debate their practical effects on our economy and on our nation's well-being. Nonetheless, if conservatives succeed in marginalizing anyone who does not toe the doctrinaire line of their free market ideology, they will lose an important--indeed the most central and precious--aspect of their creed: the faith in the virtue of individuals to make a good society for themselves, rather than the faith in an ideology to make a good society for us. . .

Many think that the conservative movement is currently on shaky ground. In a perceived crisis, it is a human temptation is to run to ideologies to save the day. But conservative thought will be impoverished if its advocates close themselves in the "clean and well-lit prison of one idea," as G. K. Chesterton warned. To do so would be to fall prey to the fallacy that theories can govern men. Men must govern men, and men have characters, good or bad, and those characters are decisive for how the country is led. . .

UPDATE: Responding to the Weekly Standard article, at Burke's Corner:

The latter-day Jacobins of the GOP's hard right, the McCain-haters, have forgotten the wisdom of Burke, the father of conservatism. Governing is not about ideology - it is about virtue, prudence, moral judgment. Which is why McCain is the candidate of authentic conservatism.

Confederate Abortionists Against McCain

The Pink Flamingos has been following the attacks by anti-immigrant folks against McCain (& Sen. Lindsey Graham) in South Carolina. It's a fascinating read, that also brings up some larger questions for the GOP:

Why do anti-abortion conservatives endorse an agenda by one of the most ardent supporters of abortion there is? Why do small government conservatives basically demand a creation of 'BigBrother' to monitor anyone who isn't a certain color or racial mix? Why do conservatives who constantly complain about government intervention into private affairs demand government intrude in every business in the country in order to remove all illegal aliens?

Medved on Limbaugh, Hannity vs. McCain, Coburn

Michael Medved asks what is evidence of true conservative leadership_? :

Who gets to define which candidate counts as a “real conservative”?

Should we listen to talk radio titans and sharp-tongued pundettes who’ve never held public office?

Or does it make more sense to listen to idealistic elected officials who toil every day to put conservative principles into practice? . . .

When it comes to evaluating McCain, I don’t expect Republicans to trust me – any more than they should trust my fellow talk hosts and commentators. But they should listen carefully to heroes like Tom Coburn, the Senator from Oklahoma who’s universally esteemed as one of the strongest conservative voices in Washington. Coburn has earned a lifetime rating of 97.8 from the American Conservative Union (McCain himself drew an admirable lifetime number of 83—virtually identical to Fred Thompson’s 86.) And earlier this week the Oklahoman endorsed his Arizona colleague for President.
. . .
The truth is that some of the most outstanding conservatives in recent Senate history have come together with Senator Coburn to campaign for McCain – including Phil Gramm of Texas (co-chair of the national McCain campaign), John Kyl of Arizona, John Thune of South Dakota, Dan Coats of Indiana, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Slade Gorton of Washington, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, and a dozen others.

Several of the most dynamic Republican and conservative governors of our time are working actively in the McCain campaign – including Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Jon Huntsman of Utah, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Frank Keating of Oklahoma, Tom Kean of New Jersey, Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, and more.

In other words, conservatives who know him best attest to McCain’s consistency, his character, and his Reaganite world-view. Those associates, enthusiastically promoting McCain’s candidacy, count for more than strident and angry talkers who know McCain not at all.

Most impressive to me is the way that even Senators who’ve disagreed with McCain can attest to his integrity and effectiveness in their battles.

Senator Coburn, for instance, did not support the comprehensive immigration reform bill so passionately promoted by Senator McCain and by President Bush. Nevertheless, after the push for reform collapsed in the Senate, Coburn wrote an admiring blog on National Review Online about McCain’s role.

“As the American people, elected officials, and the commentators reflect on the heated immigration debate that came to a temporary close in the Senate this week, many will ask, and have asked, why U.S. Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) staked out a position that may in retrospect be seen as devastating to his presidential ambitions. I hope the American people, at least, step back from the obsessive play-by-play pre-season election analysis and reflect on Senator McCain’s actions for what I believe they were: One of the purest examples of political courage seen in Washington in a very, very long time.”

Read the whole thing.

Romney was against the extremists before he sold out to them

Yes, I keep posting about Romney, but let's face it, he's so gosh darn golly interesting - things keep popping up!

The Boston Globe has a reprint of Romney talking in 1994 about why he's the candidate gays should support. Now while I don't totally agree with what he said, I'm a libertarian-leaning big-tent type, so if he still had these positions it wouldn't really be much of a problem for me.

And he said something that I think all Republicans should consider:

"I think that extremists who would force their views on the party and try to shape the party are making a mistake. I welcome people of all views in the party, but I don’t want them to try to change our party from being a large tent, inclusive party, to being one that is exclusive.”

Do you think he ever said anything like that recently, maybe to Hugh Hewitt or Tom Tancredo? Now even Ann Coulter has abandoned Duncan Hunter in favor of Mitt's bright newfound smiling reactionary smear politics.

I believe Mitt Romney has a better side than what he's shown recently in the campaign. But what he's shown is that when it comes down to the prize, he doesn't seem to care what damage he does to others' or his own reputation. In pursuit of the Republican nomination, he's forgotten what it means to be a broadminded individual in order to appeal to the self-annointed gatekeepers - the "True Conservatives" Michael Schuyler writes about here:

True Conservatives are always right. Rush is Right; Sean is right. Anyone who differs is wrong. End-of-story. True Conservatives are also right about everything. It doesn’t matter whether the discussion is about abortion or a fifty cent rise in property taxes, about immigration or the proper positioning of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. . . True Conservatives never compromise. Any compromise is seen as a betrayal of Conservative Truth, therefore compromise is simply impossible. Even talking about compromise is disallowed. And conciliation? Impossible. It is a sign of weakness, of True Conservative betrayal. It cannot be tolerated. It cannot be tolerated at any price.
. . . A True Conservative can’t win.The very things that Sean, Rush and their buddies are accusing McCain for now are all out the window for November. The very things McCain does to infuriate them are the very things that draw moderates, Independents, and right-leaning Democrats to him. His willingness to compromise, his willingness to work with Democrats, his well-known willingness at reconciliation—even to the North Vietnamese who tortured him for five years, are legendary. An extremist will never get anything done in a divided country. John McCain can.

JohnMcCain wins over formerly unfavorable Republicans

Hewitt, Hannity and the rest can do their worst, but Republicans are proving they aren't easily led.

Take a look at this graphic accompanying this New York Times article:
Over the last month, Rudy's numbers have stayed about the same in terms of favorability among Republicans. But McCain's, Huckabee's and Romney's have changed dramatically.

Mike Huckabee has become more familiar. And overwhelmingly, despite all the slings and arrows of Romney, Thomspon and the GOP shock-jock pundit class, people like what they see.

The changes in Mitt's and McCain's favorability show dramatic changes between favorable and unfavorable. Romney's favorables have decreased by one-third, meaning more Republican voters find him unfavorable than favorable. McCain, by contrast, has shrunk his unfavorables by two-thirds - tying there with Huckabee - while his favorables have skyrocketed - he is the only one among the four that a majority of Republican voters are decidedly favorable about.

John McCain has long had much support among independents and Democrats as well, as Pat Hickey notes here in response to the NYT poll.

Writer's Strike Affects South Carolina FOX debates

At least it seems that way - Haven't we heard these questions before?

Haven't we heard so many of these answers before.

The Big News of the Day: Bush believes Palestinian/Israeli peace is close at hand, but gets short shrift from "moderators." (Can you call them "moderators" when they keep egging-on the candidates going against each other?) Rudy and Ron Paul are asked about it, but no one else.
Some discussion of Pakistan.

On the other hand, plenty of the old standards - Iraq, economy, immigration.

On economy, candidates talk like they think they are in Michigan.

Mitt thinks we can bring old jobs back from the dead, McCain wants to retrain workers for the economy of the future.

Thompson shows some spunk, can't get in enough criticisms of Huckabee.

Huckabee says if Reagan were running today, the Club for Growth would run ads against him.

Ron Paul starts out sensible, distances himself from 9-11 deniers, but can't seem for too long to keep himself from saying something Chomsky-esque.

John McCain gives incredible answer on whether Democrats can win on their Iraq position - how long can they campaign against the reality on the ground?

Rudy says Democrats idea of "change" is "change out of your pocket."

Romney references "Three Dimensional Chess," appearantly trying to steal the Trekkie vote from Ron Paul.

Immigration, amnesty, yada yada yada.
McCain ain't gonna deport a wife of an MIA soldier.
Thompson, on the other hand, ain't gonna look at folks individually.
Giuliani ain't gonna send kids out on the street, but he will end illegal immigration.