Over the past few weeks I’ve heard (or read) various prominent conservative commentators as well as average citizens state that if McCain gets the nomination, they’d campaign for Hillary instead (most notably arch-vile Ann Coulter).
Is this some kind of monumental whoosh? I don’t get it. There must be some subtext I’m missing. Maybe someone more politically astute can explain it to me.
Here’s how I see the possible explanations of the “Better Hillary than McCain meme”:
This is just a dramatic flourish to remind folks that McCain is the least conservative candidate, and that the base had better stop waffling if they want a real conservative to be the Republican nominee.
They reason that a McCain presidency would move the party permanently and irretrievably to the left by about an eighth of an inch, while on the other hand a Hillary presidency would move the moderates to the right into the frothy-spittly Newt Gingrich camp, which could be consolidated after they impeach Hillary for god knows what.
They are actually sincere. But I have a really hard time believing this… I don’t think anybody really believes for a second that the hardcore rightwingers are going to cut off their nose of power to spite their face of ideological purity, or to retaliate against McCain for whatever past conflicts they had. With critical SCOTUS appointments at stake, no way are they going to throw away the presidency over petty infighting. Otherwise abortion will never get criminalized and the Armageddon prophecy might not get realized this decade. I’d expect the Democrats to flub their agenda over that kind of internal disorganization, but not Republicans.
I don’t pretend to understand it. I just hope those crazies balance out the crazies on the other side who loudly proclaim that they would vote for McCain over Clinton. They seem as reasonable to me as Ann Coulter.
Why do you find that crazy? I could see easily see McCain attracting some moderate Democrats, much more easily than Hillary attracting the support of even the most moderate Republican.
The only way that someone who would prefer voting for Obama would then vote for McCain over Clinton would be if they were voting based on popular narratives regarding their personalities. If one prefers the policy positions of Obama, it would indeed be crazy to prefer McCain over most any other Democrat.
It’s over-reaction on the part of the establishment pundits. The reasoning (such as it is) is that McCain will certainly destroy the nation with his horrible liberal agenda so it’s better to let Clinton destroy the nation and assume that a “real” Republican will win in 2012 when the US has been reduced to ash-streaked women wailing in sackcloth and starving dogs roaming the streets.
In other words, it’s a fear tactic to make people vote for… well, I don’t know who they’re supposed to vote for now since they hate Huckabee, too.
Heh. As a possible one of Hentor’s crazies, I’ll speak up. McCain and HRC are not really all that different on many policy issues of importance to some, including, from opposite POVs, the Coulters of the world and me. Given that perception (and we have elsewhere argued about that perception’s accuracy or lack thereof) a Neocon would rather have a Democrat as President and use those issues to drive for a Republican Congress next cycle than a Republican putting the same policies in place, and I’d consider if whether or not I want to give them that advantage.
There’s a lot of good reasons for *social * conservatives to believe McCain isn’t one of them. Defense or financial conservatives, no.
Perhaps the thinking among those *social * conservatives is that a Republican president who’d work against those interests would make it so much more difficult for them ever to achieve their agenda in the future that it would better to actually lose this time.
McCain refuses to suck up to the Conservative media machine (even though he actually is a Conservative by most objective standards). So the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy wants to punish him for his lack of deference (as well as warning future Republican candidates of the importance of gaining their endorsement).
Clinton meanwhile is the candidate the VRWC loves to hate. If she gets elected, they’ll have an easy target for their wrath and can spend the next four (or eight) years telling everyone how she’s ruining the country and everyone should have listened to them.
I know I’ve also read speculation that if McCain were to get the GOP nomination and lose, it would be spun as a vindication of the far right’s assertion that rejection of the base will ultimately doom you within the party.
Of course, if McCain were to go against Clinton, I think the only way he could lose is if a lot of party faithfuls not only didn’t show up at the polls, but actually defected. It kinda sounds like “cutting off your nose to spite your face”, but some short-term liberal hijinks may be a small price to pay, in their eyes, if it means regaining control of the Republicans.
Goddamn, that’s enough to get me to vote for McCain. Wait, maybe that’s their secret plan…
Yeah, OK, makes sense …
… but how are they going to say “I told you so” about a Hillary presidency when they’re the ones who supported it (assuming, of course, that they still own up to having pushed Hillary over McCain).
Well considering a lot of it comes from Rush and Skeletor (aka COulter) I think they are just attention ratings whores and think that they can get better attention/ratings if Hillary is President.
McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts that stimulated a sagging economy. He’s also weak on the war against terror. He’s all around not a conservative, regardless of what Duffus says.
That’s pretty close to it. Many folks mistakenly use the words “conservative” and “Republican” like they’re synonyms. McCain is proof that this isn’t the case.
You have been told repeatedly that this simply isn’t true, yet you persist in perpetuating this notion. There are people from both parties, as well as independents, who prefer Obama for a wide variety of reasons, some in spite of not agreeing with all of his policies. And yet, if it came down to a choice between only Clinton and McCain, there are things about McCain that they prefer to Hillary. There is nothing inherently difficult to understand about that, so why you don’t get it is a mystery to me.
I think some RWs are still seething over the McCain Amendment banning torture. How dare a Pub senator defy a Pub POTUS in time of war! Seems like treason to them.
Can we stop using ‘Neocon’ as the generic term for ‘republican’?
It’s not the neocons that are mad at McCain - it’s the evangelicals and other paleo-cons who are actually hostile to the neocons.
I don’t get the McCain derangement myself. The guy’s got an extremely conservative record - unwavering on the war, pro-life, etc. I think it really comes down to immigration. There’s a huge swath of the Republican south who are terrified of immigration, and McCain is on the other side. They make noises that his other liberal ideas are also scaring them, but in fact McCain was a darling of the right until he came out with his immigration plan.
As for why Hillary over McCain - I think the other posters have got it right - if you’re going to have have someone in the White House who’s going to give amnesty to illegal aliens, you’d rather it be a Democrat so you can rally Republicans and oppose it.
Frankly, the Republicans get what they deserve. Especially the social conservatives. They let George Bush govern as a big-government liberal because he was ‘one of them’. They no longer care about small government - all they want is to have the borders closed and their taxes lowered. Oh, and lots of God. They’ll give a pass on anything else. Screw 'em.
How so?