In 2000, John McCain was the belle of the ball, the Republican Obama, the "it" candidate. Times have changed. McCain laid off fifty staffers last week. A few days ago, Ron Paul revealed he had more cash on hand than McCain. Today comes news that he has fired his campaign manager, chief strategist, and the co-author of five of his books.
What happened? McCain championed the illegal-alien amnesty bill with Teddy Kennedy. He firmly positioned himself on the wrong side of the Iraq war issue. He got old. He turns 71 next month, and after five-plus years as a POW and numerous bouts with cancer, it's an old 71. On top of all this, he seems to have gone out of his way to insult the conservative base of the party, even though, if you really, really look at his voting record, he has been more in tune with that base than the other leading candidates.
Among the perceived top-tier of Republican candidates--Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and John McCain--perception is everything. Few volunteers and donors are attracted to these candidates by their stances on the issues. They support these candidates because they think they can win. Did you notice Hillary's pollster saying her victory is "inevitable"? He said this not because it is, but because creating this perception makes it so among people who are swayed more by a winning candidate than the best candidate. This same dynamic is true among Republicans, and it works in reverse for the McCain campaign. Instead of "inevitable" victory, the perception created by the havoc surrounding McCain's campaign is "doom."
The Straight Talk Express has hit an iceberg. Abandon ship!
If Newt doesn't run, I'm staying home.
The "Straight Talk Express" turned into the "Immigration Amnesty Express" and his engineer, Fat Ted Kennedy, ran it and McCain right into a mountain that is an electorate ardently opposed.
Dan,
Great post, and very well put.
You and I have been among many hammering on this point of doing all we can to ensure that the best candidate becomes the front runner, rather than settling for and going along with the predominant practice of picking the candidate in your party that you or the MSM think is "most likely" to win the nomination and general election, a la gambl-ing on a horse race.
Well, the best candidate - by far - on the issues from a constitutionalist perspective is Ron Paul. Without overstating his admittedly very longshot status, may I suggest that he does have a real chance, if enough of us stand up for him now? At this point in their election cycles, Carter, Dukakis, Clinton, and McCain were all polling similarly to what Ron Paul is now. If they could go on to achieve such success in their runs for the White House - back when “viral marketing” through a near-free medium like the Internet wasn’t available - then why can’t Ron Paul? For anyone interested, I explain my reason for this hope in much more detail over at the Borg Blog, in my post, "If Jimmy, Michael, Bill, and John Could Do It, Why Can’t Ron?"
