by Ralf Seiffe
Florida votes today and the winner of the Republican contest will take all the available delegates. With Rudy Giuliani’s likely swoon, Florida has become a contest that will likely propel the winner to the party’s nomination this summer. The conventionally wise tell us John McCain is the most “electable” candidate and the political class tells us he’s the one to support. If he wins, however, he will sunder the Republican Party, possibly forever, because conservatives will not support him. The problem goes far beyond the foolish legislation he has sponsored; it is a much more fundamental problem.
Note that Senator McCain earns a mid-80’s rating by the American Conservative Union yet is reviled by the folks who consider themselves “true conservatives.” The phenomenon is probably explained by the fact that the Senator is the grandson of two admirals and his own formative years were spent in the Navy or as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton. It is through this prism that the Senator probably views most things and that gives him a proclivity to vote conservatively.
Indeed, John McCain rises to the public stage on the strength of his exemplary military record. There is some comfort in the notion that a President McCain would be at ease with the military--and vice versa--in the time of rising Islamo-fascism. The Senator’s military record allows voters to project his heroism to a prospective presidency but, what if we used the military standard to judge the Arizona Senator’s political career?
It seems to me that the military’s job consists of four basic functions: identification of the enemy; assessment of his intent; understanding the assets he has available and the creation of a plan to deal with any eventuality.
In our political sphere, conservatives believe there is a right and wrong. Extending the analogy, we believe that the American Left’s vision is so wrong that those who advocate it must be considered the “enemy.” Senator McCain has spent much of his career trying to make the Left’s bad ideas respectable for his fellow Republicans with initiatives like McCain-Feingold or McCain-Kennedy or McCain-Lieberman. He does not share the conservative’s view that there must be an alternative to the Left, not a series of compromises. His willing participation and support of the enemies of liberty does not make him a bad guy. Instead, it illustrates that the Senator does not understand the true nature of the Left, a much more profound problem for conservatives. For failing to identify the enemy, the Senator is ineligible for further promotion.
Senator McCain may fail to identify the enemy because he does not understand the Left’s intent. There is no mystery that the Left’s long-term objective is to control political thought in federal elections--Common Cause and other organizations similarly hostile to the First Amendment have been working to socialize elections for more than a generation. In that time they have been very successful in restricting Americans’ ability to express themselves by contributing to political candidates. One can only imagine their euphoria when McCain went them one better and attacked free speech, directly. Campaign finance restrictions may be the Senator’s penance for the Keating Scandal but his personal expiation served the intent of the Left in a way that they could not have achieved without cover from the Republicans. Failing to understand this signals conservatives that a McCain presidency may be just what the Left intends.
The thoughtlessness of McCain-Feingold also shows the Senator’s misapprehension of the assets available to the Left. The Left acts collectively and has a long-term plan to achieve their political goals. With McCain-Feingold’s changes to the regulatory environment, the Left has approached “Soros, Inc.” with the message that the legal climate had so changed in their favor that they can capture control of American sentiment. They’ve made their case and have raised $500 million in pledges to create an institutional assault on American liberty generally and Republicans, specifically. The result is Media Matters and other Left-wing troublemakers. Failing to understand how the equilibrium of the Left and the Right’s assets used to work and why campaign finance “reform” provides huge advantages to the other side again disqualifies the Senator on the military scale.
The fourth obligation of a leader--whether in the military or not--is to have an informed and passionately held vision for the future. In a political situation, it is one’s core beliefs that generate policy and provide the fortitude to resist the predations of the Left. I cannot identify any vision from Senator McCain that presents a positive view of the future and an alternative to the left, rather than a compromise with them. It is this lack of a firmly held vision that actually compels compromise with the Left because there is no alternative, contrary plan with which to do battle. Conservatives recognize this as the most powerful disqualifier and the single most important reason McCain fails to make the grade in this analysis.
For these reasons, I conclude that Senator McCain fails this “military test” and is fundamentally unsuited to be president. His very nature predicts more disasters like McCain-Democrat and conservatives inately recognize this. Far from being the most electable, he cannot be elected at all. He will not motivate the conservatives any Republican will need to win in 8 election and Obama will claim the moderates. If he becomes the standard-bearer and moves the party to the left, conservatives may begin to think there's no place in the party for them.
But what if lightening strikes and the Democrat is abducted by UFOs or is indicted after their nomination? A President McCain may position himself as an adherent “bipartisanship” but this analysis shows he’s more likely to function as a ratchet towards tyranny and maybe not know it. In fact, the Left may do better with McCain as president than it would with Hillary or Obama. That’s because Republicans in Congress would find it exceedingly difficult to cross a Republican president than a Democrat.
In any event, McCain does present this dilemma for Republicans: is it better to stay home on November 4th or vote for Senator McCain rather than the Democrat? I don’t know.
See the January 25th post by the IR Editor connecting McCain with Soro's "shadowy" organizations for more. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/01/john-mccain-geo.html
