Am I the only one to see McCain as more dangerous to Clinton (or Obama) than any of the other Republicans? The London Times puts the problem like this:"The way Hillary Clinton has been spinning her victory in Nevada, it was as if she was the underdog against Barack Obama’s formidable political machine. Her advisers are claiming, “We won a huge victory by overcoming institutional hurdles and one of the worst negative ads in recent memory.” Bill Clinton went so far as to call his wife the “insurgent” candidate."There is a lot of preposterous rewriting of history going on. It was certainly an important victory for Mrs Clinton, but she was always the favourite to win in Nevada after locking up the support of key Democrats in the state, including the son of Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and the brother of Cesar Chavez, the Hispanic labour hero, even though Mr Obama won the support of the Culinary Workers’ Union.
After all the hoopla, Clinton is simply back to where she was in the first place as the favourite to win the Democratic nomination – we’re just a lot clearer after a particularly nasty race about how badly she and Bill want to return to the White House. We can now expect them to put the squeeze on African-American voters ahead of South Carolina’s Democratic primary this Saturday and start collecting on all the IOU’s they hold.
The fact that Mr McCain pulled himself back from the brink of disaster into the position of frontrunner without any help from Republican bigwigs means that he is free to be his own man for the rest of the campaign.
It is an enviable position for a person of integrity to be in and it will help Mr McCain to run a strong campaign against Mrs Clinton, if they go on to win their parties’ nomination. Both candidates have shown themselves to be indomitable fighters, in their own way.
Obviously not George Will whose column in yesterday's Washington Post excoriates McCain in a fit of doctinaire rigidity. I raised my eyebrows twice. First was this paragraph:
There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichaean simplicities. That place is in the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream.
Gee, Mr. Will, I think your column expressed the Manichaean thinking of conservatives who have crowed about their moral superiority ever since Mr. Bennett wrote his book about virtues.
Then, too, how does the "McCainian intolerance of disagreement" differ from George W. Bush's intolerance of disagreement? Or Tom Delay's? Or Richard Cheney's? Or just plain GOP intolerance of disagreement?
I cannot see myself voting for Senator McCain but I can respect him. Then, too, as a Democrat, I have no need to cower before Republican/conservative golden calf of groupthink.
Republican groupthink appears a bit cracked this morning. Robert Novak recognizes McCain as their best chance against Clinton and he seems even rational in Rallying to McCain. Let us hope the Republicans continue to worry more about the number of angels who can dance on the pinhead of Republican ideology than what works best for the country.
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