A message to conservative bloggers
Written by Alex on February 6th, 2008Disclaimer: I was a paid employee with Friends of Fred Thompson
In the last week, after Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani fell in the early primaries, the conservative blogosphere has been in an uproar over John McCain as the probable GOP presidential nominee. Conservatives have been pushed to unite behind a candidate in order to defeat him. Claims that conservatives will “stay home” for the general election with McCain as the nominee have been rampant.
Now, I have serious misgivings about him as the Republican nominee, as do many conservatives. But we could do far worse. And more to the point, its too little, too late. History will record that in this primary election conservatives failed to rally around the candidate that best represented their values, in favor of others who were flashier or more willing to play the media game that our nominating process has become.
Senator Fred Thompson is not perfect, but he ran the campaign that conservatives claimed they wanted. A campaign based around conservative core principles, limited government, returning our party to the ideals of 1994. And for whatever reason, voters rejected it.
And now I hear griping from various corners of the blogosphere about John McCain as our probable nominee. Complaints that our party will be demoralized with him at the helm, that conservatives will stay home, that we will continue to stray further from our principles.
They may be right, and they may be wrong. But more to the point: a lot of those doing the griping were the same people who spent the last year playing armchair quarterback on presidential campaign strategy, particularly with regards to the Thompson campaign. Our campaign had many flaws to be sure, but its loss of momentum and eventual demise was certainly aided by the constant harping on its management and strategy by right-of-center bloggers.
For a normal campaign, this might not have had a major impact. But for the Fred Thompson campaign, which was jump started largely by conservative bloggers’ early praise of his potential candidacy, it did serious damage. His campaign was launched with the unspoken promise that conservative bloggers would rally around it, and instead they began tearing him apart on the web from the moment he announced.
Conservatives wonder why our side of the blogosphere has so little success influencing elections when compared to the massive fundraising and organizational power of the lefty-netroots. The reason is this. Their side is full of activists, ours full of pundits. We had an opportunity to use our influence to push a great conservative candidate toward the nomination. And we blew it.
So for everyone complaining about McCain as the nominee, go back and check your blog archives and see how many posts you wrote about how the Thompson campaign was failing to live up to expectations, or how its fundraising numbers were too low or its media strategy unsound. And hopefully you’ll learn a lesson for the next time around.
With Senator Fred Thompson out of the presidential race, I prefer John McCain among the remaining Republican candidates. While I think he’s wrong on a whole host of issues, Senator McCain’s leadership on the Iraq war has been the type of steadfast courage that this country needs in a president. Also, from having worked against each of the Republican presidential campaigns, McCain’s has been the most ethical among them.
However, when I filled out my absentee ballot earlier this week, I voted for Fred and all his delegates. I chose my candidate, and I worked my heart out for him. And in November, if McCain is the nominee I’ll vote for him. But when I do I’ll be more than a bit sad thinking about what might have been. And hopefully, we’ll all have learned from our mistake when it next comes time to choose a President.
6
PM
“Their side is full of activists, ours full of pundits. We had an opportunity to use our influence to push a great conservative candidate toward the nomination. And we blew it.”
Alex makes this great point, and I have been telling people this for a while, including Sam (contributor here). The left netroots are truly amazing at bringing out money, volunteers, phone calls, etc through their outlets. I read DKos every day, and am amazed at the intensity of those people and the effective execution of their activism. They have people in maine calling into state offices in oregon to raise hell. Thats awesome! Click on over to RedState and you see nothing but pontification about theory. Don’t get me wrong, I love Redstate and theory, but that is not activism. It doesn’t achieve much in the way of changing and/or influencing our elected leaders. I think this is something the conservative blogosphere needs to address, because we are not reaping all that we can from the online community.
6
PM
I was surprised that FDT did not publicly endorse McCain when he dropped out.
I guessed that maybe he did it out of courtesy to some (or because of “pressure” by some) of the people who backed him . . . However, I would have thought that FDT would have too much principle and care too much about this country (and really dislike somebody like Romney) not to endorse McCain.
Maybe he was tired from all the media, and just wanted to get away.
Maybe he thought that he might be a VP candidate w/ McCain, and did not want it be viewed as some kind of reward for his support.
Alex, Do you happen to know (or have any theories) about this?
6
PM
I honestly don’t know the answer to that. Fred and McCain are good friends, but there are some pretty major ideological differences there.
6
PM
Interesting words from Newt Gingrich:
Rumors that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was endorsing Sen. John McCain are untrue. In an interview late this morning, Gingrich told me, “I am neutral on the presidential nomination. I will support the Republican nominee.”
Gingrich added, “My position is that Republicans ought to look at the three candidates that are still aggressively in the race and recognize that any of the three would be better than Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama. I think that got translated into my endorsing one of [the Republicans] since some leaders of the conservative movement have been…vigorous about one of the candidates not being acceptable.”
Sen. McCain is not Gingrich’s favorite, though McCain would be able to leap over the low bar of being better for America than Clinton or Obama. Gingrich said, “I clearly have disagreements, particularly with Sen. McCain on key issues such as amnesty for illegal immigrants or tax cuts or what I thought was a censorship law that was unconstitutional, McCain-Feingold. But if I had to look at the record of Sen. McCain over his career, compared to the record of Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton, he is vastly better for America’s future than either of those two candidates.”
Two of the three leading candidates — McCain and Romney — are scheduled to address the Conservative Political Action Conference later this week in Washington. I asked Gingrich what they should say to the CPAC audience.
He said, “I think they should outline where they would go…[and say] that the conservative movement should get over this White House fixation. The conservative movement needs to be what it is and stand for what it believes in. And when a Republican senator, or congressman or president is on the right side we should support him and when he’s wrong we should say so publicly.”
Gingrich said, “We need to focus on defining the principles of conservatism and measuring honestly whether somebody in fact is taking a position that is conservative or not. And I don’t think we did George W. Bush any favors by not aggressively pointing out those occasions where he was failing to be effective from the standpoint of conservatism.”
He added, “Just because someone becomes your nominee doesn’t mean they become perfect.”
6
PM
I agree with you Alex.
6
PM
Well played and well stated!
6
PM
Well put to say the least Alex.
7
AM
We could do “far worse” than McCain, you say?
Do explain, please.
7
AM
He’s not Rudy Giuliani, who is radically left on abortion and used to give speeches about restoring the Rockefeller wing of the GOP.
7
AM
Alan, how about Arlen Specter, or Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Chris Shays, Christie Todd-Whitman, and all the other RINOs far to the left of John McCain.
7
AM
Lincoln Chafee? Oh yeah, he’s one of TWO Republican Senators to vote against the tax cuts.
The other one? John McCain.
7
AM
ACU Lifetime Ratings:
Arlen Specter - 44.7
Olympia Snowe - 49.9
Susan Collins - 53.9
Lincoln Chafee - 34.7
John McCain - 82.3
That’s quite an astounding difference to me, but yeah, we should just stick behind Mitt Romney because after all he says he’s conservative even though his entire past record is anything but. But hey, Romney gets a pass just because he says so. Amazing how easily some are manipulated by words and how soon they forget the past.
7
PM
I’m not manipulated by words, Sam. I didn’t vote for Mitt and I don’t trust his conversion. We have a liberal Republican running trying to convince us to ignore his actions of the last 8 years, and we have a former moderate/liberal Governor of Massachusetts trying to convince us that he has completely changed his outlook on political philosophy.
Bottom line, both candidates suck. I’m just pointing out that McCain isn’t a reliable candidate and has the record to prove it. What’s more important than his lifetime ACU rating is his ratings of the past few years, which have been much worse than his overall lifetime rating.
All of McCain’s major accomplishments as of late have been with Democrats. Voting against tax cuts - along with all the Dems and a major RINO (Chafee) and spouting out liberal class warfare rhetoric, McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Edwards, calling drug companies “evil,” saying that some people on Wall Street need to be “punished,” calling for terrorists to be moved from Guantanamo to the United States giving them habeus corpus, against drilling in ANWR, McCain-Lieberman, etc, etc, etc. I feel like a broken record every time I have to repeat this litany of examples of how McCain is not a reliable conservative every time someone tries to convince me that he is.
7
PM
Langley, I wasn’t referring to you specifically about the word manipulation; it was directed towards some of those who have been commenting here as well as many in the conservative realm in general.
I agree that McCain is a crappy nominee for conservatives. How many times in the past few years have I written scathing posts about McCain ripping him to shreds over some of those very things you just listed?
But, I happen to agree with Alex. Of the three left, I’ll go with McCain because at least I know up front where he’ll help us and where he won’t and he can hold the White House for us. Romney and the huckster will be obliterated. Conservatives in Congress as well as activists in the public all across the country have been able to fend off some of Bush’s stupidity over the last 7 years. We can push back on McCain too when he is wrong. At least sometimes he’ll be right, though. Clinton and Obama never will.
7
PM
How do you expect conservatives in Congress to push back when the Dems still have a majority hold (likely to get bigger in the Senate) over the chambers?
In fact, look at it this way: Republicans in Congress and President Bush didn’t bat an eye at overspending the hell out of our money. Bush didn’t turn into a fiscal hawk (well sort of) until the Democrats had control of Congress.
So the Democrats have Congress, and a Democrat is in the White House - Republicans in Congress are going to fight hard against their proposals and in a place like the Senate, could actually stop them in some circumstances.
Now look at it the other way - Democrats have Congress, and McCain is in the White House. Same liberal legislation gets brought up, a lot of which McCain will be more than happy to entertain in the name of the “bipartisanship” - besides a small group of warriors in each chamber, will the same incentive be there for the Republicans, in the minority and with a Republican President, to fight back hard?
I hadn’t thought about it this way until you brought it up - but upon further inspection, I think that you may find that the scenario you paint could produce quite different results than you propose.