McCain Bringing Voters Back to GOP
Written by Sam on April 17th, 2008WASHINGTON (AP) — Growing numbers of people like what they see in John McCain, vaulting him into a tie with the two Democratic presidential contenders just a few months after Republicans faced a steep disadvantage.The Arizona senator has made a race of the White House contest by attracting disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Thursday. About two-thirds of them have grown disenchanted with President Bush despite voting for him in 2004, including many GOP-leaning independents, while the remaining third usually support Democrats but like McCain anyway.
I said back around Super Tuesday that this would be one big advantage by having McCain as our nominee. He wasn’t my first choice for a number of reasons, but I said he would bring back a lot of the disgruntled Reagan coalition that Bush has pissed off over the past seven years. Bush has given conservatism a bad reputation and it may take someone moderate like McCain to take off the edginess that many Republican leaning voters are currently feeling.
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People may be coming back now, but six months into a McCain presidency they will realize he is not that different from Bush when it comes to his views on government policy.
As a conservative who believes in limited government and personal liberty I have little faith that a McCain presidency would be a positive for this nation.
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The thing to understand about McCain is that his lurch to the left from 2001-2003 was more about him wanting to get back at Bush then it was about his actual principles.
At heart, McCain is very much a Goldwater conservative, and better by far on fiscal issues then Bush is.
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John is right. The thing we might want to worry about with McCain is his revenge streak. He will be a better fiscal conservative than Bush, which is not saying much, but a breath of fresh air considering the compassionate conservative nonsense we saw for the last 8 years.
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I agree with the assessment that McCain will marginally be a better fiscal conservative than Bush. I don’t think McCain really prescribes to the whole “compassionate conservatism” or “heroic conservatism” stuff. His approach is a lot more minimalistic I believe. For example in his economic speech he said how he would have a moratorium on all new non-military spending in his first year. He also wants to get rid of ethanol and agriculture subsidies which I think will be great. When it comes to actually *doing* that……I have more faith in him than Bush due to McCain’ stubborness and toughness.