McCain Meltdown

NRO’s Campaign Spot has details on the departure of 5 high-level staffers from the John McCain campaign. Combined with the paltry fundraising over the last quarter, it doesn’t seem like McCain will be able to keep going for much longer.

It’s a shame in many ways. I cannot tolerate McCain’s position on campaign finance reform as I find it to be an unconstitutional abridgment of freedom of speech. I dislike his position on immigration. I don’t believe his position on torture is appropriate, although I respect his moral stance on the issue.

However, when it comes to fiscal discipline and the global war on terror, McCain has been one of the most stalwart and principled leaders. He has never backed down from these fights, and even now that the war is incredibly unpopular, McCain won’t change his tune for the sake of political expediency. Senator McCain has more backbone than anyone in the Senate, and at the end of the day when it comes to the two most crucial issues for the future of the Republic, McCain is on the right side.

McCain may not be Presidential material, but he is a leader of principle and strength, and even when he’s on the wrong side of an issue, it’s because he believes in that position. We need more like Senator McCain, even if not in the Oval Office.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty thinks that McCain won’t bow out yet, which seems right. The big question is how long McCain can go without picking up more momentum — and the field just doesn’t have much room for him at this point. There doesn’t seem to be a way for McCain to truly turn things around, absent a major fallout with one of the other candidates. That certainly is possible, but can McCain bank on it?

4 thoughts on “McCain Meltdown

  1. Unless all of the other three top-tier Republicans falter between now and Christmas, provided he even makes it that long, McCain is finished. The irony is that even with his seemingly radioactive position on staying the course in Iraq, McCain would be an unbeatable candidate in the general election in a way that Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney wouldn’t be. His tough but straight-shooting demeanor, combined with his personal life story and an overarching weakness in the Democratic field, would be electoral gold with independent voters. If the Republicans reject John McCain, they’re squandering certain victory in 2008.

  2. “If the Republicans reject John McCain, they’re squandering certain victory in 2008.”

    That’s the always laughable argument every fawning McCain liberal makes, from people who never vote Republican, and so of course would never vote for John McCain themselves.

    What they fail to realize is for nearly two decades, McCain has performed as a media whore willing to bash core GOP principles for the entertainment of the liberal effete elite. He’s their anti-Reagan, anti-First Amendment, liberal-annointed, media-created rogue “conservative” celebrity, and John McCain is all too happy to play the part.

    Meanwhile, he campaigned against tax cuts in 2000 and voted against them in 2001 and 2003. His apparent support for the war is also a charade, as his underlying positions with regard to interrogations and enemy combatants, (as well as immigration reform for that matter) are all more aligned with the Democratic leadership of Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy than they are with conservatives and the Republican Party. Further, given his compelling history, McCain has done very little to inform and educate the American people by explaining what’s at risk in the larger Middle East and beyond from a U.S. failure in Iraq, choosing instead the kabuki theater and fancy wordplay of “support our troops” that keeps him booked week after week on the Sunday morning talkshows that so inform (tragically) the liberal elite.

    For these reasons, John McCain is the true Manchurian candidate. It is why he will never receive the GOP nomination, and rightly so.

  3. Eracus, I’m hardly a “fawning McCain liberal”. Given that McCain is a nanny-stater on top of a straight-down-the-line war-loving, labor-hating conservative wishing to inflate the domestic cheap labor pool vis a vis lawless immigration, I have less in common with this man than I do with Fred Thompson. But the point is that issues don’t matter in Presidential elections. It’s a popularity contest. And I’d put money on McCain winning that contest against anyone in the Democratic field.

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