Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 5:36:31 PM
From Michelle Malkin about McCain
McCain to conservatives: You’re fools!
Despite his longtime alienation of the Right on countless issues, John
McCain secured a solid win in a closed Florida Republican primary and
is assuming the air of inevitability.
Many pundits have been urging John McCain to reach out to conservatives
(how novel that would be). In response, he made a small point tonight
in his victory speech of emphasizing judges–an olive branch, apparently, in the aftermath of the Alito/Fund kerfuffle.
Well. We hear what he says now. But we know what he has done for years:
Insult the base, trash the base, and pay lip service to the base only when it suits his needs.
The declaration that he is the “conservative leader who can unite the party”
is yet another smack in the face to those who have watched him reach
out and slap conservatives time and again–and then run to the warm,
gooey embrace of the liberal media. Is it too much to ask to nominate a
Republican candidate who is not as openly and historically hostile to
the Republican base as CNN and (McCain’s endorsers at) the New York
Times are?
McCain’s open-borders supporters will declare that immigration is no
longer a factor in this campaign. They so wish it to be so. (Right on
cue, here’s Kennedy-fawning NYT columnist David Brooks dismissing immigration sniffily as “not a good issue for Republicans.”)
But the fact is that McCain was driven to play up his border security promises (however hollowattrition through enforcement. they may be) and to start talking up
That’s a small victory. But questions like this remain: How can McCain honestly reach out to conservatives when he defends his extremist campaign Hispanic outreach director who doesn’t believe in borders and when he boasts a national campaign finance chair and soft-money mogul
who poured millions of dollars into the fight against English-language
instruction in California, Planned Parenthood, and radical
environmental fear-mongering groups?
We know that Juan Hernandez is McCain’s Hispanic outreach director.
Who is McCain’s conservative outreach director?
Hillary Clinton likes to say that whatever differences she and her
Democrat opponents may have, “they pale in comparison” with the
differences she and her Dem rivals have with the Republicans.
Can the Republican front-runner say that the differences between him
and his GOP opponents pale in comparison with the differences between
him and the Democrats?
The McCain=Hillary ad from the grass-roots conservative group Citizens United provides the disturbing answer.
Conservatives have core concerns about McCain’s trustworthiness,
adherence to conservative ideology, and commitment to sovereignty that
can’t easily be brushed off with glib answers about being the “straight
talk” candidate. The problem is that the media chuckleheads who get to
question the GOP candidates are as hostile and out of touch with the
conservative base as McCain is. This monumental deficiency has been
exposed repeatedly during the election-year “debates.”
Wouldn’t it be helpful to have at least one bona fide conservative
questioner on the CNN debate panel tomorrow night when the GOP
candidates meet at the Reagan Library? They made room for minority
journalists when they broadcast minority interest group-sponsored
debates. They made room for local journalists when they broadcast the
Iowa caucus and NH primary debates. Why not someone at the GOP debate
who actually knows and cares about what conservatives care about?
Too much to ask, apparently.