By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
March 1, 2000
A month ago John McCain scored a surprising 19 point win over George W. Bush in New Hampshire and the media gurus filled the airwaves with predictions of McCain capturing the Republican nomination with his "Straight Talk" and his "hero" status.
However, last night the once supposedly unbeatable McCain juggernaut appeared to have had a flat tire. Fox news announced in the early hours of the morning that all three primaries yesterday were won by George W. Bush. In Virginia an election that was supposed to be very close turned out to have a double digit spread.
What happened? Actually, what seems to have happened is that McCain’s "straight talk" has sunk to ad hominem attacks. His tendency to do that, incidentally, is why he had almost no support among his fellow senators. In his efforts to get public support for the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance bill, he has publicly charged several of the senators with doing what history indicates HE did as part of the Keating Five back in the 1980s. Keating had contributed $112,000 to his campaign and when asked by Keating to delay action planned by Federal Bank Examiners against Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan, McCain tried to do so - as the only Republican among the Keating Five Senators.
McCain has been claiming recently that only he could win against Democrat Al Gore. Actually, it appears from the votes that one of the phenomenon that is not being noticed is the consistent low turn-out of Democrats in the elections.
After the New Hampshire election I reported: "Of the total number of votes, 370,060 cast, 228,717 were cast for one of the five Republican candidates and 141,343 were cast for one of the two Democrats. Put another way, of the people who voted in the New Hampshire Primary, 62% of them voted Republican and 38% voted Democrat.
"This compares with the 1996 Presidential election in which 490,140 votes were cast with 40% going to Republican Bob Dole in the Presidential election, 50% going to Bill Clinton and 10% going to Ross Perot."
Yesterday in Washington, 752,467 voters went to the polls. Of that number, 473,489 or 63% of them of them, voted for one of the Republican candidates. The remaining 278,978 or 37% voted for one of the two Democrats, Al Gore or Bill Bradley.
Where are all the Democrats in this election? We know about 20% of them in Michigan voted for John McCain, after he appealed to them and a number of black ministers urged them, from the pulpit, to vote for John McCain in the primary, to get him nominated, and then return to vote for Al Gore in the fall. In the Washington State Election, 40% of the unaligned voters voted for McCain, while 23% of the unaligned voters voted for George W. Bush.
The paucity of Democrat votes has been consistent in all states that have held their primaries to date - beginning with the Iowa Primary, the Delaware, New Hampshire and other primaries. Are Democrats disgruntled with the candidates of their own party? Increasingly I suspect that many of them are. In Virginia, George W. Bush received 53% of the vote to John McCain’s 42.8%.
In New Hampshire it appeared that many Independents and Democrats who voted Republican did so with the idea of choosing the lest conservative candidate among them. Probably not all of those Democrats and Independents would vote Democrat in the event the race was between Gore and Bush In fact, many Democrats seem to be increasingly willing to vote for George W. Bush. Others might not vote for either candidate. The rest would probably vote for one of the Democrats.
The McCain supporters have become so determined to get Democrat and Independent votes that they appear to have forgotten that the last two presidential elections proved that when Republicans are disgruntled and stay home on election day, Democrats win. It is more important for Republicans to get the Republican vote out on election day than to choose a candidate that is a carbon copy of the Democrat candidate.
In New Hampshire almost 62% of the voters in the Primary, of all persuasions, voted Republican. In Washington State yesterday 63% of the voters voted Republican. In the Iowa Caucuses, Delaware and South Carolina primaries the ratio of Democrat to Republican voters has consistently indicated that far fewer Democrats than Republicans are coming to the polls this year.
John McCain’s tactics in the last couple of weeks have increasingly alarmed people. What he has said was "straight talk" is increasingly coming across as an effort to destroy the Republican party with talk that sounds more like an attack than merely "straight." He actually started his contentious style in Iowa, where he received only 5% of the vote after attacking the Iowa farmers for benefiting from sale of the corn they grow to make Ethanol.
On Monday he attacked three of Virginia’s favorite sons and one of its colleges by accusing George W. Bush of being a "Pat Robertson Republican" who "panders to religious extremists." In a statement that was remarkable for contradictions he said, "The political tactics of division and slander are not our values." In the same breath he launched a bitter attack on Jerry Falwell and other Christian Conservatives who, he claims "are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party on in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country." This was hardly intended to bring people together. His campaign called Catholic households in Virginia and Michigan to say they should not vote for Bush because he "showed" he was "anti-Catholic" for speaking to the 6,000 students at Bob Jones University.
If the new criteria of political correctness now has concluded that going to an institution means you subscribe to all its views, folks who go to prisons to preach to the inmates are in real trouble.
Last night, before the polls had closed, he even managed to have a confrontation with Mike Reagan, who said, in explaining what happened to Bill O’Reilley at Fox News, "If anyone has tried to go down the middle with these two candidates, George W. Bush and John McCain it certainly has been me. In fact many of my listeners have accused me of being a McCain backer because I have tried to neutralize some of the lies so people can make up their own minds.
"I put him on the air and I wanted to talk to him about the fact that, as President of the United States, he would be appointing judges. He started talking about Warren Rudman and the attacks from Pat Robertson, the bigotry that’s going on. I wanted to talk about judges - and he kept saying, ‘let me finish, let me finish, let me finish."
"So then I said ‘Let’s talk about education,’ and he said, ‘Before we talk about education don’t you really want to talk about Pat Robertson and the bigotry and the hatefulness ?"
"I said, ‘No, I really don’t want to talk about that at all.’ He said, ‘You don’t want to talk about that?’ I have a rule on my show that even if my guests aren’t upholding it, I uphold the 11th commandment of Ronald Reagan, ‘Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.’ Then his cell phone started to go South and I just said, ‘Good-buy!’ I didn’t want to talk to him any more.
"He came across hateful and just a man. I could not vote for him in California. Maybe I caught him on a bad night because he lost 56 delegates in Virginia but you know when you are president of the United States, there are a lot of bad nights. Who’s he going to take it out on if indeed you happen to disagree with him on any issue that is out there?
…"I don’t think he wants to talk about issues. I think he wants to talk about Pat Robertson. I’ve known Ronald Reagan for a lot of years and the reality of it is this man claims to be Ronald Reaganesque. Ronald Reagan never called anyone a bigot. He never lowered himself to this level in any campaign. He was always above board, never going below the radar screen."
Asked if McCain had called people names on his program, Reagan responded, "Yes! The word bigot came up on more than one occasion. …There’s a lot of pressure being president of the United States and if you treat people in this way you are never going to get legislation passed or get foreign policy taken care of."
The primary in California, which is a winner take all state, is a week away there are 162 delegates at stake. One does wonder if McCain treats talk show hosts so arrogantly just what he might do to a country that didn’t do what he wanted them to do if he were president.
I continue to be amazed at how willing the American people are to believe what they are told. McCain announced he would not have a negative campaign yet he has not only managed in a few short weeks to create real hostility within the Republican party, he appears also to be trying to start a Jihad among the Christian right. Yesterday several members of Congress, led by Sen. Torrecelli of New Jersey, introduced a resolution aimed at Bob Jones University which appears to be designed to get them to stop what the group and McCain have labeled dangerous bigotry - i.e. not allowing interracial dating and not labeling Catholics and Mormons members of "dangerous cults."
I can hardly wait to read it. How can the Congress legislate any university’s religious beliefs without violating the First Amendment as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court?
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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