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THE OBSERVATORY GOP Runaway Train February 3, 2000 |
| As George W. Bush found out, sometimes you hit a bump in the road on
the way to your coronation ... and sometimes you fall flat on your face over it. This article was originally posted to the Democratic Forum on Compuserve, as part of my "Rick Report" continuing series. |
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The Rick Report ® is back, and
starting our insightful, inerrant coverage of Campaign 2000 ... Our theme, of course, is the New Hampshire results and their consequences. And since this is the Democratic forum, I suppose we should start with the Democrats. That part is easy. Nothing happened in New Hampshire on the Democratic side, and it had no consequences. If you jumped to an alternate time track where there was no New Hampshire primary -- just Iowa, and then straight to Super Tuesday on March 7 -- the Dem race would be exactly the same. But, you say (if you're a Bradley supporter), he finished close. So what? Gore has a commanding lead nationally. Bradley needed major mo to break through, and he got diddly. He'll be lucky to win one or two states, and probably no big ones. But, you say (if you're a Gore supporter), Bradley got way personal, trotting out GOP attack lines about "integrity." Again, so what? Like the GOP needed Bill Bradley to teach them hit lines? GOP ads in the fall are going to look like a travelogue of China, no matter what. Anyway, it didn't work; it stopped Bradley's free fall but didn't save his aspect. With that out of the way we can turn to the Republicans, where enough happened for three primaries. That "bump in the road" was a McCain 18-wheeler, and it drove right over GW's pickup truck. McCain went into New Hampshire needing mo even more than Bradley did (Bradley at least has money). The difference is that McCain did get mo -- and then some. A week ago, McCain trailed Bush in North Carolina by some 20 points. (A couple of months ago it was closer to 40.) Two new polls came out today. One showed McCain within a point of Bush in NC; the other showed him five points ahead. That hissing sound you hear in Washington is GOP bigwigs, strategists, and fat cats sucking gut. They all bought into GW Bush big time, and for an almost perfectly circular reason. He was high in the polls, and that brought him favorable attention that kept him high in the polls. Oh yes, and kept the cash rolling in, too. Circular logic, but last year that was enough. For almost all of 1999 he led Al Gore by double digits, an average of some 15 points. A poll last week had him leading by three points; the buzz is that next week's polls may show Gore pulling ahead. When circular reasoning collapses, it can collapse all at once. The narrowing general-election polls had already made Republicans nervous. Then McCain shattered GW's winner image; Bill Safire said a Bush nomination is now both exorable and evitable. The conventional wisdom has been that McCain might win NH, but South Carolina would be GW's "firewall." Now, as some pundit said, it is his lifeline. If McCain lands another rabbit punch there, Bush could collapse, with no time to recover by Super Tuesday. It is way too late to make a better candidate of him by March. For the GOP establishment, McCain is a nightmare. He may have a solidly conservative voting record, but he offends the establishment and loves doing it. He's even campaigned against "huge tax cuts for the rich" -- not exactly GOP orthodoxy. Sinking with GW or giving into McCain: neither is a welcome prospect for the GOP bigwigs. For now, they're desperately trying to prop GW up. In South Carolina they may manage to do it. Their only hope is to go hard right and hard negative. Both will hurt GW in the general, but he can no longer afford the luxury of being a "compassionate" conservative. But truth to be told, I don't especially care about the GOP establishment's problems -- except so far as they affect the Democrats. Most Dems I know were rooting for McCain in New Hampshire, hoping he would rough up GW a bit. He did ... a bit too much. Because most Dems I know also think McCain would be a much tougher opponent in the general election. John McCain is something of a Reagan for the John Tesh era. He has a great political persona: the cheerful, straight-talking war hero. What other candidate would say, in a debate, "That is a very good question that I would very much like to duck." He is called the candidate of substance, though he's actually offered very little. He says he will tell voters what they don't want to hear, though in fact he tells them everything they do want to hear. He joshes and jives the media, and they love him for it. McCain even makes blatant hypocrisy sound good. He says that abortion should be outlawed -- unless, apparently, his daughter needs one. Yet somehow it sounds not cynical but human; when it's a choice between ideology and family he goes with family. Whether McCain's authenticity act would last till fall we don't know. Sometimes pheenoms go as quickly as they come; remember Perot in '92? But on the whole, strategic-minded Democrats are now in the odd position of hoping that George W. Bush wins in South Carolina -- so he can stagger on to the nomination and be finished off by Al Gore this fall. -- Rick Robinson
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