White House ‘08: McCain has to stick with Palin
September 29, 2008 by chrisgraham
Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
I wrote a piece yesterday about the growing sentiment among conservatives that it might be best for John McCain’s sinking campaign if Sarah Palin would volunteer to step aside as the GOP vice-presidential nominee in favor of another more seasoned candidate.
Here’s what I think - that would be the worst move in a presidential campaign since George McGovern dumped Tommy Eagleton back in ‘72, and would likely produce a similar result in November as the landslide loss that McGovern suffered to Richard Nixon.
For better or for worse, Palin is the nominee, and even as some Republicans are beginning to recoil in horror at the trainwreck that Palin can be in the face of even tepid questions from interviewers, there is still a strong segment of Republicans particularly in the social-conservative set who not only love her to pieces but also still fundamentally dislike McCain and would not in a million years pull the lever for him for anything if he were to be seen as having orchestrated the exit of Palin from the ticket.
This, of course, is what we could call the Palin Problem - because just as she energized the social-conservative base of the GOP in a way that maybe no other VP choice could, she has also energized Democratic voters just as much, and she seems to be turning off enough of the the nonaligneds to throw a wrench into the electoral math that has changed dramatically from ‘04 when all Republicans had to do was get their voters out to have a solid shot at winning.
So the McCain brain trust is kind of damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t with respect to Palin. Drop her, and you lose the social conservatives, keep her, and you’re dooming your reach-out efforts and your chances of winning in a race that seems to have fallen into the Obama’s-to-lose category in the last two weeks.
Questions were asked within minutes of the confirmation that Barack Obama had selected Joe Biden whether he would end up regretting not having made Hillary Clinton his choice. I’ve been saying since I first heard Sarah Palin’s name six days after that McCain might look back at the end of this and wish he had taken Mike Huckabee. I still stand by that.
Huckabee would have been — by far — the best choice for McCain. He would have energized the base (other than the Romney diehards, which includes most of the talk radio hosts) and provided a huge amount of executive experience.
Plus, I believe, Huckabee could have had tremendous crossover appeal with his populist beliefs.
This probably gets me disqualified from being the Demcratic chair in Waynesboro, but I liked what I heard from Huckabee during his nomination campaign.
I was just telling somebody a few minutes ago that the Dem in me would not be confident at all about Nov. 4 with Huckabee on the McCain ticket. For the life of me, I can’t figure why McCain didn’t go with him, though I suspect it is the same reason that Obama didn’t go with Clinton.
My belief is that McCain didn’t want to anger the Romney wing (Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham et al) by chossing Huckabee. I guess it’s possible that there could have been a bit of anger since Huckabee didn’t drop out when he was “supposed” to.
But feel free to speak good things about him. In my little town in northern NH our town Repub chair simultaneously served as the local chair for two Dems running for office (Congres and state senate).
It ticked us off but he was very powerful and the state Repub bigwigs were afraid to anger him. Plus he had the backing of a local pol who was perhaps the third most powerful man in the state. Not too much you can do against them odds.
I don’t quite have that influence yet, but I will likely run into problems if I’m still in this job in 2011 and if Emmett Hanger runs for re-election to the State Senate. I have a lot of respect for Emmett, and would have a hard time strenuously backing someone against him.
It wasn’t just influence this guy had, he was just plain mean and he’d destroy whoever crossed him. And he had one of the local papers in his pocket.
Apparently I need to work on my party-boss skills …
If you need a party boss mentor, I’ll put you in touch with this guy…