Tagged onto an Adam Nagourney article about McCain jumping the shark in his attacks on Democrats who are trying to end the Iraq war is this potent note about the sorry state of John McCain’s presidential campaign:
The troubled presidential campaign of Senator McCain is eliminating some nonsenior staff positions and cutting some consultants’ contracts. The campaign characterized the moves as “minor adjustments” that are part of an overall effort to revamp its fund-raising office and budgeting operation. [Emphasis added]
McCain only raised $12.5 million in the first quarter of 2007. His campaign had apparently been structured around the presumption of raising much more money than that. Firing staff just as the campaign intensifies around money and issues is not a recipe for future success, but one born out of the need to prevent the campaign from starving to death before it can gain traction in the polls.
Indeed McCain’s campaign is troubled. His pro-war rhetoric is visibly disconnected from the realities on the ground in Iraq. The outspoken stance he has elected to take in support of escalating the war and questioning the motivations for Democratic opposition to the war has pushed him front-and-center in the national debate. That would be a good thing, except McCain is grossly out of step with the American people on the war.
Not even all Republican voters are clinging to the same illusions that McCain holds onto on the war. Giuliani and Romney, among others, have taken softer pro-war stances than McCain (as have most of the second tier candidates). A Pew Research Center poll recently showed “67 percent of Republicans thought the situation in Iraq was going well, compared with 36 percent of independents and 24 percent of Democrats.” There may not be a lot of room for an anti-war Republican in those numbers, but there’s even less room for a pro-war Republican to win independent and Democratic voters. That doesn’t leave much room for McCain to grow his support for an Iraq war position that is really a fringe view as far as elected officials go. His continued high profile for unending war support will make it hard for him to find donors among the majority of Americans that do not share his same rosy view about the war in Iraq.
Something to say?
