A top right wing group may be trying to hit the emergency brake on the Straight Talk Express.
Sure, things have been looking up for John McCain. He pulled out a major victory in New Hampshire and he’s polling well in South Carolina. If he wins in the Palmetto State tomorrow, McCain may be able to demonstrate at last that he’s licked the obstacles erected to his victory in 2000 by the Bush wing of the Republican Party.
But they’re still out there, and they still want to stop him. And the threat appears to be emerging that if John McCain becomes the Republican Party’s likely nominee, top conservative infrastructure will not get behind him.
While the GOP itself is struggling with fundraising going into 2008’s cycle, a powerful network of conservatives is emerging in the form of politically unaccountable non-profit groups. The Bush White House-linked Freedom’s Watch is one example, and another is the Coalition for a Conservative Majority, launched by indicted ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The group appears to be directly targeting McCain, spreading a message that he is non-viable, and a non-starter for the Republican Party.
DeLay spoke yesterday to Congressional Republicans, all but warning that that he will not back a McCain candidacy according to The Hill:
During a private luncheon with Republican chiefs of staff on Capitol Hill, DeLay — who has criticized McCain for years — stepped up his attacks in the wake of the senator’s reemergence as a top presidential contender. DeLay said McCain has no principles and indicated he would not endorse the senator if he won the GOP primary.
“If McCain gets the nomination, I don’t know what I’ll do,” DeLay said at the Capitol Hill Club, according to a source in the room. “I might have to sit this one out.”He added that a McCain triumph for the GOP nomination would destroy the Republican Party. DeLay delivered his luncheon address to Republicans Assuring Mutual Support (RAMS), a group of current and former chiefs of staff and staff directors.
But DeLay isn’t alone from the group in warning against a McCain nomination. Ken Blackwell, ex-Ohio Secretary of State and the Coalition for a Conservative Majority’s Chairman, hinted in a Jan. 10 column that conservatives will not get on board with McCain if he doesn’t become “one of them”:
It’s absolutely essential that Mr. McCain understands that these voters will not simply “get on the bus.” Hostilities run too deep for that. While millions of conservatives can be counted on to support the GOP nominee, literally millions more will sit out unless that nominee makes enough of a connection for those voters to say, “He’s one of us.”
So what? Well, the Republican institution is not what it used to be. It’s fundraising has been less impressive and its ability to organize and turnout voters is depressed. Groups like CCM are emerging to traffic funds from major financial backers of the conservative movement into vote-getting activities that are not officially linked to the GOP, but will help it out. And if they say they won’t invest in a McCain candidacy, it could cripple his ability to fight a better-oiled and organized Democratic presidential operation through November.
On the other hand, perhaps DeLay and Blackwell’s bluster can be shrugged off. For top Republicans it will be a question of whether they want to back a winning McCain, or follow along with an indicted ex-congressmen and loyal party operative who couldn’t turn Bush’s 2004 win in Ohio into his own election as governor of the state in 2006. For Republicans in the the weeks and months to come, it appears they will be confronted over and over with this question of “whose side are you on?”
Something to say?
