Right Wing Nation

Remember Hillary’s 3am phone call ad? Well, Hillary has again boosted McCain. Rasmussen did a poll of 800 likely voters about that ad, and the results are intriguing. From the public report:

The commercial was credited as one factor enabling Clinton to turn her campaign around in Texas last week. But, 42% of all voters said the person they’d most want to answer the phone was John McCain. Among all voters, 25% picked Clinton and another 25% named Obama as the person they’d want in the White House when a foreign policy crisis call arrived. …

Among unaffiliated voters, 39% said McCain would be their top choice to handle such a crisis. Twenty-seven percent (27%) of unaffiliateds said they thought Obama was the best to handle the call while 18% named Clinton.

Obviously, Hillary needs to make more ads for John McCain (although I suspect that Obama’s “I’d like to teach the world to sing” ads do as much as Hillary’s to boost John McCain’s election chances).Also blogging about these data are Ace and Cap’n Ed. And Ace points to more interesting data:

The two new political demographics — like Soccer moms and NASCAR dads before them — are quickly emerging as the potential election-busters of the 2008 presidential race.

And contrary to conventional wisdom, numbers emerging from polls and primary results show that Sen. John McCain — who has alienated conservatives as he courts independents and moderate Democrats — holds an advantage over Sen. Barack Obama in the race for crossover votes.

There are now more McCainocrats than Obamacans — about 14 percent of Democrats say they would vote for Mr. McCain today instead of Mr. Obama, but just 8 percent of Republicans say they would vote for the Illinois Democrat, according to a Pew Research Center survey on Feb. 28.

Additionally, 20 percent of white Democratic voters say they would defect to Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama is the Democratic Party’s nominee — twice the number who would cross over if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the nomination, Pew found.

“McCain poses a clear and present danger to Obama in that he draws Democrat base support in historic numbers,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed.

And from the WSJ:

But despite these obstacles, John McCain will now begin to assemble his fall election team with surprisingly good poll results. The average of all the recent national polls summarized by RealClearPolitics.com show the Arizona senator leading Hillary Clinton by 47% to 45% and trailing Barack Obama by only 44% to 47%. Both results are within the statistical margin of error for national polls, so it’s fair to say Mr. McCain starts out with an even chance of winning.

How could that be? The answer is that the same maverick streak and occasional departures from conservative orthodoxy that make conservatives queasy have the opposite effect on independents and even some Democrats. Mr. McCain’s favorable numbers with independents exceed those of Barack Obama, who has emphasized his desire to work across party lines.

Rasmussen surveyed 500 likely voters in South Dakota. McCain beat Clinton 50-38, and Obama 48-38. The crosstabs show that a lot of McCain’s support comes from Democrats.

One may debate how “Reaganesque” McCain is, but this election is the most similar to Reagan’s race to date. The self-appointed party “base” despised Reagan, and said they’d never vote for him (my grandfather and father were two of them). Reagan won the primary, due to voters who couldn’t have cared less what the so-called “base” said or thought, and went on to a landslide win — due to the huge numbers of Democrats who crossed lines to vote for him.

This year is a direct analogy. So-called “true conservatives” have been howling and stomping their feet, and the voters apparently don’t much care. As they did with Reagan, the “base” are coming to terms with the McCain candidacy, and while a few will sit out the election, I doubt many will, given the alternative. And like Reagan, McCain is pulling support from JFK Democrats.

Given that, I’m not sure I agree with the conventional wisdom I see about McCain’s VP pick. If you haven’t seen it (you must have been in deep hibernation over the last two weeks, because its everywhere), said wisdom is that McCain needs to pick as conservative a VP as possible to placate that so-called “base.”

I’m not at all sure that’s wisdom of any sort, as much as it is stroking bruised egos. Should McCain pick someone from the far conservative wing of the party, might he not alienate many of the voters that have largely won him the nomination? And what would be the point of that, other than mollifying the “base”?

Certainly, McCain is in a difficult position choosing a VP. He has to take into account both the geographical and political spectra. He cannot select somebody whose stances on issues differs too much from his, or he will have a discordant ticket. If he chooses somebody too similar, he gains nothing from the VP selection. And name recognition is a problem. Most of the people I’ve seen recommended as VP choices are known only to one (or two) sections of the party (Mike Pence or Mark Sanford), and are unknown to the crossover voters.

Selecting a so-called “true conservative” may indeed alienate a large part of his support, but selecting somebody very close to him (Lindsay Graham) or significantly to his left would alienate many Republican voters. Sarah Palin would actually have made an ideal choice (but she’s due in May, so that’s not an option): She’s decidedly conservative and popular among the “base,” but socially liberal enough not to alienate significant support (Palin is solidly pro-life and opposes gay marriage, but vetoed a bill banning domestic partner benefits).

Here is what McCain should do:

McCain can appoint from his right, as long as he doesn’t move too far to the right (and most of the suggested candidates in the dextrosphere have been way too far to the right), lest he alienate centrist voters. His situation is exactly the same on the left, avoiding the alienation of Republican voters.

Michael Steele may be one of the best suggestions I’ve seen, after Palin. Like Palin, he’s popular with the right, but not so conservative that he would alienate more moderate supporters. True, he did lose the 2006 election, but only by a razor thin margin — in one of the most solidly Democratic states. There is also the race issue, but I think when November rolls around, race won’t matter much in the way people vote — at least not people who would vote for McCain or any other Republican.

Those are my thoughts, anyway.

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