Man Bites Blog

Marc Ambinder writes:

Sen. John McCain had better get used to lots of questions about 2004 and whether he was ever close to accepting John Kerry’s offer to be vice president…

It seems to me this issue would have had a lot more relevance back in January, when the nomination was in doubt, and McCain was being branded as “not a conservative.”

Now that he’s the nominee, it’s hard to see how this would hurt him in the general.  Would someone vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton instead of McCain because he considered accepting the second spot on John Kerry’s ticket?

I am somewhat sympathetic to the notion that, in spite of his utterly unacceptable position on abortion, Barack Obama is a good choice for Catholics, so I was interested to see Douglas W. Kmiec’s piece arguing the same in Slate.

I found some things in the piece to agree with, but wasn’t blown away by it.

Reading two responses he sent to the Corner, I was even less impressed. I kind of have to agree with Ramesh Ponnuru’s conclusion that, “once you take away Kmiec’s sour grapes over the primaries and his fuzzy thinking, there’s nothing left to his case.”

I could see a Catholic coming to the conclusion that Obama was the best candidate. I could see a conservative being driven to the Democrats by McCain’s nomination. What I cannot see is the nomination of McCain over Romney causing someone thinking as a Catholic to jump to Obama.

The main conservative critiques of McCain, as I understand them, were his support form campaign finance reform, his support for comprehensive immigration reform, and a general tendency to prefer the approval of the mainstream press to that of his own party. Well, Catholicism probably doesn’t have much to do with campaign finance reform, or McCain’s relationships with the press and his own party, and the bishops have taken a fairly severe pro-immigration stance. Add in McCain’s rejection of torture and Romney’s support for it, and the idea that a Catholic would work for Romney’s campaign but find McCain unacceptable is indeed odd.

It’s true that Romney is still on his first marriage, but it seems odd that would matter to someone calling himself a “Reaganite.”

One of the big oddities is Kmiec’s contention that Romney had a superior position to McCain on Iraq:

especially when the candidate of the status quo has a military occupation position (”100 years, sure, maybe a 1000″) that is far too flippant for an issue of human life or national security and that is directly contrary to an equally resolute teaching of the Church. So if the primary process takes out a candidate like Governor Romney who had a grasp of the kind of humanitarian rebuilding necessary to stabilize (and not merely occupy) Iraq,

If Romney possesed such a grasp, he did a damn fine job of hiding it during the primary campaign. My recollection is that Romney always tried to present himself as the most hawkish, most unfriendly to immigrants, most willing to torture, person on the stage. Wasn’t it Romney who said he wanted to “double Guantanomo?” Talk about “far too flippant for an issue of human life or national security” — it’s also worth noting that Romney took a significant detour from answering the question that was posed in order to deliver that line, clearly something he had planned to say at some point in the debate, and not a case of a question taking him off guard.

And that lie the Romney campaign spend the final weeks of its campaign whining to the refs about was that Romney wanted timetables instead of milestones for the surge. So which is it — was Romney’s position on the invasion and the surge distinguishable from McCain’s or not?

There may be a case that Obama is the choice for Catholics, but the Republicans nominating John McCain rather than Mitt Romney isn’t it.

or more accurately, the Democrats’ path to defeat.

• Obama continues to win primaries and caucuses, building a significant but not decisive lead in delegates.
• Clinton wins the nomination on the basis of superdelegates going for her and the Michigan and Florida delegates being seated.
• Nader runs; those disgusted with him who are more moderate go for McCain, leftists go for Nader, and McCain ekes out an electoral victory.

It would seem almost impossible for the Democrats to cede the high moral ground coming into the general election, but if party bosses manage to thwart making Obama the first African American nominee after he had won most of the primaries and caucuses in order to nomiate someone who has already spent eight years in the White House, well, it could get ugly. 

It might make McCain’s problems with consrevatives seem like child’s play.

I guess one key is how Obama would play this.  A Clinton nomination and loss would position Obama very strongly for 2012.   But it seems like anybody who just had the nomination (and more than likely the presidency) taken from him would have a very hard time getting behind the person on whose behalf the stealing was done, whether he wants to transcend politics or not.

I’ve got to believe the Democrats know what a disastrous scenario this is, and won’t let this play out, but this is also the same party that thought Michael Dukakis and John Kerry would be good candidates.

K-Lo, who has been spending the last several weeks (unsuccessfully) trying to convince readers that John McCain is some combination of Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, writes of the pro-choice, pro-torture, pro same-sex marriage, twice divorced Rudy Giuliani:

It’s a big party… ‘I’m even in this party. It’s a great party.’ It’s a gracious, dignified speech. I disagree with him on some issues, but he ran a race he can be proud of.

First of all, it would be difficult to imagine how Giuliani’s campaign could have been worse.  He staked everything on winning Florida, and won 15% of the vote.  If that’s something to be proud of, then Scott Linehan’s the coach of the year.

Second, this is yet another illustration of what really matters to conservatives.  An anonymous source says that John McCain might not have appreciated Alito, even though he was very publicly supportive, and he’s a weasel.  But since Giuliani is no longer a threat to thre Great Mitt Romney, he’s a great guy.

I hope McCain picks Lieberman as a running mate just to stick it to these people.

I’ll tell you, if the Democrats have the opportunity to nominate this guy…

and then decide, “No, we’d rather nominate Hillary Clinton,” they will deserve whatever they get. The land is hungry for this brand of leadership, Democrats. Please give it to us.

For my part, I plan to vote for Obama in Missouri’s open primary on Super Tuesday.

Contrast this with the current whinefest over on the Corner over whether it was “dishonest” of McCain to say that Romney wanted a “timetable” for withdrawal from Iraq, when all he really wanted was “milestones.” Could I care less?