TWIN CITIES: 2008

A 'Maverick' Nominee, But Still The Same GOP

Even though John McCain clinched the presidential nomination without winning a plurality of conservatives or self-identified Republicans in key states, most party leaders doubt that fundamental change is afoot.

by James A. Barnes

Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008


TimelineGOP: Road To The Twin Cities

John McCain has achieved something that no GOP White House hopeful had been able to do in more than half a century--capture the party's nomination without carrying the party's base.

And that's true regardless of whether its "base" is defined as self-identified conservatives or as self-identified Republicans.

Three states were critical to McCain's success--first New Hampshire, then South Carolina and Florida. McCain won the Republican primaries in all three but, according to the exit polls, he did so without winning a majority or even a plurality of self-identified conservatives. What's more, McCain didn't attract a majority or even a plurality of the self-identified Republicans who participated in any of those three contests.

In Florida, the senator from Arizona and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney each won 33 percent of the voters in the GOP primary who called themselves Republican. (Even though the primary was open only to registered Republicans, 17 percent of those surveyed said they usually think of themselves as something else, such as independents.) In New Hampshire and South Carolina, McCain's victories came from getting the support of solid pluralities of the independents and self-described moderates who voted in the GOP contest. In Florida, which gave him decisive momentum heading into the bonanza of primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday, McCain won largely because of independents, moderates, and Latinos.

In the 13 states that held GOP caucuses--where appealing to grassroots conservatives and party regulars is critical to success--McCain came in first only in Hawaii and Washington, yet went on to clinch the GOP nomination.

"It wasn't the normal way to do it, but he did it," says former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, who has attended every GOP national convention since 1968.

So, now that McCain heads the Republican Party, will he steer it in a new direction? And does his unorthodox path to the nomination signal that it has already shifted to the center? Most leading Republicans doubt that fundamental change is afoot. Many do not desire it. Yet, almost universally, they fervently hope that McCain can fundamentally change the way their party is perceived by an electorate that now gives the incumbent Republican president, George W. Bush, abysmal job-approval ratings.

And that's far from the only paradox about McCain's nomination. Many Republicans admit they don't particularly care for McCain or his maverick tendencies, but they readily acknowledge that he has a better chance of holding the presidency for their party than any other 2008 contender they could have nominated.

During the primary season, McCain tried to appeal to the base of a party that, if anything, has grown more conservative because it has bled moderates in recent years. On immigration, tax cuts, and offshore drilling, he shifted his stands to the right. But in doing so, he blurred the very thing that gives him his best chance of winning the independents who this year hold the keys to the White House--his maverick image. So, arguably, McCain has changed more than the party he now heads.

Lucking Out

There's not much sense among Republicans that their party's base is shifting beneath them. "I think we are still the conservative political party. And McCain has adapted more to that fact than the party has moved toward some of McCain's more moderate tendencies," said Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

Conservative Gary Bauer said, "I don't think he's redefining the party ideologically, but I do think because of his persona he is bringing people into the Republican Party that may not have embraced conservative ideas if somebody else was selling them." Bauer is the founder of American Values, a nonprofit that champions conservative stands on social issues. He sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2000 and endorsed McCain after dropping out that year. Bauer backed McCain again this year and advised the McCain campaign about drawing up the party platform.

Other Republicans note that despite McCain's unconventional path to the nomination, the party base remains much what it has been since Ronald Reagan recast it on his way to winning the presidency in 1980--a coalition of defense and national security hawks, low-tax advocates, and Christian conservatives. "I don't see that any of these groups have dropped out of the party. Hence I don't see the party as having 'moved' anywhere," said California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring.

And most Republicans don't expect McCain to show much interest in the party's apparatus, let alone in trying to dictate to it. "John has never been a party guy. And I don't expect him to start now," said David Norcross, an RNC member from New Jersey. The veteran operative said that the relationship between the national party and its 2008 nominee is peaceful coexistence, or a partnership in which McCain and his campaign are the senior partners. "They really haven't tried to impose themselves on the RNC, which is a good thing," Norcross added.

Some Republicans talk of the McCain nomination as though the candidate and his party serendipitously stumbled into something mutually beneficial. Although many conservatives and party regulars had long viewed McCain with skepticism, he was also a known quantity to the Republican rank and file--someone whose history as a tortured prisoner of war commanded, at the very least, respect. But another factor was more important to the outcome of the nomination fight: No hopeful was able to rally the conservatives. In key early contests, they remained divided between former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Romney. Despite seeing his White House dreams evaporate when he lost South Carolina, Huckabee, who is a Baptist preacher, kept his name on the Florida ballot--a move that, intentionally or not, kept Romney, a devout Mormon, from overtaking McCain there.

As late as February 7, two days after the Super Tuesday contests gave McCain a huge delegate lead, some conservatives were still plotting to stop him. David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, pulled together some 50 top conservatives during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, in hopes of uniting them behind Romney. But it was too late. Shortly before Keene's group was scheduled to meet, Romney addressed CPAC and shocked the crowd by withdrawing. "It ended up being a goodbye meeting," one attendee recalls.

Not long after Romney spoke, McCain addressed the conservative gathering. Plenty of boos punctuated the applause.

Regardless of whether they supported McCain earlier this year, many Republicans now think that his nomination has thrown them something of a life preserver, given that the public is so hostile to the GOP brand these days. "As much as I liked some of the other candidates, they were in the traditional Republican mold and would probably not be faring as well right now against [Democratic presidential nominee Barack] Obama in this difficult national political environment," Wadhams said. "McCain has the ability to win this election on the strength of his appeal to independent voters, and can help our party across the board. In many ways, I think we lucked out with McCain winning our nomination."

Where Conservatives Reign

Even though McCain catapulted his way to the top of his party on his strength among moderate Republicans and independents, the GOP remains firmly rooted in conservatism. One yardstick for measuring conservatives' clout within the party is the composition of the 168-member RNC, which consists of a party chair and a national committeeman and national committeewoman from each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and four U.S. territories. Each person was elected by the party leadership or party convention in his or her locale.

"If you look at the RNC elections for national committee folks nationwide, most would argue the party is moving to the right," said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis, who attributes McCain's triumph to the split among conservatives. Anuzis estimates that one-quarter of the RNC's members are new this year. "The ones that I know have all been elected as more conservative than the people they replaced," he said. Indeed, plenty of evidence backs him up.

Earlier this year, the Kansas Republican State Committee ousted two-term RNC member Alicia Salisbury and replaced her with Helen Van Etten, the president of the Kansas Republican Assembly, an anti-tax, anti-abortion group that described itself as "the Republican wing of the Republican Party" when moderates controlled the state GOP. Salisbury had previously served for 16 years in the state Senate, where she was viewed as pro-business.

Even before Salisbury was bounced, the Kansas GOP's other RNC member, moderate Steve Cloud, announced he was not seeking re-election. The state committee had publicly rebuked Cloud for signing a fundraising letter for the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, a centrist group.

The Kansas GOP's grassroots are quite conservative: Two days after McCain became the party's presumptive nominee, Huckabee won the state's February 9 caucuses with 58 percent of the vote. McCain was second with just 23 percent.

States that McCain won were not immune to the RNC's rightward trend. In Virginia, for example, even a Bush family member was not spared by the Right. The conservatives who dominated the Virginia GOP's convention in June replaced state party Chairman John Hager with state Del. Jeffrey Frederick, who argued that the party had lost ground at the polls under the incumbent's leadership. Frederick had the support of social conservatives and anti-tax advocates. Hager, a former lieutenant governor, is the father-in-law of first daughter Jenna Bush.

Also in June, Norm Semanko ousted Idaho Republican Party Chairman Kirk Sullivan, a moderate who had presided over GOP gains in state and local elections. Semanko's victory at the state party convention was the result of his unusual alliance of social conservatives and supporters of former White House contender Ron Paul.

Earlier, at the California GOP convention in February, Shawn Steel, a former state party chairman, knocked off Tim Morgan, a 12-year RNC member who is also treasurer of the national committee. Steel is well known for having battled party moderates during his tenure as head of the state party.

But perhaps nowhere was the conservative bloodletting more pronounced than in Iowa, where Huckabee made his dramatic breakout when he won the GOP presidential caucuses on the strength of his support from the born-again and evangelical Christians who swamped the party's precinct meetings. Those conservative Christians also elected delegates to county GOP conventions and then to the July state convention, where they bowled over two pillars of the party establishment, Steve Roberts and state Rep. Sandy Greiner, in elections to the RNC.

A former state party chairman and 20-year RNC member, Roberts was tossed out in favor of Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance. Roberts, a foe of abortion rights, came under fire for not being more vocal in condemning the Polk County judge who ruled last year that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The judge stayed his own decision within 24 hours, but his ruling set off a firestorm among Iowa conservatives.

Roberts was no stranger to challenges from the Right. After the 1988 presidential campaign, when televangelist Pat Robertson came in second in Iowa's GOP caucuses by energizing the state's Religious Right, Robertson's supporters targeted Roberts for removal from his RNC post. He survived that effort.

But Roberts's luck ran out this year, and his fate is indicative of how the battle for control of the party between hard-right conservatives and somewhat more moderate Republicans is unfolding. "In Iowa, we're in the middle of a real fork in a road, and maybe nationally," Roberts said.

Greiner, an eight-term member of the Iowa House who was endorsed for the RNC post by every one of her state House GOP colleagues, was defeated by Kim Lehman, the president of the Iowa Right to Life Committee. And Greiner is hardly known as a moderate. She was an early Reagan supporter, and in 2008 she served as a state co-chair for the presidential effort of former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee.

"She's as conservative as they come," said retiring state Rep. Carmine Boal. "I've watched the woman vote for 16 years; it's ridiculous."

In Greiner's defeat, Boal sees a troubling aspect of how some conservative Christians and their allies conduct their politics--that is, without regard to whether they alienate many Republicans who agree with them on a host of issues, including social ones. "As far as the future of the party, do we take a sharp right [turn], and that's all we're going to have?" Boal wonders.

This suburban mom and five-term state legislator has the standing to raise these questions: Boal readily identifies herself as a conservative Christian. And she was one of the earliest prominent Iowans to support Huckabee, even before he gained a foothold in the state with a second-place showing in its 2007 straw poll.

For the moment, Boal, like many other conservative Republicans, is prepared to embrace McCain as the GOP nominee, but only out of what she sees as necessity. "As much as I don't like it, in many ways he is the best candidate for us--not in the long term, but he's the best one right now," said Boal, acknowledging that the political environment is anti-Republican these days.

"McCain's got enough of the conservative viewpoints to bring along people, but yet enough of the renegade or independent streak to bring along independents and country-club Republicans," Boal said. "We'd love to have a Reagan Republican. But, at this time, he is the best we can do."

Going Forward

It's hard to predict what direction McCain will go next. He has embraced traditional Republican themes and attacked Obama as an inexperienced, tax-loving celebrity. Meanwhile, he has run a television ad that includes the line: "We're worse off than we were four years ago," an unusual indictment of an era in which your party controlled the White House.

"If he becomes the president because he's a safe pair of hands, then there's no new era and you're just reshuffling the deck a little bit," said University of Wisconsin political scientist Byron Shafer, an expert on party coalitions and the presidential nominating process. "Celebrity commercials--they're not a new direction; they don't involve anything that you will do if you win."

There's some anxiety within the congressional wing of the Republican Party about how McCain will ultimately choose to focus his fight with Obama. Many GOP lawmakers have been frustrated in the past with the Arizonan's penchant for breaking ranks to work with Democrats on legislation or to take shots at the Bush administration; but a number of Republicans on both sides of the Capitol view McCain as the party's best hope to hold the White House or to at least contain the party's down-ballot losses.

For that to happen, however, McCain probably must craft optimistic and compelling messages that his fellow Republican candidates can join him in running on. "If McCain can define a future that helps shape the debate not only between him and Obama but also the two parties--that helps all Republicans," said GOP pollster David Winston, who was neutral in the GOP nominating contest. "If it's just simply about attacking Obama, then it's just a fight between the two of them. Those are two very different kinds of national elections."

Given the decline in the percentage of voters who identify as Republican--the Gallup Organization, which put the two parties at parity, 47 percent each (including leaners), four years ago, says that the Democrats now hold a 14-percentage-point advantage--McCain's fate is likely to rest with independents. According to an analysis by pollsters Alex Gage and Alex Lundry, the number of rank-and-file Republicans has shrunk by some 5 million; Democrats have picked up 3.7 million and independents have grown by 2.5 million.

"His task now is to work on that one-third [of voters] in the middle," said former RNC Chairman Fahrenkopf. "I hope that the party is realistic. I hope that the party understands [that] to govern you've got to get elected."

Still, has McCain's maneuvering made him a less viable general election candidate? "Going into the nominating process, his problem was many [Republican regulars] suspected he was not a reliable Republican," pollster Gage said. "I think that McCain--through the primary process, in trying to convince people that he was a reliable Republican--lost some of the maverick straight talk that was supposed to be his brand."

But starring in a four-day national convention capped by a prime-time acceptance speech offers McCain a golden chance to restore some luster to his maverick image. "The convention is John McCain's opportunity to stamp his brand on the Republican Party going forward, rather than him assuming the current tarnished brand of the party," Gage added.

And the McCain trademark has often been a willingness to seek bipartisan solutions even if that meant breaking with his party. Even conservatives acknowledge that. "I think that where he's likely to attract other voters is more on his style of being willing to find common ground where it's possible with members of the other party," Bauer said. McCain's maverick streak, predictably, plays well among the suburban independents expected to be critical to the hopes of both McCain and Obama this fall.

If McCain wins the White House with a hand-across-the-aisle appeal, he might decide to govern the same way. Bush, after all, won re-election with a campaign geared toward keeping the party's conservative base happy--and he has run the country that way. But in McCain's case, trying to govern as something other than a die-hard Republican could cause his electoral coalition to unravel.

"If elected, and once he starts implementing 'bipartisan' policy that many on the right will object to, this will cause some very challenging times for the party," predicted Michigan GOP Chairman Anuzis. Conservatives would recoil while moderates and independents might try to seize the party's power structures, such as the RNC and the party's fundraising apparatus, "thus causing some interesting battles within the grassroots," Anuzis speculated. "You could see a fight for the heart and soul of the party."

If McCain isn't elected, recriminations would likely divide the party: Conservatives would assert that the party should have nominated a true believer, while centrists would argue McCain should have made a sharper break with Bush and the party status quo.

That such a confrontation didn't happen during the nominating contest this year but could happen in a McCain presidency is deeply ironic. Still, maybe it shouldn't be surprising, given that John McCain has never been the first choice of most of his party.

John McCain has achieved something that no GOP White House hopeful had been able to do in more than half a century--capture the party's nomination without carrying the party's base.

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