Why McCain is still standing

You’ve probably noticed many in the media racking their brains the last few weeks to answer a simple question. Why is the race between Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama so close?

The President’s approval ratings are at all-time lows, and the Republican Party is in shambles following a horrible defeat in 2006. The Iraq War is going a little bit better than it was a year ago, but a large majority of Americans still oppose it and believe we should pull out in the near future. Even scarier for the Republicans is that they have come to the point where even the solid South isn’t so solid.

It should be the Democrats’ year.

Americans prefer Democrats on nine out of ten major election issues according to a recent Rasmussen Poll. And the Democrats have done everything right. They nominated an energetic, intelligent young man. There’s no question that Obama is a wonderful speaker, and he certainly has charisma.

Obama is a stark contrast to the old, stoic, Vietnam vet McCain. While Obama’s party views him as little short of the Messiah, McCain’s party has historically had a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with him. Yet, in one of the oddest turn of events in modern politics, McCain was able to easily secure the Republican nomination in a crowded field that split the conservative vote.

In all fairness, I don’t really like McCain. I’m a libertarian-minded voter that usually prefers a small government Republican over a nanny-state Democrat. Out of the entire Republican Primary field, McCain would probably have been my very last pick, but now that we’re about two months away from the election, I’m thanking God that he’s the nominee, because he’s probably the only Republican that would stand a chance at winning.

The reason John McCain is actually competing in this close race as a Republican, is because he isn’t much of one. During a presidential campaign, most candidates run from their party extremes to the middle to sway independent voters. This is something John McCain hasn’t had to do this year, because he’s spent almost his entire career in the Senate running away from his party.

In fact, his appeal to independents is so powerful, that John Kerry considered naming McCain his running mate in his 2004 campaign against President Bush.

But McCain’s strong poll numbers against Obama, who should be a shoo-in, aren’t only thanks to McCain’s independent streak, but also Obama’s liberal streak. The non-partisan National Review ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007. According to the Congressional Quarterly, Obama voted the party line in the Senate 97 percent of the time in 2005 and 2007. In 2006, he was a little more moderate, only voting with Democrats a mere 96 percent of the time. According to the Congressional Quarterly, McCain has voted with the Republican Party as low as 67 percent of the time.

There are two things that most American voters are not: stupid and extremist. Americans see these two candidates, and they know the basic views of both of them. Likewise, most American voters don’t like candidates that won’t compromise for the good of the nation. Obama’s votes show that he knows nothing about compromise. And yet all the Senate bills with names like McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Feingold, and McCain-Lieberman show that John McCain probably knows a little too much about compromise.

In the end, this election is about the political ideology of two men. Obama is an extreme liberal, and McCain is so moderate that I think there might be a chance he’s really a Democrat in disguise. While this nation has been moving more liberal in the past few years, I don’t think America will be at the stage to elect someone as liberal as Obama by November.

Even as I write this, I’m not sure I’m willing to bite the bullet and vote McCain. But it doesn’t really matter, because whether he wins my vote or not, I can’t imagine a foreseeable scenario in which John McCain does not win the election.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 5 2008. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry