The straw poll at this weekend's Southern Republican Leadership Conference was the first symbolic event of the party's presidential primary, and it featured plenty of empty symbolism from Sen. John McCain. While most potential candidates directly asked for support from the 1,427 delegates in attendance -- Republican activists who dropped over $180 for a ticket -- McCain offered a cheap ploy to pander to the party's Bush-loving base. McCain urged his supporters not to vote for him, but instead write in President Bush's name to show support "with the country at war."
This peculiar request was disingenuous on several levels. First, McCain is posturing an altruistic political gesture to help the President, but he loses nothing because insiders credit him with the Bush votes and his own. (That's what the GOP website RedState did.) Second, he is using the Bush card to play down his loss to Sen. Frist, who dominated the convention in his home state. Nonpartisan political expert Charlie Cook explained that McCain's people "were worried about whether they were going to win the straw poll, so they scuttled it."
Third, and most important, the move epitomizes McCain's sad strategy of running for President in 2008 as the second coming of George W. Bush. Back in November 2005, I explained this approach in an article called The Bushification of John McCain:
McCain remembers that his 2000 campaign went down in flames when he ran as a sharp alternative to the left of George Bush. His popularity in the rest of America could not help him; radical conservative activists shut him down in preseason. McCain won't make that mistake again. Now he's trying to run as the closest thing to George Bush.
(The audio is available at the Slutsky Brothers' online radio show DoubleSpeak and the article is on Alternet.)
The strategy is not limited to symbolic actions like the straw-poll ploy. McCain has pursued his Bushification by changing positions on conservative priorities like creationism, gay marriage and tax cuts. The shift on tax policy was the most striking, because McCain was one of only two Republicans to oppose Bush's signature 2001 tax cut. But after Hurricane Katrina, he told Chris Matthews that the Bush tax cuts should be maintained despite the costs of the tragedy. I explained the Bushification at work:
Given the surging costs of Katrina, Iraq and Medicare, there is no policy rationale for reversing his position now. The only rationale is political pandering. And that's exactly how some influential conservatives see it. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, recently said that although McCain has "flip-flopped on a number of issues," he is still "anti-taxpayer" because "he's voted against every tax cut." Yet the mainstream media is so attached to McCain's maverick image, most journalists didn't cover the tax reversal.
But now, some reporters are finally catching on.
An LA Times story this weekend covered McCain's Bush imitation, noting that McCain "has eased opposition to tax cuts he once complained were excessive" and was "nearly alone on Capitol Hill in defending the ports deal involving a Dubai-owned company."
McCain's antics this weekend should remind everyone how bad he wants to be George W. Bush. The Bushification strategy may even help McCain win over Bush supporters, but nowadays that's only a third of the country.
UPDATE: Knight Ridder also got into the mix today in an article on McCain's Bushification, with several references to the 2000 Republican primaries:
"Who could have ever imagined - back in 2000, when John McCain was calling George W. Bush a liar, and Bush surrogates were calling McCain mentally unstable - that these guys would be sharing the same foxhole in 2006?...
[McCain's] pledges of fealty, which began with hugging Bush on the stump in 2004, are paying dividends. Perhaps it's sheer coincidence, but no baseless rumors are being circulated in GOP circles anymore - as they were during the 2000 South Carolina primary - that McCain has a screw loose because of his stint as a POW, or that he fathered an illegitimate child... By all indications, this is not a love marriage.
...Political analyst Charlie Cook, who runs the nonpartisan Cook Political report, said here on Saturday: "These guys all of a sudden aren't great friends. From McCain's standpoint, how can he like a guy whose pals did what they did in South Carolina? That you don't forget. It was the precursor of the Swift Boats attack on John Kerry. But I think they have an implicit understanding now."