ST. PAUL,
MN: As a rule, political candidates begin moving
to the center on Labor Day, but John McCain has continued to focus on
solidifying his rightwing base, particularly among social conservatives. The convention’s first two days have been a
conservative love-fest for McCain’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.
McCain’s handlers have also allowed social conservatives free reign in writing
this year’s Republican platform.
McCain strategists have tried to explain Palin’s nomination
as an attempt to secure discontented Democrats who backed Hillary Clinton. But that’s not the refrain heard here among
social conservatives who predominate among the delegates. They like Palin because she is one of
them. And there is some reason to
believe that McCain’s choice was partly intended to mollify conservatives like
James Dobson and Richard Land who were on the fence, but who, since the choice
of Palin, have become considerably warmer toward McCain.
That’s certainly the view of Grover Norquist, the head of
Americans for Tax Reform, and a member of the secret conservative organization,
the Council
for National Policy, which met last Thursday and Friday in Minneapolis to debate
McCain’s candidacy. According to
Norquist, the council members, who include the country’s leading social
conservatives, became enthusiastic about McCain when they heard of his choice
of Palin. “They were uneasy before, and
they suddenly became very excited,” Norquist explains, as we talk in the lobby
of the St. Paul Hotel, after he has finished addressing the Arizona delegation. Norquist says the story
of Palin’s child with down syndrome was particularly important to the social
conservatives. “Even Richard Viguerie was enthusiastic. I’ve never seen him
excited about any Republican presidential nominee.”
The council members and other conservatives were also
cheered by the Republican platform. The
McCain people exercised a “light touch,” says Norquist. And indeed they did.
The platform is a paean to social conservatism and diverges from McCain’s own
convictions. It backs a Human Life
Amendment on abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or a threat to the
health of the mother; it backs the Second Amendment with no exceptions (“gun control only
affect and paralyzes law-abiding citizens”); and it takes a position on
immigration that would warm Rep. Tom Tancredo’s cold heart. It focuses on enforcing “border security,”
rejects “amnesty” and “en masse legalizations,” and promotes English-only
legislation. Most telling, perhaps, it
devotes very little attention to the Iraq
war. That, too, reflects the disquiet of many
social conservatives like Norquist about the war.
At the convention, there are rumblings about Palin from
moderates and from conservative intellectuals like David Frum and Ramesh
Ponnuru, but most of the delegates remain enthusiastic. Like Norquist, they reject the questions
raised about Palin as attempts by “the left to destroy her.” And they are convinced these attacks will
strengthen the McCain ticket. Like the
passengers on Titanic, they celebrate, while the iceberg of doubt called up by
her nomination looms on the horizon.
McCain now has tonight and the next two days to change
course. If George W. Bush appears
tonight, even by video, that is not likely to help McCain. That leaves him only two days. If he doesn’t move away from the militant
right--and if the questions about Palin don’t subside--he is likely to lose
the election, and even to lose it big.
--John B. Judis