McCain Won't Excite Conservatives, Says Former Liberal
by Chad Groening
January 3, 2007
(AgapePress) - - An author and self-professed former liberal says he doesn't think Arizona Senator John McCain is going to excite conservatives as the 2008 "presidential sweepstakes" kick into high gear. He believes there are a couple of alternatives who might be more attractive to the conservative voting bloc. Political analyst Keith Thompson is the author of Leaving the Left: Moments in the News That Made Me Ashamed to Be a Liberal. He says while John McCain remains the nominal frontrunner at this very early stage of the process, the Arizona senator has had a bad track record with conservatives, particularly on the border issue and judicial nominees. Thompson contends the McCain, were he to run, would even have to compete for the moderate Republican vote.
"Guest what? [Former New York City Mayor] Rudy Giuliani is looking at getting in the race, too," the author observes. "So those two guys split that moderate [voting bloc], which is not the predominant voice in the Republican Party anyway."
Thompson describes McCain's support in the GOP as "a mile wide but an inch deep." Among the factors that would count against the Arizona senator among Republican conservatives, says the author, are "his attempts to curry favor with religious conservatives after spending so much of his career dissing those voters, ... actually serving as a thorn in the sides of the conservatives on judicial nominations, and favoring this open borders amnesty approach."
So Thompson says even a longshot like California Congressman Duncan Hunter could cash in on the conservative GOP support. And while he believes Hunter is "good on the issues" and a "credible, strong guy," he says questions still remain.
"How he'll actually play [among voters is unknown]," he concedes. "There are so many factors [that come into play]." Hunter, he says, needs to be able to raise money and avoid verbal gaffes on the campaign trail.
According to Thompson, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney remains another "McCain alternative," even though some evangelicals have a problem with his well-documented flip-flopping on hot-button issues like abortion and same-sex "marriage."
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
