West Palm Beach
John McCain spoke through gritted teeth. “I respect Rush Limbaugh,” he said, days after America’s most influential talk radio host proclaimed that his nomination would ruin the Republican party.
Straight talk?
For two weeks, as the Republican presidential race moved south and he notched important victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, John McCain has been subject to a series of withering attacks from the stars of talk radio and other prominent conservatives. Some of the criticism is warranted. McCain seems to delight in taking positions that upset conservatives, as he did at virtually every campaign stop in New Hampshire by going out of his way to talk about global warming. The argument, which he repeated in the debate here last Thursday, goes something like this:
To a conservative, the consequences of the government mandates required to accomplish these things should be equally obvious and only slightly less devastating. Think of the vast tangle of new regulations that will cost American companies and consumers untold billions, potentially crippling the economy. It is not difficult to understand why this galls McCain’s critics.
There are other concerns, many of them well known. McCain did not support George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and often used left-wing class warfare arguments to voice his opposition. Rather than simply fight for conservative jurists, McCain joined the so-called Gang of 14 that sought to find compromise on judicial appointments. He led Senate opposition to Bush administration policies on detainee interrogation, practices that even administration critics acknowledge have prevented potentially catastrophic attacks. Then there was illegal immigration. And campaign finance reform.
Add them up, the critics argue, and you have John McCain, the Anti-Conservative.
“McCain is not only not conservative enough,” writes David Limbaugh, Rush’s brother, “he has also built a reputation as a maverick by stabbing his party in the back–not in furtherance of conservative principles but by betraying them.”
Like so many McCain critics, Limbaugh turned to former Senator Rick Santorum–“whose conservative credentials are beyond question”–as an expert witness. “I don’t hardly agree with him on hardly any issues,” Santorum said.
Really? Santorum’s lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is 88. John McCain’s is 82.3. One would suppose there might be some overlap. The difference between a real conservative and a phony one apparently lies in those six points.
Although many others have been as critical of McCain, perhaps no one has been as hypocritical. In 2006, when Santorum was running for reelection, he asked McCain to come to Pennsylvania to campaign on his behalf. When McCain obliged, Santorum put the video on his campaign website, listing it first among “key events” of the year. That’s gratitude, Santorum-style.
Other conservative politicians–or former politicians–have taken their anti-McCain arguments to absurd lengths. Take Tom DeLay, for instance, whose K Street pandering led to numerous indictments and contributed greatly to the Republican losses in 2006. The former House majority leader said, without a trace of irony in his voice, that John McCain “has done more to hurt the Republican party than any elected official I know of.”
Mark Levin, a longtime confidant of both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who now hosts his own increasingly popular talk show, took the anti-McCain argument a step further on his show last Wednesday. “At this point, anybody who supports John McCain and claims to be a conservative, let me be blunt: You’re not a conservative.”
Which came as a surprise to Jack Kemp, the ardent supply-sider who was the conservative alternative to George H.W. Bush in 1988. “That’s just so preposterous,” said Kemp. “I don’t agree with McCain on several things. He’s gotten right on the economy. He’s right on foreign policy. And he’s right on the war on terror.”
And no doubt a surprise also to Phil Gramm (lifetime ACU rating of 95), whose presidential campaign was endorsed by National Review in 1996. And to Sam Brownback, a stalwart conservative and one of the most outspoken pro-life politicians in America today. And to Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, arguably the most conservative member of the Senate.
“John McCain and I have stood side by side on many issues,” Coburn said in endorsing McCain last week. The most important, he added, are “fiscal responsibility” and the “sanctity of human life.”
Most of the rank-and-file conservatives supporting McCain point to his leadership on Iraq and his leadership on defense issues. Richard Allen, national security adviser to Ronald Reagan, made this point in an email he sent January 3, the night of the Iowa caucuses, to a small group of longtime conservatives.
Allen continued:
So what if Republican primary voters say it’s McCain? Can there be a rapprochement with some of his conservative critics?
Levin, who has been as critical of McCain as anyone, has not ruled out supporting him. “If he does squeak through, I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to do about it. We’ll see. We’ll see.”
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
