How John McCain will save the GOP

ON THE TRAIL

By Chuck Todd

Political Director

updated 8:28 a.m. ET Nov. 17, 2006

Chuck Todd Political Director • E-mail

Republicans like Karl Rove are trying to justify their party's losses this year by borrowing a page from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's (D) book of voting "if onlys." Remember Kerry harping on that if just half of the fans at an Ohio State football game had switched their votes, he'd be president?

Here are some of the GOP's "if only" talking points after last Tuesday's results. If only...

• 77,000 people had switched their House votes, the GOP would still have its majority.
• 50,000 folks in three states (Missouri, Montana and Virginia) had switched their votes, the GOP would have 52 Senate seats and the majority.
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were fired before the election.

Bottom line: Those who want to lead the GOP in the future had better view 2006 as a defeat and not just an unlucky break.

Plenty of wise GOP strategists are coming to grips with what really happened last week -- that the Republicans got killed by the middle. Self-described independents and moderates tipped just about every close election to the Democrats.

The result seems to run counter to the recent Republican argument that close elections are won by the base.

But as sullen as some are in the GOP about the party's problems with the center heading into '08, I've got good news: John McCain is here to save the day.

Now, before clicking away under the assumption that this is another typical MSM lovefest for the maverick Arizona senator, hear me out.

Conservative ire for McCain is real. The question, of course, is: Are there enough of these conservatives to stop McCain from getting the GOP nomination? Apparently, it's a question both Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani are determined to find out.

I've never fully understood the blind rage conservatives have for McCain. On some issues, like pork-barrel spending and earmark reform, he's a standard issue, small-government conservative. The guy is pro-life (though his libertarian tendencies on social issues seem to concern some evangelical types), and he's one of the most hawkish legislators in the upper chamber. There's nothing in his record that screams "liberal" other than his comfort level in dealing with the media. I've always wondered if McCain's acceptance by the media has actually hurt him with conservatives who don't trust media outlets like, say, the New York Times.

When pressed about why they hate McCain, a movement conservative usually ends up concluding that it isn't any one issue, although some do bring up the Gang of 14's scrutiny of judicial nominations, immigration and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. It's more of a gut check for these folks. They just don't trust him to stay true to his Republican roots. They believe that once he's in office, he'll act more like former President George H.W. Bush than Ronald Reagan.

For many of these folks, there isn't going to be anything McCain can say or do in the next year that will sway them to his side during the primaries. Many of them grudgingly admit they'll back McCain in a general election (but there have been whispers of a third-party movement by the hard-core anti-McCainiacs).

And if McCain gets the nomination, many of the voting groups the Republicans lost in '06 (independents, moderates, Midwest populists and even libertarian Westerners) will feel some potential kinship with the GOP's standard-bearer, which might make him the natural cure for what ails the party. The one big unknown for McCain in the next two years is just how much of a price he pays for his Iraq position. Does that trump all of his other attributes which make him so potentially appealing to the revitalized middle?

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