McCain’s easy win undercuts Democrats’ story line By: David Freddoso

August 27, 2010


This spring, liberal pundits were already anticipating the Aug. 24 primaries. It’s just that they were focusing on a Senate race in Arizona — not the one in Alaska.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, appears to have lost her primary unexpectedly to a conservative challenger, pending the counting of absentee ballots.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on the other hand, won easily on Tuesday. The race was expected to be a knock-down, drag-out affair, but it never got off the ground. McCain’s 24-point victory dramatically weakens a narrative that liberal pundits have been pushing all year to frame theNovember elections.

It was best summed up by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews back in April:

“Republican purge! Arlen Specter is out! John McCain, Charlie Crist and Robert Bennett are all being threatened on the right.”

The problem with this story is that John McCain’s defeat was supposed to be its most important chapter.

The story went something like this: Mouth-breathing conservative crazies had driven popular, “electable” moderates in Pennsylvania and Florida out of their party’s Senate races, replacing them with “unelectable” wingnuts. Now they were going to purge even their own 2008 presidential nominee — and with an ugly flourish of xenophobia.

Amid a national debate about Arizona’s new immigration law, they were going to replace McCain with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., who had gone down in flames with his strident anti-immigration re-election campaign of 2006 and who was now voicing doubts about President Obama’s birthplace.

This was supposed to occur just nine weeks before the November elections. It was supposed to make mainstream independent voters think twice before pulling the GOP lever. Meanwhile, Democrats would be touting a compassionate immigration reform proposal designed to win over Hispanics and suburban white women. Overreach by the Right would cut into the Republicans’ frighteningly large margins among independent voters, just as it hurt them in 2006.

Back in April, that was the Democrats’ best chance.

But conservatives never embraced Hayworth or gave him the resources he needed. McCain spent $25 million abusing him about his career in Congress as a proud pork-barreler and star of “free money from the government” infomercials.

The senator shored himself up on the right by talking up border security as he never had before. He received endorsements from both Sarah Palin and the sheriff of Pinal County, a strong supporter of Arizona’s immigration law.
Meanwhile, Obama was forced to abandon his immigration reform plans for the year. Congressional Democrats, having already walked the plank on health care and cap and trade, were reluctant to do so again.

So instead of taking political center stage with a Hayworth victory, Arizona’s immigration law has now briefly faded into legal limbo. Instead of a Republican jihad against Mexicans, we now watch liberal luminaries like Howard Dean and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., feebly opine that Muslims should not build mosques in lower Manhattan.

The political climate remains unchanged from what it was in April. The top issues for the independent voters who will decide the election remain the same: Obamacare, bailouts, and a stimulus package that the public now views more than ever before as a costly failure. The economic situation appears poised to worsen, and Obama’s approval
ratings are plumbing new depths.

A Hayworth victory might have provided relief for Senate Democrats. Yes, it would have put one more Senate seat in play, but more importantly it would have conjured up a convincing national story about Republican intolerance toward immigrants, moderates, small puppies, you name it.

That story is over now, and with it the rest of Matthews’ fairy tale. In Florida and Pennsylvania, the sites of the original “purges,” once “unelectable” conservative Republican candidates for Senate now hold convincing leads. Specter, the first victim, was rejected by Democratic voters. Crist’s independent candidacy peaked when he left the GOP, and has slumped in the polls ever since.

And those supposed fire-breathers in other states — Colorado, Kentucky, Nevada? The ones that are not favored to win have at least even chances.

Here’s a tip for gamblers: Most or all of the “unelectable” conservatives will win in November 2010. It will come as a surprise only to liberal pundits, who view most Americans’ opinions as outside of the mainstream because they remain stubbornly unlike the opinions of Obama!