Obamicans vs. McCainicrats & Post-Partisan Leadership
Karl Rove’s op-ed in the WSJ is must reading if you want to know the dynamics that the rest of the media isn’t talking about. Here’s a glimpse of that:
The big development to watch is not the rise of the “Obamicans”, Republicans who are backing the charismatic Illinois senator. The interesting electoral phenomenon is the emergence of the “McCainicrats”, Democrats backing Mr. McCain. It’s not just Sen. Joe Lieberman. In three recent polls, (Fox, LA Times/Bloomberg and Gallup), almost twice as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans support Mr. Obama. Three times as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans back Mrs. Clinton.
I’ve been predicting that Lieberman Democrats would vote Republican with more regularity ever since Lieberman’s defeat by Ned Lamont in the 2006 primary. I predict that that’ll be especially true this year with Sen. Lieberman endorsing his friend Sen. McCain. The likelihood of Sen. Lieberman giving a prominently featured speech at the Republican National Convention are practically guaranteed.
I suspect that it’ll become fashionable to talk about how much Obama cuts into GOP support but I suspect that it won’t be talked up much about how much support Sen. McCain will get from Democrats.
Mr. Rove is advocating that Sen. McCain and Sen. Clinton attack Obama on talking the talk but not walking the walk on uniting America:
Both need to focus on Mr. Obama’s biggest weaknesses. One is the Illinois senator’s claim to be the new “post-partisan” leader to bring Republicans and Democrats together. Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton have earned reputations for doing that, though Mrs. Clinton rarely mentions it. Mr. Obama has no real record of voting and working across party lines on high profile issues like judges, immigration, intelligence reform, troop funding and energy.
Sen. Obama is a gifted orator but his walk rarely matches his talk. For someone who passionately advocates changing the tone in Washington, he sure hasn’t done much on that front. In fact, he’s been a staunch partisan on the issues listed by Mr. Rove. It goes beyond him voting against these things. It’s that he’s given speeches talking about why he was opposing these things.
Thus far, people have believed him because he’s talked in general platitudes. That level of trust is likely to end as quickly as the information about his staunch partisanship is highlighted.
If you’re a Republican, I wouldn’t worry much about the polling right now. The dynamics of this race are changing pretty significantly as we speak. With the Democratic nomination unlikely to be decided until their convention, Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton will likely attack each other enough to hurt each other for the fall campaign.
I’m sure that there will be a number of momentum swings between now and the convention but a general outline is starting to emerge. This figures to be an interesting campaign.
Technorati Tags: Hillary, Obama, Obamicans, John McCain, McCainicrats, Immigration, FISA Reform, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog