Robert Novak that the powers-that-be in the GOP are coalescing behind Arizona Senator John McCain to the point where his selection as the 2008 may be inevitable:
It is beginning to look like “McCain Inc.” — that is, party regulars, corporate officials and Washington lawyers and lobbyists moving toward John McCain, the man they feared and loathed eight years ago. The GOP, abhorring competition and detesting surprises, likes to establish its presidential nominee well in advance.
I first appreciated this in 1996, when Robert J. Dole’s candidacy was dying after he barely won in Iowa and lost New Hampshire, Arizona and Delaware. He then won eight of eight primaries on a single Tuesday. When I asked a Dole adviser how this had happened, he said it was “Dole Inc.” repelling outsiders seeking the nomination: Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan.
Viewing Republican presidential campaigns through this lens shows the corporate party selecting one candidate — and invariably nominating him. It has nothing to do with ideology. After the establishment fiercely opposed Ronald Reagan as an extremist in 1976, he became “Reagan Inc.” in 1980. The most vivid instance was the coalition’s early embrace for 2000 of “George W. Bush Inc.,” though he had little to commend him apart from his name.
This has been a pattern that the GOP has seemed to follow since the 1960s. Nixon was the establishment candidate in 1968, Ford had that role as the incumbent in 1976, the first President Bush in 1988 and 1992, and (the biggest mistake of all some would argue) Bob Dole in 1996. With the exception of Reagan in 1980, these establishment candidates always seem to come from the Rockefeller wing of the party, which isn’t surprising if you accept Novak’s analysis that it is largely the party’s corporate donors who rally behind the candidate they approve of.
Captain Ed, though, thinks that Novak’s argument about McCain’s inevitability ignores several facts about McCain that set him apart from previous nominees:
The previous corporate choices, if they can truly be known as such, had one particular quality even above their political moderation: consistency. No one doubted where Dole or Ford or even Bush stood, and they performed pretty much as expected. Corporate thinkers value that above almost all else. McCain, on the other hand, has spent the last several years nurturing his reputation as a maverick. He has waffled on tax cuts, opposing them for most of the time since they got enacted in 2002-3 until deciding to run for President. He has been unreliable on judicial nominations, and reliably bad on free speech.
All true, but if McCain pulls ahead in fundraising and otherwise starts to look like the frontrunner, then these “corporate” forces will likely coalesce behind him.
