McCain Moves To The Right – And Loses Independents?
Pollster Charlie Cook has an interesting piece up on the narrowing gap between McCain and Hillary as McCain attempts to woo the right:
The $64,000 question is how much McCain might jeopardize his potential general election support among Democrats and independents by bonding so publicly with the Right, including on his upcoming trip to Lynchburg, Va., to deliver the commencement address at the Rev.Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
In two Cook Political Report/RT Strategies polls – one taken in late February and the other in early April – McCain received 18 percent of the selfidentified “liberal” vote when matched up against Clinton. But will one in five liberals still support McCain if he continues to assiduously court conservatives?
In the latest Cook/RT Strategies poll, which was conducted April 6-9 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent, McCain’s lead over Clinton among all adults dropped from 10 points (47 percent to 37 percent) to 5 points. Among registered voters, it dropped from 12 points (48 percent to 36 percent) to 9 points (46 percent to 37 percent).
While these shifts aren’t huge, the McCain-versus-Clinton spread should be watched closely in coming months: Will it remain in the 10-15-point range that most polls have found in recent months, or will McCain’s average advantage be only in single digits?
And polls should gradually show whether McCain can gain enough ground among Republicans and conservatives to offset defections from Democrats, liberals, and even moderates.
That’s still a substantial lead with registered voters, but it’s an interesting dynamic, to be sure…
McCain has the problem that Reagan solved so well: win the Party’s nomination by heading off to the Right, while winning the general election by attracting Independents.
Doesn’t Hillary have the same problem?
Their trips back to the middle, after the primary season is finished, will be easier because that is where they are (perceived to be) from.
Actually, while I think Hillary is in fact fairly moderate, or at least she’s proved to be so during her senate career so far, I think most polls show people still perceiving her as being pretty liberal, fairly or unfairly. So if McCain tacks back to the middle in the general election, it might seem like he’s going back home. If Hillary does, voters might think she’s just being cynical.
Perhaps by the time 2008 comes around, she’ll have convinced enough people that she’s not George McGovern in a pantsuit and this won’t be an issue. Of course, then it will be interesting to see if the fringier folks on the left reject her because of that.
I dunno, it feels like one flip-flop too many. If McCain goes from conservative to moderate to conservative to moderate all within a decade-long time span, doesn’t he cease to stand for anything other than the unquenchable desire to be president?
McCain’s only pull with conservatives right now is that he’s electable, but his move to the right is causing him to jettison any Democrat support he may have had and, along with his continued lukewarm support among Republicans, McCain is finding himself within single digits of the likely Democratic nominee. If the best McCain can do against Hillary is a modest five-point win, many conservatives will see little point in embracing the senator over various other candidates who have been more loyal to the party and who could attain a comparable margin of victory.