October 29, 2008
Republican civil war breaks out behind John McCain
Tom Baldwin
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Even in the midst of a final bombardment in the battle for the White House the
sound of gunfire can be heard coming from behind Republican lines, presaging a
protracted and bitter civil war.
A party that only four years ago appeared so disciplined and dominant as it
delivered President Bush a second term is now divided in the face of an
anticipated rout that may give Democrats unfettered power across Washington.
Mr Bush's legacy — unfinished wars, a tainted reputation for competence, record
high spending, a global economic crisis and the effective nationalisation of
the financial system — have shaken loose the ideological cement that once bound
the Republican party together.
This has left national security realists at odds with “neocon” hawks over Iraq,
fiscal conservatives railing against the bailout of Wall Street, and the
Religious right — “theo-cons” — skirmishing with the party leadership over what
it regards as a too-timid approach on issues such as abortion, civil
partnerships and illegal immigration.
Such fractures in the coalition, apparent in a primary campaign which John
McCain won despite securing significantly less than half the vote, have become
infected with gangrene during the presidential election.
Threatened with open revolt if he picked the independent Democrat Joe Lieberman
as his running-mate, Mr McCain hoped to galvanise his party by choosing Sarah
Palin. The result has been a dysfunctional campaign.
Some of his own advisers say that she is more intent on positioning herself for
the next presidential race than fighting this one. Her defenders point out that
it is she who pulls the crowds, not him, and suggest that Mrs Palin has been
ill-served - even betrayed — by Mr McCain's team.
She is increasingly giving voice to the dissent in Republican ranks,
criticising the decisions to pull the campaign out of Michigan and to avoid
making racially combustible attacks on Barack Obama over his links with the
Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
When she went to Iowa at the weekend, it may well have been significant that
she hinted at support for ethanol subsidies which are opposed by Mr McCain but
will put her in good stead when the state kicks off the presidential nominating
process in 2012.
There is little doubt that as a populist pitbull champion of culturally
conservative issues she excites core Republicans in a way that Mr McCain
cannot, not least because the party has moved decisively to the Right over the
past two decades. Mrs Palin is also coming to symbolise a fresh rift in the
party between the base and the Establishment.
The list of Republicans backing Mr Obama includes not only centrist figures
such as General Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, but also Ken
Adelman — a leading neocon who advised Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq and introduced
Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish former Deputy
Defence Secretary.
Mr Adelman admits to being startled at finding himself in Democrat ranks,
attributing his defection to doubts about Mr McCain's temperament and his
“appalling lack of judgment” in picking Mrs Palin. He told The New Yorker
magazine: “I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the
arms-control agency.”
Christopher Buckley, whose father helped to found the modern conservative
movement, has also swallowed his right-wing principles to back Mr Obama,
contrasting the Democrat's “first-class intellect” with Mr McCain's decision to
pluck Mrs Palin from the Alaskan wilderness. “What on Earth can he have been
thinking?” he asked.
Mrs Palin promises to eschew the traditional hierachy even as she hints at
having a very big part in the Republicans' future. “I would love to promote the
party ideals if we're going to live out the ideals and maybe allow other
American voters to understand what the principles of the party are,” she told
The Weekly Standard magazine. “We've got to be assured we have enough people in
the party who will live out those ideals and it's not just rhetoric. Otherwise,
I'd be wasting my time.”
At one recent rally she said: “We believe that the best of America is not all
in Washington, DC. We believe that the best of America is in these small towns
that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the
real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very
pro-America areas of this great nation.”
Her problem is that with polls suggesting that North Carolina, Virginia and
tracts of the Rocky Mountain West are heading into Mr Obama's columns, “real
America” may no longer be big enough to elect a Republican president.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5033892.ece
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