A little bird has told David Yepsen that social conservatives are not happy with Iowa Republican Party chairman Stew Iverson:
Religious conservatives, led by Iowa Christian Alliance president Steve Scheffler, are unhappy that more mainline party leaders, led by state GOP chairman Stewart Iverson, want to install some moderates and big donors, such as Marvin Pomerantz, as delegates to the national convention.
The social conservatives, who have never been very happy with McCain, want delegates to make sure that he selects a vice president who is acceptable to them and that the platform reflects their views on abortion, gay rights and immigration. […]
“If he doesn’t get a huge percentage of our people, John McCain can’t win,” Scheffler said. “It’s simple arithmetic.” In a letter to fellow religious conservatives, Scheffler wrote “there is a very serious threat to our issues and the pro-family agenda. The country club Republicans, which involves some of those in Republican Party leadership positions, are making a concentrated effort to dilute and rid the Republican Party of individuals like you who consider themselves social conservatives.”
His group held a meeting Tuesday night at a Windsor Heights church to plot strategy, and some party leaders showed up uninvited. Some spirited shouting matches ensued, according to several in attendance who said they were surprised at the profanity that got used inside a church building.
I don’t envy McCain the task of choosing a running mate. He needs to pick someone to shore up his support from conservatives, but which conservatives? In last week’s South Dakota primary, McCain only got 70 percent of the GOP vote, with 17 percent favoring Ron Paul and 7 percent favoring Mike Huckabee.
A running mate with a more libertarian bent might prevent Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr from taking a lot of votes from McCain in swing states like Nevada. But that wouldn’t help McCain with the religious conservatives who want one of their own on the ticket.
I think McCain can’t choose Huckabee, who is hated by business conservatives and joked at the recent National Rifle Association convention about someone pointing a gun at Barack Obama.
But if McCain chooses some other white southern evangelical as his VP candidate, he may alienate the Ron Paul wing of the party as well as some suburban swing voters.
Some have suggested he should choose a woman, like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, or a person of color, like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.
Use this as an open thread to discuss which VP candidate would give McCain the best chance of winning, and which VP candidate you’d most like to see him choose.
P.S.- An interesting tidbit from Yepsen’s column is that one of the names being floated as a possible replacement for Iverson is the Iowa blogosphere’s own Real Sporer, aka Polk County Republican chairman Ted Sporer.
UPDATE: At least 14 Republican members of Congress have so far refused to endorse McCain:
6 Comments
The GOP
What is a good way to discuss the GOP implosion with die-hard Republicans?
When I just graduated college and knew everything, I was a Reagan-inspired young Republican.
The values I held were: Financial responsibility/frugality, strong defense, strong foreign policy, and less government interference in the lives of people.
The funny thing is, I still believe all those things are important, so now I’m a Democrat. In my lifetime, the GOP have been the biggest spenders, peddlers of the worst kind of foreign policy, and now, thanks especially to the religious right’s strangle-hold on the GOP, we have Republicans wanting to make constitutional amendments to outlaw gay marriage, exclusively teach Creationism in schools, dis-allow all kinds of stem-cell research, allow warrantless wire-tapping and, in the case of Guantanamo prisoners, totally dismiss the writ of habeas corpus.
Yet I think that there are members of the GOP that still identify themselves the same way I used to, but because of party loyalty, fail to see its recklessness.
Now, when we’re dealing with national, state and local elections, how do we convince individuals loyal to the GOP that their party has abandon their values? What is the best possible venue to reach possible GOP converts to the Democrat’s “blue dog” movement?
johnnyschad Thu 12 Jun 11:07 PM
a former Republican wrote a diary about this
at Daily Kos, and I am going to put up a separate post linking to it, so that more people will see it.
desmoinesdem Fri 13 Jun 7:32 AM
Republican voters are not satisfied with the choice of John McCain
Twenty-five percent of Republicans voting in primaries in the last 3 months leading up to the conclusion of the primary season on June 3rd did not vote for John McCain (all major Republican candidates opposing John McCain withdrew from active campaigning after March 4th). This total did not include Republicans who voted in Democratic primaries and caucuses during that same period. It appears that up to a third of all Republican voters are not satisfied with the choice of John McCain.
mitch Sat 14 Jun 10:42 AM
So what do we do with/about them?
So many dissatisfied voters on the Republican side, it makes one wonder what (if anything) can be done to make them vote our way?
Or, do we hope for their vote? Do we simply hope that they don’t vote at all?
If we do want to attract them to our party, what can we do to persuade them to do so?
johnnyschad Sat 14 Jun 11:13 PM