Poor McCain. He’s stuck between a Bush and a hard place.
While Senator McCain enjoyed a landslide victory in the Republican primary, he is going to have an incredibly hard time convincing people to vote for him come November. The people who scream for change in Washington think he has aligned himself too closely to the sitting President. The people who support the sitting President say that McCain is too liberal and is not aligned closely enough to the sitting President. It looks like no matter what he does, people are ready to throw rocks at him.
The largest of McCain’s problems comes from the split in his own party. A lot of prominent members of the Republican party are openly vilifying the current administration. These voters are saying that the second George W. Bush term has been disastrous and they want a candidate who is as different from him as they can find. Many of the people who supported George W. Bush so vehemently in 2004 have run away saying, “I’d rather be a Democrat!”
Meanwhile, there are just enough staunchly (and stubbornly) uber-conservative voters still standing behind George W. Bush to make McCain realize that by separating himself from the current President he would lose one of his most powerful and persuasive (some might say bullying) voting blocs.
When he ran against George W. Bush, McCain did what he could to prove that he was different from his opposing candidate. Now that he’s won the 2008 candidacy, should he turn a complete 180 and align himself completely with the current President’s agenda? If he does, when will the cries of “he’s a flip flopper!” begin? Will the Swift Boat folks publish a book condemning his Vietnam record the way they did for Kerry?
What is a presidential candidate to do?
