Sunday, November 25, 2007
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McCain's Enviro Mail in NH
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Posted by:
Patrick Ruffini at
6:17 PM
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This is going to sound crazy, but I've got a simple message for my friends in the Rudy, Mitt, Fred, and Huck camps: watch your backs for John McCain.
I'm the last person to write a piece of McCain puffery, but crazy-like-a-fox stuff like this is pushing me over the edge:
Examine these mail pieces sent to New Hampshire households, and you'll see that McCain is not only pushing his environmental credentials -- he's positioning himself to the left on the issue. The piece quotes the Natural Resources Defense Council singing the Arizonan's praises, along with Republicans for Environmental Protection -- a group that -- let's not kid ourselves -- borrows straight from the Ann Stone/Main Street playbook.
The piece also implies that McCain has been alone among the Presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican, in leading the way on climate change legislation.
This is McCain 1.0, going back to the well of New Hampshire independents who were so generous with their votes last time. The 2000 primary showed how it could work. This time, McCain only needs a fraction of the independents he got last time to make the same dramatic impact.
This development is something to be taken seriously. McCain only works as a stealth candidate. Positions like these are what killed his frontrunner status. But if he can sneak up on you from the back of the pack...
The electorate has not learned one bad new thing about John McCain in five months. No one has even bothered attacking him. The thick oppo books on him have scarcely been cracked. The anti-McCain army that had all but claimed victory this summer has demobilized. At the same time he remains extremely well known. As a result, his campaign has been touting poll numbers showing him as the most electable Republican against Hillary Clinton. That's what happens when you're popular and people refuse to attack you. It's the position Rudy was in a year ago, when no one took him seriously.
What happens to Rudy Giuliani if McCain edges him out in New Hampshire? What happens if the winners of the first two major nominating contests are Huckabee and McCain?
It seems to me that Rudy especially needs to start thinking about popping the McCain bubble. McCain remains the longest of long shots for the nomination, but he could play the homewrecker role, severing Rudy from his ascendancy with the center-right voters he needs to win.
Closing thought: If a vote for Huckabee is a vote for Rudy, there could also be some strange McCain-Romney alliance brewing wherein McCain is the instrument Romney uses to disqualify Rudy. MIA in all this is Fred.
(Hat tip to the McCain-friendly GreenMountainPolitics1 blog.)
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