Governor Sanford urges we bite the McCain sandwich before securing our condiments. No deal.
Interesting. Well-liked South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has endorsed McCain and urges other conservative holdouts to do so as well:
The process of iron sharpening iron is good for the GOP. But now, I believe, the time has passed for focusing on what divides us.
At Hot Air, Captain Ed (who's doing a great job and always has a take worth reading) builds on Sanford's column to argue persuasively for McCain's fiscal conservatism. Okay, he's a fiscal conservative. Ed also says that the stakes leave "little room for principled apathy". Fine, so what's McCain going to do about it to get me fired up? See, where I disagree with Ed is that we should rush out to support McCain right now. As I said a while back*:
It's his move, after all. We are conservatives are locked in what Anwyn calls a very ugly game of chicken with McCain. But it's an unusual game of chicken, because we don't have to make our move until after he makes most of his, and if we're smart, we won't. He has several things he can do to enlist conservative support, meaningful things, not just buttering our muffins with pleasant speeches. We conservatives only have to make one move, and that's voting in the general election. He has several moves he has to make, includingI'm glad to see there is some support for this view in the Hot Air comments. I'm going to need binding and costly commitments from McCain to do conservative things, not just rhetoric about how conservative he is. So far he's missed a few chances to win me over; he could have condemned the failed virtual fence and reiterated his (total b.s.) promise to actually build the real fence, for example. Or fired Juan Hernandez. Or said something about Planned Parenthood needing to stop getting government money.A: picking a running mate, and
B: reacting to the Democratic proposal to re-introduce the Shamnesty bill. ... If he's smart he'll take this as an opportunity to condemn this bill and Amnesty.If we play it cool and string him along, he won't be able to take us for granted. But whatever you do, I'll say again, don't say you've made up your mind. Make sure he hears there's a chance he can win conservatives over with some conservative personnel and policy. Otherwise he won't bother trying to please us, if he thinks he can't please us, or if he thinks we're in his back pocket and he doesn't need to try.
I think McCain is well-placed to win. Maybe he thinks he can win it without the base, but how he's going to pay for that, I'm not sure. I hope those Europeans he's talking to are ready to open their vaults for a pro-war conservative, while we go all out for Congressional races.
McCain's job description includes "party leader". He'll be in sales as well as management. If you are in sales, and you have a huge client whose orders you count on, you should be there every day taking their executives out to dinner, asking about their requirements, and maintaining that relationship. And you should be busting your butt every day to fill orders for that client and keep them happy. Want to expand your business and get some new clients? Fine, but keep the big orders happy. If the conservative base is really his best client and such a natural fit, he needs to build on that relationship and not take it for granted. Just telling us how great McCain is doesn't build the partnership at all. DO SOMETHING CONSERVATIVE. Make a headline. Take some flack.
Unless you really think you don't need us.
*I'm sorry to be Johnny One-Note about this idea, and I imagine regular readers are saying , duh, we heard you the last five dozen times, score some condiments, got it. I'm bringing it up here because of Sanford's column urging that we fall in line. I don't hold it against Sanford and from what I hear he'd make a fine VP--but it's not in conservatives' interest to jump on the bandwagon yet.
UPDATE: This guy recognizes that there is a problem with motivating the base, though I don't think I agree with his solution. Not sure why--maybe it has to do with Jindal's lack of experience--but it just doesn't feel right.