McCain and "the base"

NPR was all over the "how did the McCain campaign implode so quickly" story. Throughout the story, they repeated a couple of times the notion that McCain was "the prohibitive favorite" at the start of this thing. I don't believe that was true, at least if you're talking about actual primary voters. The likely GOP voters still hated McCain for his opposition to George W. Bush in 2000, McCain-Feingold, and his full-throated (though bogus) opposition to the president on torture, the Geneva Conventions, etc. And their hatred was refreshed by his support for the Immigration bill.

The only group for whom McCain was "the prohibitive favorite" were the reporters and pundits covering his campaign.

But worst of all in the NPR report was the repetition of the claim that McCain's campaign fell apart because of his embrace of "an unpopular war."

That's seriously untrue, as Greenwald expains.

This is wrong on several levels, and independently, it is a counter-productive theme to be peddling. In fact, the opposite is true: no presidential candidate can possibly hope to win the GOP nomination unless he fervently supports the war in Iraq.

It is not support for the Iraq war which dooms a GOP presidential candidacy, but the opposite: any real questioning of the wisdom of the war or any agitating for withdrawal or opposition to Bush's commitment would immediately and single-handedly destroy the viability of a GOP candidacy. Ask Ron Paul, or Chuck Hagel, or even Sam Brownback, whose flagging campaign has triggered the wrath of the base despite his radical social conservativism as a result of his ongoing questioning of Bush's Iraq policy.

The war in Iraq remains popular with the GOP base. They want to stay and keep waging war. They would immediately turn against anyone who advocated withdrawal or even questioned the wisdom of staying. The Republican Party continues to be the Party of the Iraq War, and -- directly contrary to the conventional wisdom that is arising -- loyal support for the Iraq War is an absolute pre-requisite for winning the nomination.

In fact, the only praise McCain has received over the last several months from the GOP's base is due to his unwavering support for the war. McCain's candidacy is failing not because of excessive support for the Right's war in Iraq; that was the only thing keeping it afloat. Instead, it is due to his excessive deviation from the Right's mandated views -- on torture, on McCain-Feingold, and especially on immigration.

To claim that McCain's unapologetic support of the Iraq War is what destroyed his candidacy is to misapprehend completely the nature of the Republican Party base. What they demand, first and foremost, is unwavering loyalty to the Cause, and that Cause is shaped predominantly by Middle East militarism, beginning with Iraq.

Dispositive proof of how false is this new conventional wisdom comes in the form of the positions of the other leading GOP candidates, who are at least as supportive as McCain is of Bush's policy in Iraq, if not more so. This, for instance, is what Fred Thompson said in March when interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News:

WALLACE: What would you do now in Iraq?

THOMPSON: I would do essentially what the president's doing.