PERRspectives: Adviser Black: McCain "Slightly Right of Center"

May 10, 2008

Adviser Black: McCain "Slightly Right of Center"

Just in case you needed any more evidence that John McCain is planning to run away from his party and president in the November election, senior adviser Charlie Black put any doubts to rest this weekend. In Sunday's New York Times, Black described McCain, as "slightly right-of-center." Apparently, with the Republican nomination now safely secured, McCain the self-proclaimed "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution" is trying to reverse the hard right turn he took in the GOP primaries.

In the Times piece on McCain and Obama strategies for the fall campaign, the GOP lobbyist extraordinaire and enthusiastic Moonie Black made it clear his man would be undergoing an extreme makeover, faux moderate edition.

Mr. McCain's advisers said they would present him as a senator who frequently stepped across the aisle, while portraying Mr. Obama as a down-the-line Democratic voter who is ideologically out of touch with much of the country.
"We believe America is still a slightly right-of-center country, and that is what McCain is," said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. "If you look at Obama's base and his record, he is a pretty conventional liberal."

Sadly, Black's centrist label for the supposed maverick is wishful thinking belied by McCain's voting record and policy positions. And that rebranding comes after months of John McCain's efforts to sell himself as a "true conservative" to right-wing Republican primary voters.

During the height of his battle with Mitt Romney to capture the GOP nomination, John McCain was desperate to claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan and assuage social conservatives worried about his commitment to their cause. The result was an ad titled, "True Conservative" which McCain campaign ran heading into the decisive Super Tuesday primaries in early February:

McCain: "I enlisted as a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution."
Announcer: "Guided by strong conservative principles, he'll cut wasteful spending and keep taxes low. A proud social conservative who will never waver. The leadership and experience to call for the surge strategy in Iraq that is working. John McCain: The true conservative. Ready to be commander-in-chief on day one."

McCain's conservative street cred is backed up by his record in the Senate. Congressional Quarterly gave McCain a 90% score for "party unity," making him an even more reliable GOP water-carrier than fellow Arizonan John Kyl, the #2 ranking Republican in the Senate. The Washington Post similarly gave him a score of 88.3%, tying him with South Carolina's Lindsey Graham ahead of 29 other Senate Republicans.

Analyzing his Senate voting record since 1999, the Arizona Republic found that John McCain rarely strayed from the Republican Party line. As the Republic details, when the going got tough, McCain got in line. When it mattered most in the closest votes, Senator McCain since 1999 sided with his GOP colleagues. As it turns out, McCain "almost never thwarted his party's objectives." It is for good reason that Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, concluded:

"He is a conservative who votes conservative on most issues. By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate."

And it's no wonder that back on January 23, 2008, Charlie Black confidently predicted that movement conservatives would be firmly in the McCain fold once he secured the nomination:

"All these conservative leaders will be for him in two weeks when we lock up the nomination."

Just in case, Black insisted, President Bush is "a political asset" for McCain in his bid to reassure the Republican right. To be sure, McCain's embrace of virtually the entire Bush agenda helped. As his quest for the GOP nomination heated up, McCain veered hard to the right in an effort to appease his party's conservative base. As I noted last month, McCain changed positions on:

The Bush tax cuts, Jerry Falwell and the Christian right, immigration reform, overturning Roe v. Wade, whether Justice Samuel Alito is a model for the Supreme Court, and France-bashing, just to name a few.

But that was then, this is now. Given the staggering unpopularity of his party's platform and president, John McCain is now running away from both. John McCain needed to be a "true conservative" to win the Republican nomination. To win the White House, he now needs to be "slightly right of center." At least, that is, according to Charlie Black.

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