[評論] Party clashers

[swallow73 (swallow73)]

雖然Tomasky認為保守派對McCain頗有敵意,McCain目前
也離過半門檻很遠,保守派可能在Super Tuesday前想出辦法
打倒McCain,不過目前看不出保守派有多少機會阻止McCain.
特別是Giuliani將在明天公開支持McCain,使McCain在大州
的優勢變得更加不可能被趕上.
如果Mike Huckabee願意退選跟Romney合體大戰McCain
應該還很有看頭.Huckabee在南方的實力頗強,根據這篇不
甚精確的分析:http://0rz.tw/053C1 ,Huckabee在Super
Tuesday後甚至可以掌握比Romney還多的黨代表.(即使普選
票比較少)

可惜Huckabee目前沒有退選的打算,保守派力量分散開來對
抗團結的McCain-Giuliani陣線,要逆轉應該是頗有難度.

Party clashers
US elections 2008: John McCain's narrow Florida win sets up a confrontation
between Republican voters and the leaders of the conservative establishment

Michael Tomasky
http://0rz.tw/493CL
The Guaridain
Comment is free

OK, I give up.

I thought coming into the Florida Republican primary that if John McCain won,
which he has, that he would now be the crystal-clear front-runner for the GOP
nomination. Well, he's the front-runner all right. But clear?

In many ways, the nature of his win is impressive. It's a narrow win - but he
was outspent by Mitt Romney by a factor of eight-to-one. It's a narrow win -
but it was a state in which only Republicans could vote, so McCain proved
that he could beat a candidate who advertised himself as a true conservative
(Romney) without the help of the independent voters to whom he has
demonstrated appeal.

So the McCain win is something. It should ensure that enough contributions
will roll in to enable him to mount strong campaigns in the February 5
states, where he's already the favourite in the large ones. It might, they're
saying on television tonight, get him a quick endorsement from Rudy Giuliani.
The ex-mayor flamed out, all right, but he got enough votes - and has enough
of a base in New York, New Jersey and California - for an endorsement from
him to matter.

By the way, I can't help but think of the quo that Giuliani might be asking
for in return for the quid of his backing. Attorney general? A supreme court
seat? Vice president? Giuliani actually makes sense as McCain's vice
president - it would make McCain quasi-competitive in states he wouldn't
otherwise be against a Democrat. I remind my readers both friendly and
hostile of the funniest, and truest, thing Al Sharpton ever said, way back in
1997: Whoever takes Giuliani as his vice president had "better hire a food
taster".

But in a year like this, we shouldn't be quite ready to say that McCain's win
tonight, impressive as it is, settles things. What McCain still faces, in
spite of his series of wins among voters, is broad hostility among what we
might call Official Conservatives with a big C.

These conservatives would prefer Romney. They don't have as much leverage as
the voters, but the leverage they do have rests in the delegate count.

We're now at that phase, in both parties, when it's time to start counting
delegates and trying to picture when the winner might pass the delegate
threshold. You may be thinking that rhythmically, we should be getting near
that point? No chance; McCain is still a long way away from hitting that.
Fully 1,191 are needed for the nomination. Even with his Florida win, he
hasn't even hit 100 yet. There's a long, long way to go.

That means that the Official Conservatives who hate McCain still have time to
scheme against him. But the walls are closing in on them. They need to make
Romney a more viable candidate - if he couldn't win this state with an
eight-to-one spending advantage, he's going to have trouble in lots of
places. They need to persuade Mike Huckabee to get out of Romney's way and
quit stealing votes from Romney - something Huckabee, in his concession
speech, did not sound inclined to do.

The next seven days will present a vertiginous scenario on the Republican
side. On the one hand, McCain will be cruising toward anointment because he's
the odds-on winner in the big February 5 states. On the other, the leaders in
the conservative establishment who hate him will be meeting and emailing and
calling and asking: who will rid us of this meddlesome beast?

The smart money is probably on the voters, who don't seem to have gotten the
message from Washington that they're supposed to despise McCain. But hatred
is a strong motivator, and I wouldn't count the despisers out just yet.

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推 ncyc:跟摩門教徒羅姆尼合作，保守派會答應嗎？
→ swallow73:就像達爾如果不肯跟悟空合體,就只好等著被普烏打倒了
→ swallow73:讓McCain獲勝還是跟財力雄厚,化妝成保守派成功,得到不少
→ swallow73:保守選民支持的Romney合作,兩種總得選一樣
推 ncyc:保守派為何不喜歡麥坎呢？
推 yeh67:羅姆尼 哈佛大學法學學士和工商管理碩士