Elaboration, or, Another Thousand Words

So some folks want to know why I think McCain is going to have a turnout issue.* Here we have to go back in time a bit…

Remember the CPAC speeches right after the Super Tuesday primaries? When Mitt Romney dropped the bombshell that he was pulling out and shocked a crowd predisposed to hate McCain for insufficient fidelity to contemporary conservatism? As of that date – right after Super Tuesday – McCain had racked up a little over 5 million primary votes from Iowa to February 5. However, that adds up to 39.8% of the total votes cast – which means that by the time the race was conceded to McCain, he was the preferred candidate of barely 2 in 5 Republican primary voters. And the rest were a mixed bag – they might be holy rollers for Huckabee, or part of the corporate cult of Multiple-Choice Mitt, or national-security Giuliani obsessives, or…well, I’m sure somebody voted for Fred Thompson.

Long story short: McCain was far and away NOT the preferred candidate of the GOP. In fact, through Super Tuesday, he broke 50% in a Republican primary in only 3 states – all in the Northeast. A lot of Republican primaries only award delegates to the candidate who finishes first, or to the top two or three with 3/4 or more of the delegates going to the first-place finisher. After finishing on the low side of a virtual 3rd place tie in Iowa, McCain won eleven such states by midnight on Feb. 5, with an average of 43% of the vote in those states.

43% of the votes and nearly 100% of the delegates. That – coupled with the undying love of the entire TV-news punditocracy – is how somebody can finish fourth in Iowa and be the nominee 5 weeks later.

“But won’t the GOP just fall in line?” you cry plaintively. The crocodile tears of coke-whores to the contrary, nobody in the GOP was ever – ever – going to pull the lever for Hillary Clinton over John McCain. The risk was not defection, but desertion – and it still is, especially in the GOP’s base: the Deep South.

Three names keep coming up as the frontrunners for the VP spot on the red team: Romney, Jindal, and Crist. These are all bad options in the South. Romney hasn’t gotten any less Mormon since February, last I checked. Bobby Jindal is young, bright, and a conservative stalwart, but he also might look way too young while simultaneously making McCain look way too old – and the troglodytes of the old Confederacy will not take kindly to a brown-skinned Catholic whose real first name is Piyush, even if he was a Rhodes Scholar. Hell, especially if he was a Rhodes Scholar. And Charlie Crist is experienced, popular, sharp as a tack, and divorced, with constant rumors floating around about his sexual orientation. If it weren’t for that, combined with his refusal to get involved in the Terri Schiavo debacle, he’d probably be on the ticket already.

Well, who else is out there? Who would the necks get cised for? Huckabee? Probably, but appointing an Arkansas preacher to the ticket isn’t going to win over a lot of independent voters. Okay, so why not go for Joe Lieberman and pitch the mythical “unity ticket?” Well, for one thing, the base isn’t going to go for a Jewish Democrat who’s against them on everything other than moral issues and the war in Iraq, and the independent voters aren’t going to go for somebody who if anything is even more gung-ho than McCain on staying in the Middle East forever. Try to double up the black vote and the women’s vote with Condi Rice? Don’t make me laugh. Well, what about…what about…hm…

And there lies the real tragedy of the Bush era for the GOP – in the first half of the first term, Bush completely strip-mined the Republican farm team to stock his own administration. Tommy Thompson, Christine Todd Whitman, Colin Powell for crying out loud – nearly everybody who could provide regional balance and ideological support to a McCain campaign, without alienating the base or the prospective independents, wound up with the stain of a 71% -disapproved administration on them. Look down the GOP’s bench, and you’ll see a whole lot of bare pine.

In the end, it won’t matter much who McCain picks. As Nixon said, your VP can’t help, only hurt. And ultimately, the nominee for the 2-spot won’t matter nearly as much as McCain’s real running mate: George W. Bush, who bequeathed him an anemic economy and a tarnished national brand. Since 1950, every incumbent party that couldn’t deliver at least 2.6% GDP growth in the Q2 of the election year gets beaten, and since 1960, the party of every incumbent whose approval rating is below 45% has lost.

On top of that, a lot of Republicans, if pressed, will admit what they really think: it’s been a disaster, and it’s only going to get worse in the short term, and this massive stinkbomb might as well land on the desk of a Democrat so they can try to pin it all on him in time for 2012. Call it dolchstoss, call it point-shaving, call it a remake of Blazing Saddles if you like – but plenty of doctrinaire conservatives would be thrilled to see McCain thrashed and discredited so that a true believer can show up in four years, claiming that we were this close to the land of milk and honey before Sheriff Obama rode into Red Rock and ruined everything.

And ultimately, that’s why I don’t think Republicans are going to be lined up out the door to vote this year: when you think you’re man’s going to get the beatdown, you really can’t be arsed to show up for it. And comparing the relative participation in the primaries…to paraphrase PJ O’Rourke, “people don’t get up at the crack of dawn and stand in line to vote for the status quo.”

I like John McCain a lot, but I wouldn’t take over running his campaign if you gave me the Washington Redskins plus cash.

* Nobody actually wants to know why I think this.