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McCain Reaches Out to Conservatives -- to Slap Them Down
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
July 6, 2008
With a contentious presidential campaign ahead, McCain campaign activists have been exhorting fellow Arizona Republicans to help out with the McCain campaign. They want Republican activists to work phone banks and provide other assistance, including financial, to help build McCain's support in battleground states. With all of this work to do, many McCain activists have also been trying to reach out to conservative Republicans in Arizona-- to defeat them.
Russell Pearce, an icon in the fight against the illegal alien invasion of Arizona, is being challenged in the Legislative District (LD) 18 State Senate Republican primary. His challenger is a Chamber of Commerce Republican candidate more amenable to McCain policies concerning illegal aliens. The situation is so transparent that even the Maricopa County Republican Party Executive Guidance Committee (EGC) voted almost unanimously to endorse Mr. Pearce in the primary. Not only is Mr. Pearce being challenged for the Senate nomination, he is even being challenged in the Precinct Committeeman (PC) election in his precinct.
A glaring example of McCain activists being more focused on bashing conservatives than courting them and trying to focus on defeating Democrats this fall is the Precinct Committeemen elections in LD 11. Rob Haney, the Chairman of the LD 11 Republican Committee, is a conservative Republican who has been a McCain critic. Two years ago, Mr. Haney was challenged by McCain activists who tried to take over LD 11 and failed. This year, they are trying harder. There are contested Republican PC races in 46 precincts in LD 11. Considering that it is a struggle to fill these slots at all in most LDs, this is, even at face value, not likely to be a case of Republicans just spontaneously deciding to get more involved in politics. In LD 11, there are 350 people running for 255 available PC positions in the contested precincts. These people will be more focused on their own election than helping McCain or any other Republican during the primary season.
This is clearly a play for control of the Maricopa County and State Republican Party organizations. Conservative leadership in LD 11 has resulted in more conservative influence on the County and State party leadership. Because of the number of PCs in LD 11, the LD 11 chairman has a decisive influence on election of Maricopa Country Republican Party leaders and has tremendous influence, through state committeemen, on the election of State Republican Party leaders. Randy Pullen was elected State Party Chairman by 4 votes. This was in the face of concerted opposition from the entire Republican Congressional delegation, Big Business Republicans (who threatened to withhold their money if Mr. Pullen was elected), and McCain activists. It could never have happened without conservative leadership provided by Rob Haney in LD 11.
There is no doubt that John McCain and his closest supporters have reason to not like Rob Haney and other conservative Republicans. However, this is a reflection on the seriousness of McCain's presidential candidacy. If the McCain campaign really wants to win the presidency rather than just control the Maricopa County and Arizona Republican Party organizations, then it should try to court conservatives rather than treat them as a more serious threat than Democrats. The net effect of these efforts is to alienate conservative Republicans from the McCain campaign and to distract all Republicans from defeating Democrats. If this is how John McCain woos conservative Republicans, it is easy to see why they are apprehensive about working with him.
Copyright 2008 GOPUSA News. All rights reserved.
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