{"id":874,"date":"2007-11-19T00:04:11","date_gmt":"2007-11-19T00:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/11\/the-case-for-mccain.html"},"modified":"2007-11-19T00:04:11","modified_gmt":"2007-11-19T00:04:11","slug":"the-case-for-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/11\/the-case-for-mccain.html","title":{"rendered":"The case for McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan’s very smart case<\/a> for McCain:<\/p>\n

McCain offers the Republicans a way to support a still unpopular war and maintain a scintilla of credibility on national security. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson have all punted on the issue of Iraq to some degree or other in the campaign so far. None will directly attack President George Bush, since he is still a semi-religious figure among the Republican base. All support the surge for now, but none has detailed what they would do next year, let alone the first year of their own potential presidency. We know Giuliani wants to bomb Iran. But we know little else.
\nWhich leaves McCain. Yes, he\u2019s still out there. His disappointing past six months have had one beneficial effect: he has stopped being too cautious, resumed his habit of talking nonstop to any hack within hearing range, and put his mother on television to have a go at Romney.
\nI loved his response to the somewhat staggering news that the Christian right\u2019s Pat Robertson had now joined Giuliani\u2019s campaign: \u201cI\u2019m speechless.\u201d Well, when two oddballs gather together \u2013 one who blamed feminists and gays for causing 9\/11, the other who hounded ferret owners as mayor of New York City \u2013 silence is often golden. McCain has even attacked Senator Hillary Clinton for securing federal funds for a Woodstock museum. It may be 2007, but you can still run against hippies.
\nMcCain, however, looks better not just because he has stuck to his pro-war position while acknowledging painful reality, but because the others have increasingly looked so unnerving. Romney\u2019s plastic demeanour and say-anything style have not caught on outside the first two states where he has poured millions of his own money into blanket television advertising. Thompson has yet to seem a viable president. Giuliani\u2019s bizarre personal quirks and all-purpose, random hawkishness do not calm nerves in a very unstable world. Fellow Republican candidate Mike Huckabee is a jovial inheritor of Bush\u2019s spend-like-Jesus conservatism, but has zero foreign policy experience. And so . . . we come back to McCain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan’s very smart case for McCain: McCain offers the Republicans a way to support a still unpopular war and maintain a scintilla of credibility on national security. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson have all punted on the issue of Iraq to some degree or other in the campaign so far. None will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nThe case for McCain - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/11\/the-case-for-mccain.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The case for McCain - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Andrew Sullivan’s very smart case for McCain: McCain offers the Republicans a way to support a still unpopular war and maintain a scintilla of credibility on national security. 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Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson have all punted on the issue of Iraq to some degree or other in the campaign so far. 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