Ron Paul, Romney refugees: Anyone but McCain?
by Mark Silva and updated with reader comments
This is the winter of discontent for a lot of voters, particularly conservative Republicans, who are watching their party rally around a candidate they cannot accept.
For Sen. John McCain, the alienation of many conservatives for many reasons -- including anti-war Republicans who had rallied to Texas Rep. Ron Paul's opposition to the war, and remain concerned about McCain's commitment to the war -- the challenge will become reaching into the middle of the American voters' hearts and pulling enough moderate Republicans, independent voters and swing-voting Democrats to offset his anemic base of conservative Republican support. Surely many of those disaffected will vote in November, but perhaps for a third-party candidate. Or perhaps many will simply sit it out.
The problem for McCain remains those anti-war Republicans and those Republicans carting signs around the halls of the Conservative Action Political Convention in Washington this weekend: "McCain=Amnesty.'' The combined albatross of immigration reform and the war represents a lot of baggage to carry into a general election in November in which Democrats will seek a renewed commitment to immigration reform and promises of ending the war.
Even after Republican Mitt Romney had dropped out of the race this week, people assembled for the CPAC continued voting for him in the straw-poll conducted there. Three-quarters of the straw-poll ballots were cast after Romney's announcement at the convention, according to CPAC. And, among all 1,558 ballots cast, 34 percent were cast for Romney, 33 percent for McCain, 12 percent for Mike Huckabee and 12 percent for Ron Paul.
Before Romney's withdrawal, 44 percent of the straw ballots cast at the convention were going his way. After his withdrawal, 32 percent still were going his way. So much for McCain's appeal to a convention that he had skipped last year, with apologies for his absence.
There are a lot of voters out there like "Don,'' who weighed in at the Swamp this morning on the question of where voters will go once Ron Paul is out of the race:
"The MSM can embrace McCain now, but the victory will be as ashes in their mouths,'' writes Don. "Now they will trot out the folks from the conservative PR firm hired by McCain in order to tell us, if effect, that our choices now are "his way or the highway". No thanks. I will vote 3rd party or stay home before being a party to sacrificing more lives to ill-advised foreign military adventures.''