Jennifer Rubin

The vast majority of voters have yet to cast their ballots. The presidential candidates are still campaigning. Ads are still running. But many Republican insiders and some members of the conservative punditocracy are already moving on. This election is, to many of them, passé.

David Frum boldly wrote off John McCain in a Washington Post column, instructing Republicans to abandon the McCain-Palin ticket to save floundering Senate and House candidates. Half of the McCain team is savaging Sarah Palin publicly. The other half is rushing to her defense. And many onlookers are touting her for 2012. Meanwhile, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is already booked for a visit to Iowa latter in November.  read more »

It was not too long ago that conservatives were salivating about the prospect of running against Barack Obama. They were certain he could easily be painted as a tax-and-spend liberal and that a right-of-center economic message presented by an non-doctrinaire Republican might be just what their party needed to pull off an upset. But then the economy melted and, worse, they discovered that they had nominated someone with no discernible economic vision.

Instead, they have watched in abject horror as McCain has presented a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, a heaping of me-too-ism and a non-stop diet of earmark minutiae. No wonder conservatives are depressed.  read more »

To call Governor Sarah Palin a “wild card” doesn’t begin to describe the drama and uncertainty that she has injected to the presidential race. Conservatives are elated and Democrats are worried, but we’re still finding out about her. No one is quite certain who she is and what she means for the race.

Democrats are hoping that her VP face-off against Senator Joe Biden is the Hindenburg of debates – a disaster of unmitigated proportions that sends the McCain ticket up in flames and rekindles concerns about John McCain’s judgment in selecting her and, indirectly, about his age and health. Republicans hope she’ll be a magic bullet to enliven the base, grab Hillary Clinton voters and nail down problematic Western states.  read more »

Hillary Clinton must be feeling John McCain's pain. For months and months she battled against Obamamania -- the lofty rhetoric, the swooning girls, the giant crowds and the massive turnout of young people. She tried to mock and belittle his language. (Who can forget the cringe-inducing "Change you can Xerox"?) She tried to raise doubts with the " 3 a.m." ad about Barack Obama's readiness to serve as commander in chief. But in the end she lost. Now McCain is trying his hand, using some of the very same arguments.

His Celebrity ad and a subsequent one dubbed the "Fan Club" go straight at Obama's mass-movement popularity.  read more »

Democrats are frustrated and Republicans are amazed: Barack Obama is not running away with the presidential race.

This is the presidential election, we have been told, that a Democrat can’t lose. The economy is in decline, with unemployment on the rise, President Bush’s approval ratings in the basement and virtually everyone convinced that America is “on the wrong track.” But the race remains tight, at least according to the polls.

The McCain camp would no doubt like to keep the focus of the coverage where it was for most of last week, on story lines far from the economy. The narratives were the ones they dictated: Obama’s presumptuousness, the success of the surge and the Democrats’ opposition to offshore drilling (which has popularity ratings approximately double that of Bush and Congress combined.  read more »

John McCain has a love-hate relationship with immigration reform. Or rather, he loves immigration reform but the conservative base hates it. That becomes apparent whenever he talks about it.

McCain and his conservative critics learned different lessons from the ill-fated attempt in 2007 to create a comprehensive immigration reform scheme. Conservative opponents of immigration reform interpreted the defeat of the Bush immigration plan as proof certain that opposition to legalization for illegal immigrants was a winning argument and that the public had embraced a border-security-only plan.

But McCain saw it differently. He survived a near-political death experience and then came back from the political grave to win the nomination of the G.  read more »

Justice Kennedy started the fireworks. As the deciding vote in the landmark Supreme Court decision which extended habeas corpus rights to detainees held at Guantánamo he not only made legal history -- he set off one of the heated debates of the presidential campaign. John McCain argued that Barack Obama is weak on terror. Obama argued that McCain is George Bush revisited.

If you redacted the names you might think it was 2004 and the candidates were George W. Bush and John Kerry. Back then Kerry accused his opponent of frittering away America’s reputation and disregarding the sensibilities of the international community. Bush derided Kerry for being soft on terror and holding America hostage to the “international test.  read more »

On the last night of primary season, both John McCain and Barack Obama spoke before national television audiences. The contrast was not a favorable one for McCain. It was even worse with the sound turned off.

The text of the speech was fine, even innovative in some places, as McCain laid out the beginnings of a reform agenda and began to question Obama’s New Politics bona fides. However, even sympathetic Republican observers noted McCain’s scene -- complete with a dreary suit, the glaring lights which washed out his complexion, and the pea-green background board -- were no match for the Xcel Center where Obama spoke to 25,000 screaming fans. Moreover, McCain does not talk in the inspiring manner and voice of his opponent. The contrast was painfully obvious.  read more »

There is a lot of bitterness out there. And it’s not coming from rural voters in Appalachia. There are legions of Hillary Clinton supporters—from Emily List activists to NARAL members to middle-aged female fans—who do not like the impending outcome of the Democratic primary.

They are downright angry about some of the language employed by the media to describe Clinton, and at what they see as the media’s undue haste in shoving her out of the race. And they don’t like some of the phrases tossed around by Barack Obama (“Sweetie”; “You’re likable enough, Hillary”) either.  read more »

Barack Obama has won the Democratic nomination. Magnanimous Democrats might applaud Hillary Clinton for energizing the party and helping to register millions of new voters, but her contribution was not merely to her own side.

Clinton’s failures and successes provide some invaluable lessons for John McCain as well—if he’s alert enough to heed them.  read more »

While the Democratic contenders are locked in battle, John McCain is roaming the countryside.

First was the Bio Tour—a sort of “this is your life” venture revisiting his personal highlights. Then came the “It’s Time for Action” tour, which wended through places his campaign describes as “communities that have been forgotten and left behind.”

This has spawned a certain amount of head-scratching in Republican circles. Why the soft sell during a period when the Democrats are making it so hard to get attention? And why go to places that never vote Republican anyway?  read more »

John McCain clearly sees his foreign policy experience and his personal biography as his strong suits in a potential match-up against Barack Obama. But he should get a debriefing from Hillary Clinton before he makes these the centerpiece of his campaign.

She, after all, has been spectacularly unsuccessful in convincing voters that “experience” trumps “change.” What makes McCain think he can do any better?

Yes, McCain might be tempted to bet that he can make a more compelling case about experience than Clinton has. That unlike Clinton, he really has been at the center of national security issues for a generation.  read more »

John McCain may be a victim of his own success. His early, unwavering support of the military surge in Iraq ended up helping him win the nomination. And as the situation has become more stable over there, it has removed the war from the front pages here, diminishing what was suppose to be McCain's big liability.

As a result, though, voters now overwhelmingly see other issues, specifically the economy, as higher priorities for the presidential contenders. And that creates several real challenges for McCain.  read more »

After beating the odds and capturing the Republican nomination, John McCain faces many challenges—raising money, staying in the headlines, calming the conservative base. But none is more daunting than the first major test of his executive skills: selecting a running mate.

In choosing a vice-presidential candidate, he’ll have to say “no thanks” to many well-meaning (but potentially disastrous) suggestions while staving off a new opportunity for mischief-making from his conservative foes.  read more »

John McCain has a new problem with some of his far-right critics. Having made his life miserable in the primary, they seem now intent on wrecking his general election effort before it even starts.

At a campaign event last week, radio talk-show host Bill Cunningham used Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, multiple times in his warm up act for McCain. The very next day the Tennessee Republican Party was back with the same stunt, sending out an official press release using Obama’s middle name.  read more »

It didn’t hurt John McCain during the Republican primary when he told Iowa voters to forget ethanol subsidies, or when he broke the news to Michigan voters that their auto industry jobs were not coming back. Just as it only boosted his reputation as the straightest talker in the Republican field when he turned down Florida Governor Charlie Crist on his catastrophic insurance fund, and told conservatives he still supported stem cell research, and admitted that he didn’t listen to Rush Limbaugh.

In spite of all of that, or perhaps because of it, he has wrapped up the nomination.

But he now finds himself in a new and foreign role: party leader and peacemaker. For the former navy cadet who finished nearly last in his class and first in demerits, and the senator who delighted in declaring that he would never win a “Miss Congeniality” award from his colleagues, this is new turf indeed.  read more »

Following John McCain’s victory in Florida last week the chorus of McCain-hatred grew louder on talk radio shows and on many conservative blogs.

Rush Limbaugh declared that McCain was not conservative and unacceptable as a candidate. Formerly respectable conservative figures took delight in criticizing McCain’s war record—yes, his war record—by tallying up the number of planes he had lost in combat. Ann Coulter and James Dobson, a social conservative leader and head of the Focus on the Family organization, declared McCain so indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton, the featured villainess in any conservative drama, that they would vote for her or stay home.

In short the McCain villifiers doubled down on their bet that they could derail McCain and lift their favored alternative, Mitt Romney, to victory.  read more »

Certain conservative opinion makers are not pleased.

Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, much of the roster at the National Review and many (but certainly not all) of their more conservative talk radio and blogger colleagues are beside themselves at the prospect that one of the Republican contenders they deemed to be “not conservative” might be nominated. As Mike Huckabee won Iowa, John McCain took South Carolina and Fred Thompson bestirred himself to draft a note withdrawing from the race, the fretting has intensified. How could the voters reject their advice?  read more »

Senator John McCain entered the presidential race facing a skeptical conservative base.

The list of grievances was long: He voted against the Bush tax cuts; he championed campaign finance reform and the ban on issue ads that are the lifeblood of conservative organizations; he advocated a sweeping, controversial plan for immigration reform; and he wanted to close Guantánamo and considered waterboarding to be torture.  read more »

A year ago the smart money was on John McCain to be the Republican nominee. He had the biggest and best campaign operation, plenty of George Bush’s supporters and moneymen and healthy poll numbers.

The combination of conservative fury over immigration reform and a financial train wreck in his campaign operation subsequently sent his poll numbers plunging and convinced pundits his candidacy was doomed.  read more »

Mitt Romney is panicked.

He has invested over $7 million to get his pro-family policy message out to the social conservatives who dominate the Iowa caucuses, and has held nearly 200 events there to solidify his support.

Then Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher with a sterling pro-life record, emerged. Rising to first in Iowa polls and second nationally, Mr. Huckabee threatened to become the alternative to Rudy Giuliani.

Based on the idea that he had lost his lead because of “the Mormon problem,” Mr. Romney devised The Speech to assuage religious-right voters that his religious values are basically the same as theirs. But his problem isn’t simply his religion.

Mr. Romney’s decline is rooted in something more basic than that.  read more »

Mitt Romney is panicked.

He has invested over $7 million to get his pro-family policy message out to the social conservatives who dominate the Iowa caucuses, and has held nearly 200 events there to solidify his support.

Then Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher with a sterling pro-life record, emerged. Rising to first in Iowa polls and second nationally, Mr. Huckabee threatened to become the alternative to Rudy Giuliani.  read more »

It’s getting increasingly hard for Romney to stick to the script about his record.  read more »

The most influential noncandidate in the Republican presidential primary is not Pat Robertson, Paul Weyrich or any other supposed kingmaker. It is Hillary Clinton.  read more »

Mr. Huckabee is a walking, talking advertisement for his opponents’ flaws.  read more »

On paper, Mitt Romney seems the most attractive G.O.P. contender. He has business and executive experience, a fine family and no connection to the “Washington mess.” Yet his chance to win the nomination is slipping away.  read more »

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is a wonderful illustration of the law of unintended consequences.  read more »

Mr. Giuliani could be buoyed in the primary by the contrast between him and an administration so bereft of administrative competence.  read more »

What, if anything, can the Bush administration do to improve the chances that a Republican will succeed Bush into the White House?  read more »

Rudy Giuliani is determined not to repeat the errors of John McCain.  read more »

John McCain has taken on a Job-like appearance. Stripped of friends, supporters and cash, he has fallen from front-runner to destitute long shot. It is worth pondering how he got here.  read more »

Conservatives seem unwilling to recognize their own role as “enablers” of a failed President.  read more »

Republican angst has created an opening for Fred Thompson.  read more »

Karl Rove told the Republicans it wasn’t going to be like this. He was to mastermind the explosion of the Republican “base,” making the G.O.P. into the default party in power and relegating the Democrats to permanent minority status. The much-vaunted independent swing vote would fade to irrelevance. Of course, that’s not the way things turned out.  read more »

It has taken over four decades, but the time may once again have come for the Democratic Party to run on defense and foreign policy. They have good reason to do so.  read more »

What "Rangers" aren't worth what they used to be.  read more »