Dems Duke It Out - Good for the GOP?

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the longer the Dems fight it out, the better it is for the GOP. The line of thinking is that Hillary seems to be digging up enough dirt on Obama to last us the entire election, thus keeping McCain from getting his hands dirty in the mud-slinging process. I've also heard that this has given McCain time to "raise funds" and "unite the conservative base." It's nice to have the Dems doing our dirty work for us, but I'm not sure that this time out of the spotlight is helping McCain. Let me break it down a bit.

First, I don't believe that McCain has to worry about uniting the conservatives. For all intents and purposes conservatives have pretty much forgotten their disdain for McCain (I am a perfect case in point). This is obvious by his huge success in polls against either Democratic contender. McCain has always known that the intense animosity against him would die down when conservatives had to compare him to Obama and Hillary rather than Romney and Huckabee. He never really had to make much of an effort to bring the conservative base back, and I reject the speculation that he will chose a strong conservative as a running mate to try and win them over. He will easily carry the south and most of the Mountain West. He is most likely to find someone who will help him carry swing states like Florida, Minnesota, and Ohio, and that person is not likely to be radically conservative.

As for the money, McCain is sorely behind in the fund-raising category, and the Dems duking it out doesn't seem to be giving him any sort of real boost. But, he has been almost bankrupt before. Remember the appalling footage of hims actually carrying his own bags through the airport? What a disgrace (sarcasm). McCain has never needed a lot of money to get his name out. He's John McCain. Practically a household name, even outside of us political junkies. He's the grumpy old man that we would love to see in a fist fight against Fidel Castro (if they could land any punches over their walkers). In a nutshell, he didn't win the GOP primary by raising a lot of money, nor will he win the general election Romney style by flooding the airwaves, Huckabee style by playing a guitar and cracking jokes, Obama style by holding mass revivals, or Hillary style by digging up dirt. He wins people over by being himself - the tough, stubborn, patriot that he is. That, in and of itself, is an encouraging fact for Republicans.

However, this being true, the Dems squabbling over Michigan, Florida, super-delegates, pastors, sniper fire, etc. does not play well into McCain's hands. McCain wins by getting in the media for free. His won in New Hampshire because he has always been a favorite to the Republicans there with an "independent" (aka liberal) streak. That win put him all over the papers as a winner and Romney a loser. It propelled him to a win in SC which effectively bumped Huckabee and Thompson out. All that was left was the big showdown in Florida where he eaked out a win thanks to the Cuban-Americans. He didn't have to buy TV commercials, mailings, or radio spots. The media was more than happy to give him a mic to blast his rich rival and to bolster his own positions. Huck and Cain loved to brag about spending a jillion dollars less than Romney, and they could afford to do so because they got it for free.

Now McCain finds himself on the sideline, the press eating up every second of the Hillary-Obama showdown, making it feel more and more like the Democratic contest is the end of the game. The conversations are not "Who do you like, Obama, Hillary, or McCain?" They are "Are you an Obama or Hillary fan?" McCain has been bumped to the back of the line and voters are forgetting about him. Remember Fred Thompson and Rudy Guiliani? Me neither. They are ancient history because come election time, no one was talking about them. There was nothing to say. Now it's the same for McCain. Why would people talk about him doing some random fund-raiser in Colorado when they can talk about Obama's racist pastor or Hillary's "mis-speaking" about being shot at?

And McCain knows this. That's why he's running ads already. When was the last time a candidate ran general election ads before he even had an opponent?

A wise man once told me that any publicity is good publicity. That certainly is the case now for John McCain. He may not say it publicly, but I think he would like to see this Democratic fiasco come to an end just as much as Howard Dean.

Here we go...

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