Kristol: ‘GOP Concerned About McCain’

Not to beat a dead horse, but the disconnect between Republican voters and their presumptive presidential nominee says a lot about just how much the political climate has changed in the last eight years. In his New York Times column, and then in a Fox News interview, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol discussed how many Republicans are concerned that the McCain campaign might not be up to the challenge of going toe-to-toe with the Obama campaign. In his Times op-ed column, Kristol discussed McCain’s speech in New Orleans last week:

McCain chose to speak early in the evening, before the polls closed in South Dakota and Montana, thereby getting the jump on Obama. He read a disjointed set of remarks at a badly staged rally at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner, La. Here’s part of an e-mail message I received as McCain spoke, from a Republican who admires him: “They could have done so well tonight, shown a tone of confidence. Instead it looks like a bad Congressional race: dumb green puke background, small crowd … Makes me want to cry.”

A story in The Los Angeles Times about the campaign in Ohio indicates that McCain’s trouble with conservatives could be most pronounced where it is most needed: in battleground states.

As the architect of Ohio’s ballot measure against gay marriage, Phil Burress helped draw thousands of conservative voters to the polls in 2004, most of whom also cast ballots to re-elect President Bush. So Burress was not surprised when two high-level staffers from John McCain’s campaign dropped by his office, asking for his help this fall.

What surprised Burress was how badly the meeting went. He says he tried but failed to make the McCain team understand how much work remained to overcome the skepticism of social conservatives. Burress ended up cutting off the campaign officials as they spoke. "He doesn’t want to associate with us," Burress now says of McCain, "and we don’t want to associate with him."

While McCain’s reputation as a politician willing to reach across the aisle may have turned off some conservatives looking for a more ideological candidate, the campaign has also frustrated party activists because it has been slow to establish a presence in competitive states.

Some Republicans say they are also troubled that the McCain campaign has not been faster to build a get-out-the-vote operation in Ohio, a state that is again expected to be a key battleground. These Republicans, who have a close-up view of events, worry that McCain will be overpowered by Obama’s ability to motivate activists.

"I’m going to be very honest with everyone in this room," said Hamilton County GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou, as he threw his hands in the air during a speech last week at a Republican club dinner in suburban Cincinnati. "We are a little bit frustrated with the ability of the McCain campaign to get going."

This time four years ago, Triantafilou recalled, he had already taken leave from his county government job to work full time for Bush’s re-election. "By June 1, we were humping hard on the presidential campaign," he said. While waiting for the McCain team, the county party has launched a voter registration drive of its own.

The senator also had issues with party activists in his home state of Arizona. As TWI’s John Dougherty notes, many Arizona Republicans — including the state party chairman Randy Pullen — were outraged when Sen. McCain bucked a large segment of the Republican Party and stood with President Bush in support of comprehensive immigration reform. The rift was so bad that, a story from PolitickerAZ.com reports, until recently McCain’s Arizona fund-raising operation had been mostly handled by the Pima County Republican Party, rather than the state party.

With just five months to the election, McCain has a short time to establish his presence in battleground states and coordinate with local activists — especially considering that Obama has had the advantage of building his organization and turning out voters all across the country during the grueling primary season.

As Kristol told Fox News:

"[T]he Obama campaign has been so much more sophisticated and strategic than the McCain campaign. There are lots of Republicans I have talked to [who] are concerned. They’re not panicked. They’re concerned."