WHAT DEAL WILL THE FAR RIGHT MAKE WITH McCAIN TO SOLIDIFY THEIR SUPPORT?

Right-wing extremist Brent Bozell has a very public challenge for McBush

As Chairman of the Student Activities Board at my college, I got to book concerts and also a speakers series. One of the most memorable speakers I ever hired was Julian Bond, the young founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a freshly elected member of the Georgia House of Representatives (which refused to seat him because of his opposition to the War in Vietnam). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Georgia House had to seat him and they did. That's when I hired him to speak at Stony Brook. My faculty advisor, Ms. Couey, said I'd have to balance the program. I asked her if she expected me to engage the Grand Dragon of the KKK and she just said she knew I would find someone appropriate. I hired Strom Thurmond. There's a wonderful story here, but that isn't what I plan on writing about tonight.

More recently-- though not too recently-- I was asked to put together a panel for the CMJ Convention on Freedom of the Press. When the proprietors saw my list of panelists they sounded just like Ms. Couey. They said my 6 left-wing media critics could be balanced in one fell swoop and gave me the phone number for Brent Bozell III. He had founded a right-wing media watchdog group, the Media Research Center, which would howl whenever they perceived that conservative points of view weren't getting enough exposure. He was a foolish and uninteresting panelist and the audience and other panelists quickly tired of his one-track mind and ignored him. I haven't seen him since.

And then today, there he was with an Op-Ed in the NY Times complaining that McCain isn't conservative enough for the extremists Bozell runs with. He says they won't vote for McCain. Bozell implies that right wing media pundits-- and who knows them better than he does?-- like Fred Barnes and Mark Helprin are all wet when they insist that "McCain needn't worry that conservatives are uncomfortable with his candidacy, because 'while they love to grumble and grouse, conservatives tend to be loyal Republicans who wind up voting for their party's candidate.'" Bozell says he knows the movement better than they do and that they're wrong; the "conservatives have nowhere else to go" meme of the Republican Insider Establishment is the worst thing McCain's strategists could count on.

And I earnestly hope that McCain isn't listening to the advice he's getting from these folks. Their thinking betrays a fundamental misreading of the conservative pulse in America today.

Conservative leaders, particularly those in talk radio, cannot and will not be silent. They will not betray their principles and their audiences. Tens of millions of activists turn to them for guidance. These activists could be, and need to be, McCain's ground troops, but unless and until conservatives believe him-- and believe in him-- they will not work for his election. McCain may have the Beltway crowd in his corner, but grass-roots conservatives aren't sold.

Yet through his surrogates, McCain is attacking these leaders. This is beyond folly. It is political suicide.

For 20 years, the moderate establishment of the Republican Party has told conservatives to sit down, shut up and do as we're told. History shows that sometimes we bite the bullet. But not always. I absolutely guarantee that this year we cannot be taken for granted. This is a movement fed up with betrayals, and they've come one after the other.

The problem with taking Bozell too seriously is that in his tiny dark corner of the universe, Bush and McCain are liberals. "We watched with growing fury as he [Bush] and the GOP leadership [Frist? DeLay? Lott?] promoted one liberal initiative after another."

But he's correct that the Hatred and Bigotry wingnuts are at odds with the Greed and Selfishness fanatics. If the split deeps the Republican coalition collapses. The Hatred and Bigotry types are irreconcilable over the Greed guys getting Bush and McCain to push for cheap labor (their vision of immigration reform) over xenophobia and racism, staples of the "social conservatives."

What was once a powerful alliance between the Republican Party and grass-roots conservatives had become a political bridge to nowhere. With the GOP facing the loss of Congress in 2006, we shrugged in indifference. The movement that had "nowhere else to go" had gone.

And it has not returned

The question, of course, is, will it? Bozell ignores the fact that McCain has a nearly lock-step right-wing voting record. On crucial substantive issues only 19 of the 100 Senators are rated more reactionary than McCain. His voting record is more right-wing than conservative heroes like Sam Brownback R-KS), John Thune (R-SD), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and over half the Republicans in the Senate. If they the wingnut extremists who Bozell professes to speak for aren't going to support McCain, what about Republican senators far less conservative than him who are running for re-election? Will they boycott John Sununu (R-NH), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Gordon Smith (R-OR), and Susan Collins (R-ME)? These half dozen have been dependable Bush rubber stamps, voting against the interests of their constituents-- not as much as McCain or nots like Inhofe and Cornyn but plenty-- in order to play ball with the Bush Regime. Will right-wing extremists abandon them? I don't think so.

This is what Bozell demands of McBush if he wants to secure the votes of the loons he claims to represent:

McCain must present a strategy to defeat the threat of radical Islam. He needs to call on the United States to rebuild its military infrastructure, so devastated by the Clinton administration. [Huh?? Most military men will tell you the infrastructure Bush inherited was the best in the history of man and that Bush wrecked it; but what's a good Republican argument without blaming everything on Bill Clinton?] He should secure our borders by a date certain. In every great struggle, the citizenry-- everyone, not just the country's military-- has been challenged to participate. McCain could make this the clarion call for volunteerism, for national service. [Slinking towards the inevitable McCain Draft? Give him time. Straight talk about that would sink his chances from 25% to 5%.]

If McCain believes in freedom, he should promise to take the yoke off the American taxpayer. He has embraced making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Good. Now he should pledge to end the estate tax and lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. In fact, he should call for an overhaul of the tax system. The flat tax or the fair tax-- either is preferable to the monstrosity that is the Internal Revenue Service. [One for Bozell's corporate contributors. Keep the donations coming, boys.]

The federal government is out of control. Conservatives don't want to hear talk about "reining in the growth of government." Those are empty words. McCain needs to call for the elimination of entire sectors of the federal leviathan. He should pledge to turn back to the states that which is their responsibility and which comes under their authority. We want to see how he will deregulate the private sector and how he will once again unleash the economic might of the United States. He should champion private retirement accounts and health savings accounts.

McCain should place the left on notice-- now-- that if elected, he will not tolerate congressional obstructionism of his nominations to the federal judiciary. [Firing squads?]

Our culture is decaying from within, and most Republicans have been shamefully AWOL on this issue. McCain could begin a national conversation about parents, not the state, taking responsibility for their children and their communities. [Hey, that's what Obama does; maybe McCain could start a national dialogue with grandparents.] He should call on the entertainment industry to stop polluting America's youth with its videos and its music and on the Internet. [I thought that was Hillary's issue; maybe McCain could ask her if he could co-sponsor her legislation.] We wait to hear him call for the United States to honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage and family, and to return God to the public square.

Yeah, let's get some straight talk here, McBush. Are you going to kick the conservative base under the bus again and again? Let's hear you scream from every roof top your agreement with all these demands. That would guarantee a dozen Senate seats and 4 or 5 dozen House seats flipping from red to blue. And they say if you don't nominate Romney, a man you personally loathe, to be your vice president, they'll hate you too.