CAN McCAIN ACTUALLY TRY TO RUN BY DENYING HE'S REALLY A REPUBLICAN?

Earlier we mentioned how some in the Republican Party are calling for some long overdue self-examination. John McCain, even more than the congressional incumbents, has to examine how the GOP has gotten so out of step with American voters on so many issues. With CNN reporting that even evangelicals are reconsidering their support for the GOP, Politico points out that the McCain camp is aware of the toxicity of the Republican brand. One of the sleaziest lobbyists driving the Double Talk Express explains that “Nobody ever gets elected president by running on their party label. The character, the qualities, the independence-- that certainly allows him to rise over the party label. It is more important than usual to rise above the party label.”

Meanwhile, ABC News is reporting that McCain is even toying with reversing the Republican absolutist position against Choice. Considering his own voting record-- if not his flippy-floppy rhetoric-- this will be a very hard change for him to make and probably an impossible one if he expects to go into the November elections with any semblance of a unified Republican Party. So utterly brainwashed are large segments of the GOP base, that they would much rather see the Republicans lose the White House than abandon their jihad against Choice.

Since June, 2002, McCain has participated in 16 Senate roll calls involving Women's right to Choice. He voted against that right 16 times. Whether it is to ban specific procedures, to confirm fanatic ideological anti-choice judges, or voting to force AIDs funding to go for ineffectual abstinence programs or making it difficult for women in the military to get abortions or to coddling violent anti-abortion terrorists, McCain has voted, lemming-like, for the anti-choice position every single time; no exceptions. Not one... not ever, even if he once-- long ago, admitted that the Republican obsession with anti-choice fanaticism was hurting the party.

Now that McCain has tricked much of the religious right into getting behind his candidacy, he's trying to find ways to reach out to mainstream America and make his party seem less extremist and less... well, 19th Century. There's talk about reforming the Republican Party-- or at least the platform-- into something that looks more like America and is more inclusive, possibly even making exceptions to the GOP's virulent anti-choice mania, like for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

"If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," said Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, to ABC News. "I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble."

...Despite McCain's support for changing the platform in 2000 and 2007, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the co-chairman of McCain's Justice Advisory Committee [and an anti-choice absolutist and fanatic], significantly downplays the possibility that McCain would revise the party's call for a nationwide constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions.

"I don't think that's going to happen. I think you're going to see a platform process that is going to maintain that plank," said Brownback, a leading abortion rights opponent who endorsed McCain after ending his own White House bid.

"There are going to be a number of people supporting his nomination that want that plank left exactly as it is," he said. "They're going to be a strong majority."

...While leaving the platform untouched would please many in the GOP's socially conservative base, it could alienate some of the more moderate voters that McCain hopes to woo.

"If he doesn't change the platform, then he's being the same kind of hypocrite that he accused Bush of being in 2000," said Jennifer Blei Stockman, the co-chairwoman of Republican Majority for Choice.

"To not accept abortion in cases of rape and incest, give me a break. That's sick. That's inhumane."

"And the life of the mother?" she added. "These are things that we can't even put our arms around because they are so inhumane... Many people think of him as a moderate," she said. "But when it comes out that he doesn't want to change this extreme, right-wing Republican platform, the word 'moderate' is going to disappear from any description of McCain."