"Where are they going to go?" asks one McCain adviser, expressing a sentiment I've heard from several others.
One possibility: nowhere. Unmotivated by a candidate who would rather talk about global warming than gay marriage, conservatives might simply stay home. This lack of enthusiasm for McCain among conservatives was evident in the Washington Post/ABC News poll taken in mid-June. Ninety-one percent of those who identified themselves as Obama supporters say they are "enthusiastic" about their candidate; 54 percent say they are "very enthusiastic." Seventy-three percent of self-identified McCain supporters say they are "enthusiastic" about his candidacy; but only 17 percent say they are "very enthusiastic." More ominous, while almost half of the liberals surveyed are enthusiastic about Obama, only 13 percent of conservatives are enthusiastic about McCain.
Republican pollster David Winston believes that McCain can close this enthusiasm gap by campaigning on issues where there are sharp differences between the candidates. "We are still a center-right country," says Winston. "And voters will still prefer a center-right candidate to a liberal one."
Data from that same Washington Post/ABC News poll support this claim. Although Democrats hold a strong advantage in party identification, more people consider themselves conservatives than liberals. The survey found that 38 percent of those polled thought of themselves as Democrats, 24 percent as Republicans, and 34 percent as independents. Only 21 percent of those polled thought of themselves as liberals, while 33 percent saw themselves as conservatives and 43 percent as moderates.
McCain, it seems, has to do two things at
once to win. He has to motivate conservatives to support him (financially now and at the polls in November), and he has to woo independent voters away from a charismatic liberal. To that end, McCain might want to make this an issues election and run as a conservative, emphasizing issues--the war on terror, spending and government waste, tax reform, racial preferences, and gay marriage among them--on which large segments of independents and conservatives agree.
There are signs the McCain campaign is beginning to understand the importance of conservatives. In late June, McCain met with a group of pro-family conservatives in Ohio. And the previous week, he took a break from talking energy to pound Obama for his embrace of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision--a decision voters opposed 5 to 1.
There is another reason to do this. As NBC News political director Chuck Todd pointed out last week, many of those who are now calling themselves independents are likely to be conservatives disappointed with the Republican party. So winning support from independents and conservatives may, in many cases, be the same thing.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
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