Can McCain win NH and the nomination?

McCain's campaign was hovering around 25% in NH until the second week of June when it started a 3-month decline. This was just when the immigration bill was being considered by Congress. Immigration is, as I've posted on before, a hot topic in NH despite the state not having many illegal immigrants. But as that issue came out of the spotlight, McCain's polls in NH gradually improved to above where he was at the beginning of the summer. He's now in a statistical tie with Romney.

If John McCain does not win in NH tomorrow, his campaign will be over. But if he does win, could he win the Republican nomination?

The Republican race breaks down like this. There are three viable conservative candidates (Huckabee, Romney, Thompson) and two more liberal candidates (McCain, Giuliani). I've already posted on the impossibility of Giuliani winning the nomination. His poll numbers all along have been artificially high; since he hasn't challenged anyone for votes yet, no one has stepped up to attack him. Once (or if) that happens, Giuliani's numbers will fall even more precipitously than they already have. There is so much material for negative ads in Giuliani's background, he's almost smart in waiting out Iowa and NH rather than delving in the trenches and ending his campaign early.

On the conservative side, Thompson can't win due to an unattractive candidate. This leaves Huckabee and Romney.

And McCain. Could he go all the way?

In 2000, McCain won the following states before his campaign ended March 9: NH, Arizona, Michigan, Connecticut, Massachusetts, RI, Vermont. NH was an open primary, Arizona was semi-closed but of course was McCain's home state. The battleground of Michigan was an open primary, and McCain won it on the votes of independents despite losing 3-1 amongst Republicans. The rest of the states McCain won were: Connecticut and Rhode Island were closed, Massachusetts and Vermont were open. The only closed primaries McCain won were from the liberal Northeast.

This previous experience causes me to think that it's an inside-the-beltway fantasy that McCain could get the Republican nomination. Right now the conservative vote is being split three ways, and even four, adding in Ron Paul. Those four candidates got 82% in Iowa. They currently get a majority of the vote in NH. The point is, that there are more candidates running as conservatives and two as more liberal, which means that, though the conservative vote is a greater percentage, it is being split by more candidates who get less a share of the pie each. In NH in 2000, the candidates running as conservatives (Bush, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes) got more votes combined than McCain.

Iowa and NH do not pick presidents. Rather, they just narrow the field for the other states to make their selection from. That's what's happening right now on the Republican side. Once the winnowing process takes place, it'll be a two or three way contest (Huckabee, Romney/McCain, Giuliani). At that point the more liberal candidate(s) will take a hit, just as happened to McCain in 2000. When conservatives are united behind one candidate, no matter how much they prefer him or would rather have a different conservative candidate, then the opposing candidate like McCain or Giuliani don't stand a chance.

Right now it is a Romney--Huckabee race. A Giuliani win in NH knocks Romney out, and he can't come back unless he wins a (currently narrowly contested) Michigan primary. The marriage of convenience between Huckabee and McCain favors both candidates, but ultimately it's Huckabee who would prevail if they were the last two candidates standing.

Values debate reflections

Some reflections on the Republican values voter debate on Constitution Day...

It was announced that no Democrats agreed to come and debate the following week; after hearing the provocative opening hymn the reason why is crystal clear. The opening prayer is even more revelatory of the chasm of religious style between the parties. Whichever candidate can to some degree bridge this abyss from either party has a huge advantage in the general election.

Ron Paul got his usual huge welcome from the crowd. He stopped in mid-sentence with his opening statement when the bell rang. The rest of the night the applause came during his comments before he finished. Tom Tancredo stumbled over his very first sentence of his opening statement, and totally botched his personal faith answer. The Huckster turned on the charm from the get-go in his--he's so much smoother than anyone else on stage. In his opening statement and his answers he would made his summation just two seconds before the bell rang. His answer on abortion was a little mangled at the end but the beginning was very strong, he hit the personal faith question out of the park, and effectively buttered up Phyllis Schlafly. However, he was completely confused over a question on the Mexico City policy and had to be corrected by the other candidates.

Alan Keyes went after Mitt Romney in his first answer. It'll be interesting to see if he's allowed into the other debates. His impassioned answers got little applause, until he corrected the Huckster. John Cox also came off well. He's not allowed into the other debates because his polling is too low. Ron Paul talked about the exceptions clause of the Constitution as way to deal with "activist judges" instead a constitutional amendment; a much easier proposal than the impossible route of amendment. Duncan Hunter gets in the same act that Giuliani started and the Huckster continued of getting applause by shooting Paul down on foreign policy. This happened during the debate--interestingly, the same thing happened during closing statements and Hunter did not get any response from his upbraiding of Paul. Hunter also got a laugh with "I don't belong to any organized denomination; I'm a Baptist."

The microphones needed work. There was constant whispering during answers and mics not being turned on quickly enough.

Alan Keyes Announces

Alan Keyes just announced that he's running for president on the Republican side. Keyes is an excellent orator, and will liven up Republican debates, assuming he gets in the debates.

His run looks like an attempt at self-promotion, similar to Al Sharpton's run on the Democratic side in 2004. Keyes ran before in 1992 and 1996. In '96 he was pressed into running by his college roommate Bill Kristol, who wanted to split the social conservative Republican primary vote and harm the chances of Pat Buchanan, whose foreign policy positions are anathema to Kristol and Keyes.

Keyes will be in a debate Monday with all the second-tier Republican candidates. I remember the publicity Keyes got in 1996 when he was hauled away from a debate in Atlanta in handcuffs on camera. I remember the reaction of a friend, who was turned off by Keyes' shouting on the footage--it's symbolic of the way he turns people off by being too shrill.

Here's part of the New York Times article on Keyes' arrest in 1996:

Mayor Bill Campbell, summoning Olympian powers of spin control, characterized it as "a whimsical night" in Atlanta.

But Alan Keyes, a Republican Presidential candidate who was hauled off in handcuffs by the Atlanta police on Sunday after trying to crash a candidate debate, saw his night on the town somewhat differently. "Is this America or the Soviet Union?" he asked today, just warming up. "This is a disgrace to American democracy."

If it was a public relations blunder for image-sensitive Atlanta, it was a bonanza for Mr. Keyes, a candidate who would have garnered far less attention by participating in the debate than he did by being forcibly removed from it.

The incident began when Mr. Keyes, already on a four-day hunger strike to protest his exclusion from a debate in South Carolina, mounted two unsuccessful charges at the white-columned portico of WSB-TV, an ABC affiliate whose call letters stand for "Welcome South, Brother." It ended with Mayor Campbell, dressed in sweat pants, picking up Mr. Keyes from a Pizza Hut parking lot in a seedy part of town and delivering him safely to his downtown hotel.

"We wanted him to have a great time in our Olympic city," Mr. Campbell said at a news conference today, "and we did not think that he was enjoying our city at that time."

As an advertisement for Southern hospitality, barely four months before the opening of the Centennial Olympic Games, the television images of police officers detaining the only black Presidential candidate left something to be desired. And while no one, including Mr. Keyes, charged either the city or the television station with racism, many said the imagery was damaging.

"It's embarrassing," said Russell K. Paul, the state Republican chairman. "I grew up in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960's and, unfortunately, that's what that took me back to."

Mr. Keyes, a former State Department official whose best showing this year was his 7 percent vote in the Iowa caucuses, said today that he did not hold the city responsible for his treatment. But he said he was considering suing WSB-TV for violations of Federal communications law.

Lee Armstrong, a station spokeswoman, denied any wrongdoing, saying WSB-TV chose to limit the debate to "the people who have gotten the most interest in the primaries" in order to make best use of its hourlong format.

Even before Sunday night's debate, a dozen or so of Mr. Keyes's supporters had pitched tents on the television station's lawn in a show of solidarity with their candidate. But WSB-TV management did not waver from its decision to limit participation to the four leading Republican candidates going into Tuesday's Georgia primary -- former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Patrick J. Buchanan, Senator Bob Dole, and Steve Forbes. Mr. Dole chose not to attend the debate.

When Mr. Keyes first tried to enter the station on Sunday night, surrounded by cameras, he was escorted to the end of the driveway by the police, who said they were acting at the request of the station.

After Mr. Keyes tried a second time, the police cuffed his hands and placed him in a patrol car.