The Florida polls vary fairly widely between McCain and Romney leads of between 2 and 5 points for either one. The average has McCain up by less than half a point, meaning it’s a dead head just 5 days out.
The rap on McCain is of course that apart from the war, he’s hardly a conservative. He advocates restricting free speech, hasn’t helped get conservative judges to the bench, voted against the Bush tax cuts, etc etc etc. It’s all true. So if you’re Romney, how do you set yourself up as the true conservative without going negative and getting bad press or generating more good vibrations from your rivals for it?
Simple: Quote conservatives praising you. That’s what this ad does.
It sure beats what Silky is selling.
Update: I get email —
You write:
“The rap on McCain is of course that apart from the war, he’s hardly a conservative. ”
Well, even that “rap” is wrong.
McCain is certainly strong on the SURGE, but NOT on the war. Because he OPPOSES waterboarding under ANY circumsances, he wants to close Gitmo, and he wants enemy combatants to have habeus corpus rights and to be tried in the U.S. court system, etc.
Therefore, McCain, in my opinion, is WEAK on the war as a whole… certainly weaker than most of his GOP opponents this primary season.
Am I wrong?
No, you’re not wrong. In fact, as I’ve written before, McCain’s stance on waterboarding in particular is awful because it amounts to protecting politicians from the actions that government interrogators take against terrorists in order to save lives. So I stand corrected. McCain isn’t even truly strong on the war.
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