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The blame game

James Forsyth

Friday, 9th May 2008

The presidency is the GOP’s best chance of a win in this year’s national elections, it is almost certain that the Democrats will expand their majorities in the House and the Senate. The consequences of a presidential defeat could be dire for the Republicans and not just for the reason that it would see them lose the White House.

McCain is sending every signal that he will not push some buttons the Republican base wants him to. For instance, McCain—who believes in comprehensive immigration reform—isn’t going to demagogue the immigration issue. He also isn’t going to go hard on social issues and on the environment he is going to chart a much greener course.

The risk is that if McCain loses, the Republican party will learn the wrong lessons from his defeat. Rather than accepting that he limited the Republican’s margin of a defeat in a year where the generic Republican is getting crushed by the generic Democrat, they might blame the defeat on McCain’s failure to tack to the right on immigration, emphasise social issues and the like. If they were then to go down this path, it would be a political disaster for them akin to the Tories 2001 general election campaign.

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TGF UKIP

May 10th, 2008 12:01am

Oh come on James! Peddling the Tory Left's canard that it was conservative policies that lost the Tories the 2001 election should be left to Matthew d'Ancona and the other "moderniser" apologists. The Tories lost in 2001 because of the brilliantly successful destruction of the Tory brand by Blair/Brown/Mandelson and Campbell and because Hague and his message were systematically and deliberately undermined by the Tory "modernising" Left on the run up to that election.

The lesson for McCain, the Republicans and the Tories should be that conservative convictions win electoral victories when effectively communicated with conviction. The US and the UK are inherently conservative societies - as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both knew.This is going to be a tough election and McCain is going to need every last Christian fundamentalist conservative vote. He should listen to Ol' Turd Blossom and not be so sniffy.

George

May 11th, 2008 10:17pm

So why did the issues of the 2001 election not go away? Here we are again in 2008 and the country is fed up to the back teeth with unlimited immigration and bossy Brussels. America is very different indeed because it doesn't have a state-funded Left wing broadcaster.

Look at what Berlosconi has achieved in Italy - people are fed up with the Left because they've woken up to its incoherence on eveything.

Ian C

May 12th, 2008 10:07am

There are few lessons for McCain from the Tories 1997-01. The 01 election was won in 97 and with that the 05 election as no inroads were made to the Lab. majority. The reason was the anti-Lab forces were split between the Lib Dems and split Tories, so Lab. won big eacghh time. The only lesson for McCain is which vote to risk splitting - the right or the centre? There is no reason to suppose that at a once in a century election (no incumbent, first woman/black prospective presidents) appealing mostly to the right will win him election. So I know which vote I would go after. Bush in 04 could afford not to because of 9/11 and not everyone yet believing that iraq was the mess it was. McCain has no such comfort, but on Iraq and foreign policy, at least, has a message that innately conservative USA instinctively wants to hear. He has to maintain a moderate tone and not tack right. He can do that in 2012, not in such a once off election.