Romney bids adieu

With Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney leaving the field yesterday, Arizona Senator John McCain is now the presumptive Republican nominee. To declare McCain as such – and it being but February 8 – is not out of the ordinary for the Republican party, which typically prefers to settle upon a nominee early and then circle the wagons to fend off the Democrats, but this electoral season is a little different.

First, there hasn’t been this much discord within the Republican party since 1976, when Gerald Ford held off a hard-charging Ronald Reagan for the party’s nomination. Ford represented the old guard of the Republican party, and the sun-belt conservatives who were gaining in power never warmed up to Ford. While it was far from a fissure, the Ford nomination simply didn’t represent a rallying point; the party remained a bit listless and discouraged, and as a result, the first post-Watergate election went to the Democrats.

This morning in its Geopolitical Diary, Stratfor asks what international implications a McCain presidency might have. In getting to that question, however, Stratfor made the following statement regarding the latent strength of the McCain campaign:

The Democrats are locked into a Clinton-Obama death match for the loyalty of the left, while McCain – who has secured the political right – can begin courting the center and run for the presidency itself (rather than for the nomination).

During most election cycles the logic above would be correct, but 2008 is anything but normal. John McCain might have vanquished the conservatives’ most able warrior, but winning the nomination would be an empty achievement if the conservatives stayed home for the November election. Simply put, he has not “secured the political right,” but rather subdued it, and unlike past cycles, McCain will not be able to move as quickly or as confidently to the center as past Republican nominees have. Many conservatives neither trust nor like John McCain (as evidenced by yesterday's mixed reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference).

This is the “Ned Lamont moment” I spoke of yesterday. A confident John McCain bestriding the center of the political spectrum would have an excellent shot at defeating either Democratic candidate; however, if McCain must continue an extended courtship with the conservatives to prove to them his worthiness, his task to win the independents in the center will be more difficult. In any case McCain needs both the independents and the conservatives to win the election, especially given the alacrity with which Democrats have taken to this election.