McCain rebuilding the old Reagan coalition

Yeah, I know it sounds like a miracle, but trust me, we predicted this when he officially locked up the nomination. The AP reports that McCain is gathering members of that old coalition that Reagan grabbed in 1980 to defeat Jimmy Carter:

Republicans are no longer underdogs in the race for the White House. To pull that off, John McCain has attracted disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall.

Partly thanks to an increasingly likable image, the Republican presidential candidate has pulled even with the two Democrats still brawling for their party's nomination, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Thursday. Just five months ago — before either party had winnowed its field — the survey showed people preferred sending an unnamed Democrat over a Republican to the White House by 13 percentage points.

Also helping the Arizona senator close the gap: Peoples' opinions of Hillary Rodham Clinton have soured slightly, while their views of Barack Obama have improved though less impressively than McCain's.

The survey suggests that those switching to McCain are largely attuned to his personal qualities and McCain may be benefiting as the two Democrats snipe at each other during their prolonged nomination fight. ...

"It's not that I'm that much in favor of McCain, it's the other two are turning me off," Mason said of Clinton and Obama, the senators from New York and Illinois, in explaining his move toward McCain. As for the Republican's experiences as a Vietnam War prisoner and in the Senate, Mason said, "All he's been through is an asset."

By tracking the same group of roughly 2,000 people throughout the campaign, the AP-Yahoo poll can gauge how individual views are evolving. What's clear is that some Republican-leaning voters who backed Bush in 2004 but lost enthusiasm for him are returning to the GOP fold _ along with a smaller but significant number of Democrats who have come to dislike their party's two contenders.

The findings of the survey, conducted by Knowledge Networks, provide a preview of one of this fall's battlegrounds. Though some unhappy Republicans will doubtless stay with McCain, both groups are teeming with centrist swing voters who will be targeted by both parties.

Well, that's not entirely true. The Democrats have given up on independent and moderate voters. They're running to the Left to out-do one another. But McCain has reached out to them in the same way Reagan did. Some would say McCain is pandering to the Left, but that's not true. He's reaching out and telling them to come back home. He's promising to return to the days of Reagan, where we're a unified nation, with a clear goal in mind for the future.

Voters are doing exactly as we predicted. Hugh Hewitt said it back in February:

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68.

Since he stated that, we have been repeating it to GOP voters, and we've added one more aspect to it. There is an eighth reason -- the economy. We already know we can't trust Democrats with the war. They're talking about leaving Iraq as quickly as possible. We can't trust Democrats with the high court. They'll appoint the likes of Gloria Allred or Laurence Tribe to the high court. And with the economy, their spending predilections are already on the table -- universal health care alone could wreck the economy. And should we lose more seats in the Senate, we can forget stopping it. The only way to stop such an idea is to command the White House. Voters, be they GOP, Democrat, or independent, understand that they can't trust either of the two Democrats. That's based on what they've said, and what they're promising.

A Quinnipiac poll released on 15 April shows us that Hillary and Obama supporters would bail depending on who the nominee is:

In this latest survey of 2,103 likely Democratic primary voters by the independent Quinnipiac University, 26 percent of Clinton supporters would switch to Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican, in November if Obama were the Democratic nominee. Nineteen percent of Obama backers would switch to McCain if Clinton were the Democratic nominee.

This is the dilemma now sitting in the superdelegates collective laps. Neither one will unite their base, and they can't pull the independents, Reagan Democrats, or GOP voters over to their side. The genie is out of the bottle. The emperor has no clothes. Voters are seeing this, and what they see they don't like. For them, the future is what matters, and the choices presented by the Democrat Party show that the future isn't what's on their minds. It's on John McCain's mind, and he's doing what he can to ensure us that we will once again become that "shining city on a hill."

Publius II