That is the reason I keep hearing from people, whom I've considered sensible in the past, for supporting John McCain. They don't necessarily like him any better than I do, but they just want to win the game.
I have a couple points of why this is absolutely the wrong reason to be supporting a candidate. Quite honestly if we end up nominating a guy, who will not make a good Republican president, based on polling data taken in January for a November election, we will not win in November.
As of today, the composite polling at Real Clear Politics shows that McCain can beat Clinton by a whopping 0.1%! If you look at the graph on that page, you can see the polling trends between McCain & Clinton for approximately the last year. It is in this graph where my first point lays.
Around January 1st, McCain picked up support, largely from the media, & began polling ahead of Clinton by about 5%. That was when, all the sudden we stopped hearing "Giullianni is the only candidate who can beat Clinton" & started hearing "McCain is the only candidate who can beat Clinton." That was a month ago. Notice on the McCain v. Clinton trend graph that, with the exception of January, Clinton has been polling ahead of McCain, by quite a decent margin, since July. What will happen to polling data over the next 9 months?
Let's look at the trend graph for the Florida primary. From May 2007, up until about January 15th, Giulianni had Florida locked up. Then McCain gained ground for about a week and a half, now he is neck and neck with Romney, & Giullianni is expected to get less than 15%.
My, how things change in just a few days! There are 279 days between today & November 4th. Do we as Republicans really want to sell out our philosophy, based on January polling data that says that McCain has been more popular than Clinton for the last 29 days? Now that his popularity against Clinton is almost gone... What now?
My opinion, McCain will not beat Clinton in the general election. Hopefully, he won't have the chance to try, but if he does end up with the nomination, the race is over. Clinton will eat him up. Slips like the gaffs on his knowledge of economics, & the ridiculous attempt to cover himself with poorly executed "truth-stretching" and "subject changing," will not pass the Clinton Machine.
Some are saying that only he can garner support from independents & even some Democrats. Well, what if we gain these constituents, but at the expense of losing conservatives who will likely stay home? I will really have problems voting for him , & likely will not.
Anyone suppose that this is why so many liberal media outlets have been playing up McCain? Hillary has high negatives, that is people will come out to vote against her. No one has won an the presidency with negatives as high as she has. The only way to overcome this is to get people who want to vote for a republican to stay home.
Nominating John McCain will indeed have that effect.
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