Britain and America

McCain says British withdrawal from Iraq was not a good idea

There's lots of excitement in parts of the UK blogosphere (eg here and here) about John McCain cancelling a meeting with Gordon Brown.  McCain was due to be in Europe this weekend for the Munich security conference.  He was to have a meeting with Gordon Brown en route but, with his Republican rivals still campaigning, McCain decided that he would need to stay on US soil.  Not a great snub to the British Prime Minister but a warning to all spin doctors that it's not wise to pre-brief meetings until you are really sure that they are going to happen.

A much more significant story gets much less attention from the blogs but is undoubtedly more important.  The FT reports Senator McCain's disappointment at the UK's withdrawal from Basra:

"The Arizona senator, who has been a strong supporter of the surge, echoed the misgivings of the US military about the British move, telling reporters he “did not think it was a good idea”... “I understand the British domestic situation and I very much appreciate the service and sacrifice the British military made in Iraq and are making in Afghanistan ... Obviously we’d have liked to see them stay longer but the enormous contribution they made in Iraq and Afghanistan I have to just be grateful for.”"

Up until now newspapers have reported private White House and military disappointment at the British withdrawal but this is the first time that a very senior American politician has spoken publicly.

The new conservatives: David Cameron and John McCain

Not so long ago Britain's David Cameron was something of an exception in global conservatism but that's changing fast.  Two more traditional conservatives - John Howard and George W Bush - have either left the stage or are about to depart.  In Australia John Howard has been replaced by a more centrist leader, Brendan Nelson.  If Super Tuesday votes as the polls predict, Senator John McCain will become the Republican Party's nominee and the de facto leader of America's conservatives.

Here is a summary of how Cameron and McCain are taking conservatism in new directions (and where they differ).

THE NEW CONSERVATISM OF CAMERON AND McCAIN

Greener: Both are of one mind on global warming, supporting government action to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.  Both see the European Union taking a lead on the issue.  John McCain has said that “Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union."  He continued: "The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.”

More civil libertarian: Both McCain and Cameron have been very critical of Guantanamo Bay.  Both have more sympathy for protecting civil liberties than George W Bush or Michael Howard.  They have both criticised aggressive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

Less impressed with tax relief: Both emphasise fiscal conservatism over supply-side tax relief.  John McCain twice voted against President Bush's tax cuts and David Cameron has pledged to limit promises of tax cuts to only those that can be fully funded by commensurate tax increases or by spending reductions.  Recently, however, John McCain has vowed to extend Bush's tax cuts and has demanded a tough approach to public spending.  UK Tories are pledged to match Labour on spending.

More welcoming of immigrants: Both men have antagonised elements within their parties who have wanted very hardline positions on immigration.  John McCain almost lost any chance of the Republican nomination when he sided with George W Bush on immigration reform and a form of amnesty for illegal immigrants.  David Cameron has substantially softened Tory rhetoric on immigration and towards asylum seekers, in particular.

Pragmatic on controversial medical research: Both men support embryonic stem cell research.

More gay-friendly:  David Cameron has moved the Conservative Party decisively in favour of gay rights issues and favours tax relief for same-sex couples who enter civil partnerships.  John McCain's position is less clear although he has described attempts to secure a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as "un-Republican".  That opposition stems more from a respect for state rights than social conservatism, however.  He is thought to be sympathetic to civil partnerships.

Zero tolerance of ethical lapses: Both men take a low tolerance approach to ethical indiscretions by politicians.

McCain will be the Republican candidate for the Presidency. Probably.

VICTORY FOR JOHN McCAIN IN FLORIDA

McCain won 36% of the vote in yesterday's Republican primary election in Florida - 5% more than Mitt Romney.  Giuliani's Florida strategy failed.  He might easily have come fourth if Mike Huckabee had won 20,000 or so more votes.

GIULIANI IS EXPECTED TO DROP OUT AND ENDORSE McCAIN

That's what ABC News is reporting and, if true, it will help McCain carry New York and its huge number of delegates when they vote - next week, on 'Super Duper Tuesday'.

A McCain-Giuliani ticket?  ...Vodkapundit speculates.  (Joe Lieberman btw has rejected the idea that he might be McCain's running mate).

Why did Giuliani fail?  Stanley Kurtz is convinced it was because he didn't make nice with soc-cons: "The collapse of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential bid is surely one of the most striking developments of the 2008 campaign. Strategic mistake? I don’t think so. Rudy lost because he dissed social conservatives. In fact, the reason Giuliani missed those early primaries is because he dissed social conservatives."  Read Kurtz's full piece.

The Politico thinks Giuliani's demise marks the end of 9/11 politics: "Giuliani's national celebrity was based on his steady, comforting appearance in Americans' living rooms amid the terrorist attacks... Giuliani's failure reflects a broader shift in the American landscape, in which Sept. 11 has so diminished as an emotional touchstone that neither The Gallup Organization nor The Pew Research Center has even polled Americans about the attacks for a half year."  The BBC's Justin Webb is far from convinced that the threats have gone away.  Mr Webb is right.

EVEN KEY ROMNEY SUPPORTERS ARE CLOSE TO CONCEDING THAT McCAIN IS ON COURSE FOR VICTORY

This is Kathryn Jean Lopez from National Review Online:

"I'll shut up after this post, but Romney has been ON since Michigan. It may prove — it may have been proven tonight — to be too late. But this guy speaking right now, is hitting important issues, making you feel good about America, as you should. It's a rallying speech. Maybe it's the silly flip-flopping thing that has been too hard to shake. Maybe he took too long to rise above it.  What if Fred had endorsed? What if Jeb had? Ah well.  It may not be over. But it's going to be hard to kill McCain's momentum coming out of tonight and a probable Rudy endorsement. He does have the money and the turnaround skills."

McCAIN: THE IMPERFECT CANDIDATE

Commentators like Gerard Baker have pointed out that many conservatives are unfairly critical of McCain.  But there are many responsible conservatives who worry about him, too.  One is Ross Douthat.  He wrote this last night: "His self-righteousness and stubbornness; his thin grasp of policy detail on a host of issues; his (related) tendency to filter policy debates through a Manichaean worldview, in which politics is the extension of war by other means; and his longstanding tendency to squander his reform-conservative tendencies on precisely the wrong domestic causes (campaign-finance reform, immigration, etc.)."

McCain certainly has his UK fans.  See Alan Mendoza and Ben Rogers at CentreRight.com.

5.40pm: Some videos from today's campaign events

Was this the moment when McCain sealed the GOP nomination?

The popular Governor of Florida has just endorsed John McCain.  Charlie Crist's endorsement was most sought by Rudy Giuliani who was once the overwhelming favourite to win Florida but is now trailing in third place.  Crist's backing is likely to be enough to see McCain prevail in the sunshine state.  Pre-endorsement polling had McCain edging Mitt Romney by just 0.3%.  That should lengthen now.

As expected Barack Obama has won the South Carolina primary but with a big racial divide potentially emerging in the Democrat party.  Senator Obama has been keen to avoid being seen as a racially partisan candidate but he won 80% of South Carolina's black voters but only a quarter of the state's white voters.

2.15am: James Forsyth, at the Obama victory party, notes how Bill Clinton's image was jeered when it appeared on TV screens.

David Cameron champions free trade, praises John McCain

Speaking at Davos last night, Conservative Party leader David Cameron warned against protectionist tendencies shown by India, China, and US presidential candidates on both sides:

"As politicians, our actions must match our rhetoric. No buying off domestic opinion with subsidies and barriers. At a time of global and economic uncertainty and of financial instability we must not pander to people's fears by peddling false hopes of protectionism.
 
In years to come, the world will look back at this period, and there will be heroes and there will be villains. The heroes will be those who held their nerve and stood up for free trade. The villains will be those who tried to push us over this tipping point and down the dangerous path of protectionism."

He singled out Republican candidate John McCain for praise in this respect, for arguing that protectionism would not bring back lost industrial jobs. The Telegraph's Rosa Prince, a former Daily Mirror journalist, seems to read too much into this by saying Cameron was breaking diplomatic convention and overtly backing McCain for president.

He may not be openly advocating his selection but he certainly seems to be the Republican of choice amongst Tories now, who are delighted that he has come full-circle in the polls since he spoke at their naitonal conference. The Independent's Pandora column wrote this on Tuesday:

"Quiet ripples of excitement among young turks at Conservative Central Office, as the Vietnam veteran John McCain edges into pole position to become the Republican Party's presidential candidate.

Junior aides have been informed that it is "taken as a given" that some of their number will be heading across the Atlantic should the Arizona senator get his name on November's ballot for the White House. Those selected will be able to cut their teeth in an election environment. The jostling for plane seats has started.

McCain and the Tories already enjoy a cosy relationship. The American visited Westminster in 2005 as a guest of Michael Gove, now shadow Schools Secretary, and spoke at the Tory conference in Bournemouth the following year, at the invitation of the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne."

Also worth noting is that whilst McCain spoke in glowing terms about Cameron in January 2006, by March 2007 he was saying that he felt decieved by Cameron about his stance on Iraq, after Cameron opposed more US troops in Iraq.

Our poll of thousands of Conservative Party members last June put McCain at a very distant second to Giuliani. We'll repeat the poll soon so it'll be interesting to see if they have switched places since then.

McCain's South Carolina victory makes him favourite for Republican nomination

JOHN McCAIN WINS SOUTH CAROLINA

• McCain: “Thank you, South Carolina, for bringing us across the finish line first in the first-in-the-South primary. It took us a while, but what’s eight years among friends?”  Watch his victory speech.
  
• McCain 33%; Huckabee 30%; Fred Thompson 16%; Romney 15%; Ron Paul 4%; Rudy Giuliani 2% (full results).

The markets now give McCain a more than 50% chance of winning the Republican nomination.

Marc Ambinder lists the seven reasons why McCain was able to win South Carolina - a state that ended his challenge against George W Bush eight years ago. Top reason is probably his fifth: Fred Thompson (McCain's Senate buddy) taking conservative votes away from Huckabee.  That's certainly Tim Shipman's view: "The laconic former senator grabbed 20 per cent shares of the vote in Christian conservative parts of the state, which otherwise might have gone to Mike Huckabee." By staying in the race in Florida, Shipman believes that he can help McCain prevail and be rewarded with the Attorney General post in a McCain administration.

Mark Steyn believes that McCain is now the GOP's only genuine national candidate.  He disses Giuliani's claim to be able to run a fifty state strategy:

"Rudy's campaign announced itself as one, but, as I said a while back, it quickly turned into a 1-800 candidacy, rooted in no real area code, with no real physical presence, as if he'd outsourced the thing to a call center in Bombay. That's why his team have spent most of the last month artfully explaining why it doesn't matter that ten per cent of American states have consigned "America's Mayor" to a statistical asterisk. I'd love to hear from Lisa, David Frum or our old pal JPod if this is truly where they expected the "frontrunner" to be at this stage in the game: Two per cent in South Carolina, and a grand total of one delegate."

Who is now the 'Stop McCain' candidate?  Mark Steyn thought it still might be Rudy (who has put tax at the heart of his fading hopes for a Floridian victory).  Ross Douthat thinks it's Mitt Romney.

There is certainly appetite for Stopping McCain as TPM reminds us: "A few days ago, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that "we" find John McCain "unacceptable." Yesterday the disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said that "McCain has done more to hurt the Republican party than any elected official I know of."

It's definitely over for Duncan Hunter.  He announces he's quitting the GOP race.  Thompson's third place probably means it's over for him.  Rush Limbaugh's endorsement wasn't enough.  The Times' Across The Pond blog also concludes that Huckabee may be finished, too:

"Mike Huckabee fails to win a state dominated by his natural suporters - evangelical Christians.  This is a body blow to Huckabee and he will eventually have to call it quits. He may well prove to be a one-state (Iowa) wonder. He wouldn't be the first."

HILLARY CLINTON WINS NEVADA

Toby Harnden thinks Clinton's win 'a big one' and emphasises her victory among Hispanics: "Exit polls showed that 64 per cent of Hispanics voted for Clinton compared to 23 per cent for Obama – this despite the endorsement of the Culinary Workers’ Union, which has a membership that is at least 40 per cent Latino. Thousands of Hispanic workers, it seems, defied their union... Obama will probably win South Carolina, which has a majority black Democratic electorate, on Saturday. But not even an historic black turnout on Super Duper Tuesday will save him if he cannot win Hispanic votes in states like California and New York."

Dan Hamilton: British Conservatives should hope that John McCain will the Republican nominee

Dan Hamilton is a Runnymede Borough Conservative Councillor.  The view he expresses in this guest column is a personal opinion - as was Tory MP Simon Burns' endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

On Tuesday, Republicans in New Hampshire will exercise their unique right to vote in ‘Round Two’ of the battle for the 2008 Presidential nomination.

With Dick Cheney, the incumbent Vice-President, declining to run for the Presidency, Republicans are engaged in possibly the most significant and exciting nomination process the Party has witnessed since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The candidates offering themselves to the Republican Party faithful are many and varied.

They can plump for Mike Huckabee, whose big-government policies swelled the size of his state government from $6 billion to $16 billion during his ten year term of office.  Mitt Romney, whose positions on everything from taxes to abortion have veered from the liberal left of the political spectrum to the conservative right in less than five years, is a serious option.   Perhaps they could rally around the actor Fred Thompson whose campaign, defying huge expectations, has so far had the theatrical flair of a corpse?  Another possibility is Rudy Giuliani whose vision and substance on the campaign trail, despite two wildly successful terms as Mayor of America’s largest city, has been described as extending as far as “a noun, and a verb and 9/11”.

Or they can nominate John McCain – the logical choice for any British Conservative.

John McCain's worldview

In the first of a series of posts, BritainAndAmerica will be summarising the key foreign policy recommendations of the leading candidates to be America's 44th President.  The posts are summaries of essays that the candidates have written for Foreign Affairs.  We begin with Senator John McCain's contribution: An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom.  Tomorrow we will preview Senator Barack Obama's worldview.

America must prevail in Iraq despite the errors of the pre-surge years: "Defeating radical Islamist extremists is the national security challenge of our time. Iraq is this war's central front, according to our commander there, General David Petraeus, and according to our enemies, including al Qaeda's leadership.  The recent years of mismanagement and failure in Iraq demonstrate that America should go to war only with sufficient troop levels and with a realistic and comprehensive plan for success. We did not do so in Iraq, and our country and the people of Iraq have paid a dear price. Only after four years of conflict did the United States adopt a counterinsurgency strategy, backed by increased force levels, that gives us a realistic chance of success."

>> Video: McCain and Obama offer very differing views on the surge in Iraq, CNN

>> MoveOn.org's attack on McCain ad for his support of the surge

More must be done to address the Talibanisation of Pakistan: "We must continue to work with President Pervez Musharraf to dismantle the cells and camps that the Taliban and al Qaeda maintain in his country. These groups still have sanctuaries there, and the "Talibanization" of Pakistani society is advancing. The United States must help Pakistan resist the forces of extremism by making a long-term commitment to the country. This would mean enhancing Pakistan's ability to act against insurgent safe havens and bring children into schools and out of extremist madrasahs and supporting Pakistani moderates."

McCain wins the support of a better face of American evangelicalism

The biggest barrier to Giuliani's road to the Republican nomination is the distrust felt towards him by the social conservatives that form the GOP's bedrock army of volunteers.  New York's former Mayor came bottom of the vote at a recent conference of Christian conservatives.  Today's news that leading evangelical Pat Robertson has endorsed Giuliani is consequently something of a coup for the man currently frontrunning the Republican race:

Here's some reaction on the blogosphere: "The endorsement of perhaps the best-known living Christian conservative cannot hurt the socially liberal New Yorker's chances. Mr Robertson, it seems, endorsed Mr Giuliani because "To me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorists." - The Economist's Democracy in America.

"Just talked to a top social conservative. He says, hinting that more prominent social cons will end up going with Rudy, "There's plenty more where this comes from." On the impact of the Robertson endorsement on the race: "What it does for Rudy is it says, 'It's OK to vote for Rudy.' I think there will be more of that, pre-nomination and post-nomination." On conservative evangelical voters and Giuliani: "If Rudy is the nominee, they're going to vote for him—period." - Rich Lowry, National Review.

But The Times' Gerry Baker remembers Pat Robertson's ugly first reaction to 9/11 and concludes: "I'd far rather have Sam Brownback's support."

Which is where BritainAndAmerica started the year.  Unfortunately for Giuliani, Brownback has endorsed McCain.  Bill Kristol writes:

"McCain got the better of this one. Brownback is a human-rights-supporting representative of much that is admirable about religious conservatism. Robertson is a currying-favor-with-dictators voice from the past. Does Rudy really want his support?"

Bill Kristol is right.  I'd rather have Brownback's Wilberforce Republicanism than Robertson's narrowness.

PS There's been quite a lot of discussion recently about the alleged decline of the religious right.  The debate was started by a major feature in the New York Times.  The video below from Gallup shows how trends in support for Bush from churchgoers are actually consistent with the rest of the population:

McCain touts democratic alternative to the United Nations

Interesting idea from John McCain.  He is calling for a 'League of Democracies' to be formed as "the core of an international order of peace based on freedom".  The League will be interpreted by some as an alternative to the way George W Bush is (unfairly) perceived to have run a go-it-alone foreign policy.  It's probably more accurate to see John McCain's idea as a way of ensuring that action can be legitimised outside of the impossibly slow United Nations.  AP writes:

"Such a new body, he says, could help relieve suffering in Darfur, fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa, develop better environmental policies, and provide "unimpeded market access" to countries sharing "the values of economic and political freedom."  And, McCain adds, an organization of democracies could pressure tyrants "with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval" and could "impose sanctions on Iran and thwart its nuclear ambitions" while helping struggling democracies succeed."

Read the Senator's full speech here.