Blowin’ in the wind with Richard Lowry—away from McCain

In December, Richard Lowry and his editorial board endorsed Romney. After Iowa Lowry was dismissive of Romney and distinctly favorable to McCain. After New Hampshire, Lowry was dismissive of Romney and distinctly favorable to McCain. After Michigan, the same. But in an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Monday night, Florida eve, Lowry, amazingly, sounds as though he’s personally rooting for the candidate he’s endorsed, Romney, to defeat the candidate he hasn’t endorsed, McCain. Isn’t that weird? It’s like being in Chicago and seeing a man dancing with his own wife.

But it gets weirder. Lowry is actually attacking McCain:

RL: … But that’s really outrageous what McCain is doing, bringing up this ancient interview, and distorting it at the last minute so he doesn’t have to talk about the economy.

HH: Rich Lowry, your reaction to this whole scandal, attack, as well as Rudy’s and Toobin’s reactions?

RL: Well, I think they’re right. I think it’s totally dishonest, and I took away a couple of things from it. One, I think McCain just kind of feels entitled to this cheap shot, because he was genuinely up front about the surge, he was more courageous about it than pretty much any other major politician. So he just feels, though, he can deliver this low blow. And the other thing that is going on, I think, is McCain is much more comfortable attacking harshly and unfairly his enemies within the Republican Party than he is attacking Democrats. And layered on top of this is his obvious, and I think I find it very distasteful, but his obvious hatred for Mitt Romney. If you saw the clip of McCain today, chortling as he was talking about Romney’s flip-flopping, it’s this kind of insincere McCain laughter that masks his true bile that he’s directing towards Mitt Romney. So I find the whole thing, from the dishonesty to the kind of sentiment animosity it’s revealing about Mitt Romney, to be really unworthy of John McCain, and kind of a shame.

I’m glad Lowry is saying this, but how can it be that he’s just realizing now, after all these years, what a nasty piece of work John McCain is?

And here is Lowry talking about the same story he wrote up at NRO that I posted, McCain on the campaign trail talking about immigration, but Lowry describes it very differently than he did in his article:

RL: … I will say watching McCain on the stump, I was down there in Florida Wednesday and Thursday of last week, you know, he sounds like Lou Dobbs on immigration now, and I just think it’s so obviously insincere. Someone got up at one of his town halls, and asked him if he’d consider pardoning the border agents, those two border agents, Ramos and Campion. And he basically said yeah, I might, you know, we need more information about that, there’s an investigation ongoing. You know in his heart he thinks the guy who is asking that question is an idiot and a right-wing fanatic. That’s how he thinks of him. But he’s pretending to get himself through to this nomination. And I just don’t believe anything he’s saying on immigration, and I think one of the first priorities he would have as president of the United States would be cutting an amnesty deal with some sort of border enforcement window dressing on it, with the Democratic Congress.

I’ve been saying for weeks that Lowry was just looking for McCain to break out of the pack and for Romney to fade so that NR could endorse McCain. But we’re seeing a whole different Lowry now. It’s hard to imagine Lowry endorsing McCain after the way he spoke about him to Hewitt. What could have happened? Perhaps I was not the only one to react so strongly against NR’s flirtation with McCain. (See my articles in which I said that NR was gearing up to endorse McCain and abandon conservatism.) Maybe a lot of conservatives spoke up about it, and it had an effect on the NR crowd. Maybe it finally got through Lowry’s head how truly out of the question McCain is from a conservative point of view. In any case, something has changed.

- end of initial entry -

James W. writes:

I see a specific phenomenon at work that has a broader application than to National Review.

Republican politicians, wonks, and presumers have increasingly accepted lazy assumptions made possible through the stupifying reign of Bush II, and are now being braced and corrected by the actual conservative base—that has been only recently advised it is no longer directing the show (the Reagan Revolution is over).

We told them the phony immigration bill was not the done deal they thought it was. How the Republican leadership howled. Didn’t they know what was best for us?

A number of other projects were put to rest through bloggers and talk radio. Even in radio, the audience is often more sophisticated than its host. Limbaugh’s long-time fans never accepted his carrying Bush’s water, something he has admitted to only recently and stopped doing.

I believe the base has not only not gone away, but will become stronger through adversity. McCain only exists as a perceived legitimate force the same way Hillary does—with the connivance of the media. As we have seen, Hillary could not endure all those months without revealing herself, and McCain will get what is due to him in far greater proportion because the Republican base is something the liberal base is not—principled.

That leaves one man standing. We know Romney’s shortcomings, but he does not have a tin ear, and we are speaking clearly to him. There will be no honeymoon, and that is as it should be. When you set your office up in a whorehouse, even a priest is going to last so long.

Our job is oversight.

On the other hand, hitting bottom with Hillary is not as unappealing as it once was.

Either way.

But McCain? Our humiliatioin would be greater for having supplied the mean of our own destruction.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 29, 2008 02:03 AM | Send