Something less than a badge of honor

Jack Kelly:

In a small indication of poor judgment, Sen. John McCain's operatives provided a link on his campaign Web site to the New York Times editorial endorsing Sen. McCain in the New York primary Feb. 5.

The endorsement got more attention than it otherwise would because MSNBC's Brian Williams, one of the moderators of the GOP debate in Florida last Thursday, threw it in the face of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The editorial had consisted mostly of the editorial board explaining why they think Mr. Giuliani is an evil mean nasty rotten guy. Mr. Williams wanted to know: how does the mayor respond to such withering criticism from his home town paper?

Mr. Giuliani's eyes lit up like Babe Ruth's used to when he saw a hanging curve spinning in his wheelhouse. Rudy knew, as Brian Williams evidently did not, that for the vast majority of Republicans, to be endorsed by the New York Times is like being endorsed by Satan.

What is curious is that Sen. McCain would consider the endorsement of value to him in a GOP primary fight. The Arizonan has yet to win a plurality of Republican voters in any primary or caucus. (Independents put him over the top in New Hampshire and South Carolina.) In Florida, and in most of the primaries to come, only Republicans will be permitted to vote. Reminding suspicious conservatives that he's the favorite Republican of limousine liberals doesn't seem to me to be the best way for Sen. McCain to win them over.

Most observers thought that debate was won by former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney, but Mr. Romney handed back whatever advantage he might have won with some clumsiness of his own.

Mr. Romney received a modest bump in the polls immediately after the debate, but it dissipated when Florida's popular governor, Charlie Crist, and Sen. Mel Martinez, popular with Cuban-Americans, endorsed Sen. McCain. Both likely would have remained neutral were it not for the heavy handed tactics of Mr. Romney's operatives, said the American Spectator's "Prowler."

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Rudy Giuliani may not be a favorite of the New York Times, but former Sen. Fred Thompson, the first major dropout in the GOP race, has got to be very fond of him. Thanks to Rudy, Sen. Thompson can no longer be said to have run the worst campaign in modern history.

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Both Sen. McCain and Gov. Romney are too flawed to reunite and reinvigorate a dispirited Republican party. There is only one candidate who can do that. And she might lose to Barack Obama.

Hillary does have the ability to unite the Republican base, but so does Obama. If you get past the fancy packaging and the soaring rhetoric, he is still a liberal and he want be able to hide that when he RNC and the Republican candidate focus on his record and his platform. He is dead wrong on Iraq and painfully ignorant of what has happened there in just the last year, much less during the run up to the war. He is goofy on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bill and Hillary have been hammering him on the wrong issues, because they are trying to pander to the same kook base that supports Obama on national security issues. Republicans want make that mistake.