Ground Game

It’s no secret that John McCain is the favorite Republican presidential candidate of most beltway reporters, Democrats and unorthodox conservatives. This past week's storyline has been about a slowly growing McCain surge. For weeks, the evidence was purely anecdotal. But the positive McCain trends are becoming measurable. Even Bill Clinton thinks he’s the most electable Republican in the field.

McCain’s barrier to entry has been the opposition of conservatives, for whom immigration and the “original sin” of campaign finance reform are litmus test issues. However, McCain’s campaign advisers have held on to a belief that if he could simply stay afloat long enough, both the establishment and many of his detractors would come around and accept him as the most viable conservative in the race.

You can’t get much more establishment than Robert Novak, who writes:

Sen. John McCain, given up for dead a few weeks ago as he ran a cash-starved, disorganized campaign, today is viewed by canny Republican professionals as the best bet to win the party's presidential nomination. What's more, they consider him their most realistic prospect to buck the overall Democratic tide and win the general election. Indeed, if Mike Huckabee holds on to actually win the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the road forward could be clear for McCain.

And much like Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economic theory, conservative bloggers are slowly but surely showing signs of accepting, if not embracing, the notion of McCain as GOP standard-bearer. Leading conservative blog Red State has posted no less than three positive McCain posts in the past 24 hours:

Praising a new McCain campaign ad

Chiming in on the Novak column:

Bob Novak himself did not support the position that McCain is the potential nominee with the best chance in November; rather, he reported it. My question is: Is Bob Novak telling us something we do not already know? Absent a last minute Fred Thompson explosion, isn't McCain the only candidate well positioned to defeat Hillary or Barry?

And even asking, “Does America Need John McCain?"

Already whispers have begun that if Fred Thompson can't pull off Iowa, conservatives will need to rally around a candidate and that candidate is most likely John McCain. Is John McCain the man to lead America? The Union Leader said yes. And they just might be right.

Even Powerline, which has been far less hospitable to all-thing-McCain, takes a look at the Romney/McCain brawl and concludes:

None of this means necessarily means that conservatives shouldn't vote for McCain. In my view, he is easily the most electable Republican and, if the environment is hostile enough next November, quite possible the only electable one. He's also sound on more issues than he's unsound on, including most of the biggest ones. But conservatives should not doubt that a President McCain will infuriate them on more than a few occasions.

That argument comports with an encounter I had last night while waiting for a delayed flight out of O’Hare Airport. I ran into a Republican friend who was still steaming at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination and threatening to vote for a Democrat, something he’d never previously done, if his other choice was the former Baptist minister. This friend has been staunchly opposed to a McCain presidency over the years, but conceded, “I’d rather vote for someone I’m going to occasionally disagree with but at least has conservative principles.”