H/T The Plank:
In the end, I think the party needing to go in a different direction from a conventional conservative approach was the primary reason for his diminished position in the race for the 2008 nomination. This just puts an exclamation point on the view that Allen is no longer a real contender for the nomination.
“This” is the Macaca screwup. I will ignore his other presumptions. Cook continues on the Macaca Screwup:
If Allen decides to pursue the nomination anyway, rivals will raise this incident and previous questions that have emerged as “evidence” that he is accident prone, or has foot-in-mouth disease, and argue that the party shouldn’t risk nominating someone who could self-destruct.
Accurate or not, fair or not, his opponents will argue this and it will hurt. To win the GOP nomination, someone might need to raise at least $100 million before Iowa, and this incident would probably have a chilling effect on fundraising, early endorsements — it would hurt across the board.
I hinted at some of these reasons before here.
1 Comment
On McCain being a frontrunner at eyeon08.com · August 21, 2006 at 10:55 PM
[…] First, there will be early states. IA, NH, SC, AL, MI, AZ, followed by media. So some guesses on the first states. McCain comes in 2nd in IA, 1st in NH and MI. Probably first in SC. Sure first in AZ. In each of these states (except AL? I just don’t know) McCain has high quality teams on the ground now. The upshot is McCain has a good chance of coming out of these in very good shape. Second, there will be the money game. To win as Charlie Cook pointed out in his letter to TNR about George Allen, one of the questions is going to be “Can he raise $100m by IA?”. This is because the schedule is going to be very, very compact, as it will be for the Dems. As soon as the early states are over, the campaign will switch to national media. McCain will have the money. His frontrunner status will beget more money. And everyone already knows who he is, saving him time and money on TV. Probably only Romney can compete in the money game from day one. In response to Redstate, it is important to note that the Blogosphere cannot raise this level of money. Therefore, the real question will be whether McCain will have an opponent after the early states who will be willing and able to fight to the convention — like Reagan did in 1976. But that will be the fight… […]
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