CNN has an article about the conservative backlash McCain is facing over his mortgage bailout proposal.
Gee, I couldn’t see this coming.
John McCain is facing a fresh round of anger from members of his own party deeply opposed to the Arizona senator’s proposal for the federal government to purchase troubled mortgage loans.
[...]
Matt Lewis, a contributing writer for the conservative Web site Townhall.com, told CNN the plan only further riles conservatives upset with McCain’s backing of the massive government bailout plan passed last week.
“Fundamentally, the problem is John McCain accepts a lot of liberal notions, unfortunately. There is somewhat of a populist streak,” he said. “Most conservatives really did not like the bailout to begin with, and this was really kind of picking at the scab.”
[...]
It’s a proposal that is fundamentally at odds with the conservative principle of individual responsibility, and is the latest in a string of public spats conservatives have had over the years and in this election with their party’s standard bearer.
[...]
Instead, the estimated $300 billion tab essentially gets transferred to taxpayers, among the funding already provided by the bailout bill — a proposal that may rile not only fiscal conservatives, but also struggling homeowners who have worked to keep up their mortgage payments.
“The guy who works two jobs and struggles to actually pay his mortgage is penalized. He would be better off under this plan to just quit paying his mortgage,” Lewis said. “And this fundamentally goes against a lot of conservative principles and individual responsibility.”
[...]
“Liberals who might actually be inclined to support a welfare check such as this are already going to vote for Barack Obama, and conservatives, who view this as irresponsible and even apostasy, are turned off by it,” Lewis said. “This is both bad policy and bad politics.”
This was a very bad move by McCain. Really, his only hope for winning this election lies in rallying conservatives to support him. The more we see of this side of McCain, the more likely we are to not vote for him.
After all, if the next president is going to be a big government liberal, it might as well be the Democrats taking the blame for it.
October 11th, 2008 at 5:47 am
I have no numbers to back up this statement … BUT … I think the big winner out of this last McCain/Obama discourse and that of the Biden/Palin show was Bob Barr.
McCain has voted in the Senate to push government ownership into Wall Street and has proposed the feds purchase mortgages on a widespread basis. Palin has bragged about her huge tax increases on the oil companies in Alaska to make up for what she called Obama’s vote to reduce taxes on those same oil companies. There’s got to be a lot of folks who self identify as fiscal conservatives who don’t want to vote for a liberal and are getting upset with McCain and Palin.
I’d love to see some good polling numbers.