By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — National commentator Glenn Beck and a conservative activist guest on his radio program didn’t have any problem agreeing that beating U.S. Sen. John McCain in the Arizona Republican primary next year would be a “huge” accomplishment, sending a strong message.
Who might take on that assignment? Beck’s guest, Matt Kibbe, president of the pro-small-government FreedomWorks organization, said it liked Arizona GOP Cong. Matt Salmon as the challenger. An appealing conservative Arizona state senator and physician, Kelli Ward, from the Colorado River town of Lake Havasu City, said she was considering making the run.
If someone does jump in, it’ll take lots of name recognition and even more money.
Not every one of the 100 U.S. senators may be an instantly recognizable name, but McCain’s is across the nation, from long-suffering political conservatives who bear the burdens of his betrayals to liberal media people who rejoice in the conservatives’ distress.
Out in the West where a man should be as good as his word, two-faced McCain murmurs the conservative talk when forced to appeal to voters, such as when undertaking his recently announced campaign to run for the Senate again in 2016. But that’s not what’s in his heart.
Come to think of it, that duplicity could describe a lot of Republican bigwigs, such as the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells who pound their fists in the air against massive illegal immigration while doing all they actually can to leave a big welcome mat on Arizona’s southern border.
At home here in Arizona, McCain’s team is in a constant struggle with grassroots conservatives for control of various party bodies. McCain wants as much control as he can get, which means other Grand Canyon State politicians are recognized either as being McCain guys or not, or maybe slipping from one side to the other.
McCain’s foes may be as numerous as the sands in the desert here — but what is sand except something to be stomped on by the elite?
If politicians are in McCain’s corral, being a social conservative may not be so useful. Recall former Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) making the still-valid disclosure that McCain hated to have morally conservative issues on the Senate calendar.
In an interview with talk host Hugh Hewitt before the 2008 campaign began in earnest, Santorum recalled that “when we were in these meetings, there was nobody who fought harder not to have these issues before the United States Senate on some of the most important social conservative issues, whether it’s marriage or abortion or the like. He always fought against us to even bring them up, because he was uncomfortable voting for them.”
So when pro-lifer Doug Ducey, Arizona’s new GOP governor elected in November 2014, put his foot down in late April to promote adoption and foster care by homosexual “married couples,” some folks shrugged: Well, after all, Ducey’s a McCain guy.
McCain guys don’t have to be as completely “mavericky” as their boss, as long as they know who’s boss.
Rob Haney, retired chairman of Phoenix’s Maricopa County Republican Party and a longtime McCain foe, told The Wanderer in a May 3 email:
“Gov. Ducey’s action to advance the homosexual doctrine was not a surprise. After all, he was Sen. McCain’s candidate for governor and is only following through on McCain’s agenda: take no action against the illegal-alien invasion or the Common Core education initiative, and pave the way for homosexuals to dictate the sodomite culture we are to live under.”
The generally liberal Arizona Republic, the state’s largest daily paper, cheered for Ducey with an April 24 front-page story headlined, “Critics, allies surprised as Ducey backs gay adoption.”
The story said that although Ducey won his election “with significant help from some of the state’s most socially conservative leaders, [he] took many by surprise this week with an order that the state immediately resume allowing married same-sex couples to foster and adopt children.”
Arizona had a constitutional amendment affirming traditional marriage that was passed as an initiative by the state’s voters, but it was overthrown last fall by a federal judge who considered himself superior to the state constitution.
The Republic story continued that Ducey’s “position runs counter to the beliefs held by many of his supporters, and it has elicited cheers from many who didn’t vote for him.”
It was a classic GOP case of betraying supporters to win plaudits from hostile media.
While Ducey’s allowing “gays” to adopt may sound pretty worrisome, McCain probably has been devoting considerably more worry to a move by Arizona Republican Party troops to limit the party’s primary election to participation by registered Republicans only. The senator recognizes that his chances for victory are better when non-Republicans help choose the party’s candidates.
In January 2014 Arizona GOP state committeemen as well as some of the counties’ committeemen, including dominant Maricopa County, strongly voted to censure McCain as being untrue to the Republican Party platform.
It was a rebuke that stung McCain deeply, although his media pals like The Arizona Republic did all they could to downplay the embarrassment. McCain started strategizing to try to avoid future rebukes.
Although Arizona is the sixth-largest state by area, nearly two-thirds of the state’s population of about 6.75 million people lives just in the greater Phoenix area, so Maricopa is the tail that wags the dog.
It wasn’t so many years ago that the Arizona establishment often called the shots for many party organizations, but more recently the candidates considered to be foes of McCain easily have won leadership positions.
When Robert Graham was elected as state GOP chairman in January 2013 by state committeemen, he was considered to be on the side opposite McCain. However, after Graham’s election to a second two-year term this January, serious doubts began to emerge about his allegiance.
In April Graham proceeded to dismiss state committeemen’s strong call through a resolution that the party begin the process to close its primary election.
Haney, the former Maricopa County chairman, told The Wanderer in an email that Graham “led conservatives to believe that he would give them a fair hearing, but he, too, turned out to be a McCain operative. While being well aware how much McCain was despised by precinct committeemen, Graham had the audacity to slip McCain into the state party convention [in January 2015] for a surprise introduction, and the place erupted in boos and catcalls.
“Very likely following McCain’s wishes,” Haney continued, “Graham later rejected the directive of the state committeemen that the GOP primary be closed, so that only registered Republicans would decide who the Republican candidate would be.
“McCain has stated that he wants the primary open. With an open primary, he can garner Independent votes, some belonging to Democrats who temporarily switch to Independent in order to vote for RINOs [Republicans in Name Only],” Haney said.
Haney, a Catholic, saw parallels between the acts of some GOP leadership here and national Catholic officials acting contrary to Catholic doctrine.
“The question is, how could GOP party officials so easily subvert the words of the Republican platform and the will of the base of the party? But are not the GOP officials in D.C. doing the same thing? And are not a large number of U.S. Catholic bishops and Catholic university presidents doing the same thing when it comes to ignoring Catholic doctrine in favor of Democrat Party socialism? Only half joking, maybe term limits would be best for all of them,” Haney said.
A Legally Binding Resolution
In a letter to members of the Arizona GOP Executive Committee, the immediate past chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, A.J. LaFaro, pointed out the resolution to close the party primary “was overwhelmingly passed” by state and Maricopa County committeemen.
“The resolution isn’t a request, but a directive to the Arizona GOP Executive Committee to close our Republican primaries either by litigation or referendum,” LaFaro wrote.
“Robert Graham is telling people the resolution is unconstitutional. That is simply not true. I met with several of our state elected officials and legal counsel — it’s a legally binding resolution.”
LaFaro attached a copy of the approved resolution, which, among its stipulations, said:
“RESOLVED, that Arizona’s Republican precinct and state committeemen hereby direct the Arizona Republican Party Executive Committee and legal counsel to file all necessary paperwork with the Arizona courts to seek summary judgment restoring closed primaries in partisan elections.”
Will McCain prevail? Stay tuned. His buddy Barack Obama already showed that in elite eyes, whatever rules and regulations say can be taken lightly or ignored.
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