Conservative Race-Baiters Could Sink McCain

John McCain has a new problem with some of his far-right critics. Having made his life miserable in the primary, they seem now intent on wrecking his general election effort before it even starts.

At a campaign event last week, radio talk-show host Bill Cunningham used Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, multiple times in his warm up act for McCain. The very next day the Tennessee Republican Party was back with the same stunt, sending out an official press release using Obama’s middle name. When queried about it, a state party official suggested they “have a duty to inform the Republican base” about the potential Democratic nominee.

McCain apologized unreservedly for both incidents. But as he heads into a general election fight that may already be an uphill effort, it was a headache he did not need. McCain’s move to clamp down on the first hints of bigotry was indisputably the right move, morally and politically: facing an African-American opponent, it would be political suicide for him to appear to countenance racism or religious intolerance.

The backlash to the Drudge Report’s photo of Obama in Somalian garb was proof, if any was needed, that elevating his opponent to victim status would be a losing proposition. The last thing McCain needs is to reignite concerns that his party, which struggles to appeal to minority voters, is insensitive or prejudiced.

It is telling that the man whose candidacy nearly collapsed when he battled his party’s base on immigration reform, and whose pleas to treat illegal immigrants as “children of God” were derided, should find himself in this predicament. He seems fated to forever be pleading with his own side not to alienate non-white voters.

But McCain may not be master of his own fate on this one. No sooner did he chastise Cunningham than Cunningham retaliated on air, claiming McCain “threw me under a bus—under the Straight Talk Express,” and pledging to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Rush Limbaugh, McCain’s full-time nemesis, was not pleased either by McCain’s reaction either, asking, “Are all white Americans going to continue to be held responsible for their alleged racist forebears, multiple generations removed?” He later complained, “We're getting dangerously close here to where the liberals are telling us what we can and can't say.” And Ann Coulter? Her latest trick is to refer to Obama as “B. Hussein Obama.”

It is painfully clear that McCain and the Republican National Committee may be able to strong-arm state party officials into behaving themselves, but their ability to silence the talk-show crowd is nonexistent. McCain may denounce this brand of inflammatory politics, yet he is, in the end, powerless to control the Limbaughs and Coulters who will fan the flames—and worse, condemn McCain for capitulating to “liberal” sensibilities when he objects.

Now some may wonder whether a small segment of the far-right conservative base may be swayed by this sort of thing. But unfortunately for McCain there is no silver lining here. Those receptive to the not-so-subtle hints about Obama’s background are part of the very same crowd that has been threatening to stay home rather than vote for McCain and which rejects the notion that a candidate with a lifetime rating of 80 from the American Conservative Union is even a conservative.

The real effect, and the danger for McCain, is more likely that a broad swath of voters will be offended and that he will be forced to offer up daily apologies for and disavowals of the latest insult directed at his opponent. At best, McCain can hope that by comparison to his hectoring critics he seems sane and restrained.

It is ironic and sad in a week in which the conservative movement lost William F. Buckley, Jr. (the man who drummed the John Birchers out of the conservative movement and labeled Pat Buchanan’s comments anti-Semitic) that McCain should be bedeviled by the specter of bigotry sullying the image of the party he seeks to lead. He could have used Buckley’s help.