John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is historic and intriguing. She certainly is not one of the usual suspects chosen by and for Beltway insiders. Her background, her personality and her personal narrative figure to add new twists and turns to the fall campaign.
While Governor Palin may bring some hitherto forgotten constituencies to the Republican table—hockey moms, salmon fishers—her presence on the ticket suggests that Mr. McCain and his party have written off the Northeast. That would be a foolish mistake.
You wouldn’t know it by Republican’s westward-leaning ticket, but some of the party’s best-known figures live far from the great open spaces beyond the Mississippi River. No doubt there are good reasons why Mr. McCain skipped over Mitt Romney as a running mate, but let’s not forget that Mr. Romney managed the notable feat of winning election as governor of Massachusetts as a Republican.
More to the point, voters in New York City have elected a Republican as their mayor in four consecutive elections. It’s true that few people expected Mr. McCain to name his friend Rudy Giuliani as his vice presidential nominee. And Mr. Giuliani’s successor as mayor, Michael Bloomberg, forfeited any chance he might have had when he wrote himself out of the Republican Party and re-registered as an independent. Nevertheless, their electoral success in New York City, of all places, proves that even stalwart Democrats can be led down the road to apostasy under the right circumstances.
There is nothing in Mr. McCain’s message thus far that shows that he has learned much from the Giuliani-Bloomberg success. That is most unfortunate, because Republicans who gathered here four years ago to re-nominate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney got a firsthand look at the ways in which Republican chief executives have transformed and revived the country’s most important city.
While pro-choice, culturally moderate Republicans may be anathema to the party’s core constituency, Mr. McCain is supposed to be a maverick. That’s why so many conservative commentators despise him, and why they will hold their noses when they cast their votes for him in November.
A maverick who enjoys good relations with a Republican like Mr. Giuliani, as Mr. McCain does, would be wise indeed to send signals to voters in the Northeast that he understands their concerns and their alienation from the party’s cultural conservatives. While states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania may seem as blue as the summer sky in Alaska, voters in all four states have supported Republicans who have made national names for themselves: In addition to Messrs. Romney, Giuliani and Bloomberg, let’s remember that Tom Ridge and Christie Whitman were successful Republican governors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, respectively.
There can be no doubt that Northeastern Republicans are a breed apart. They always have been. But they also have been successful in attracting Democratic crossover votes, precisely the voters Mr. McCain will need. It’s hard to believe he thinks he can win over Democratic women simply by his choice of Governor Palin. Indeed, in choosing Ms. Palin, with her commitment to abstinence, creationism and overturning Roe v. Wade, Mr. McCain is positioning the Republican Party well to the right of most Americans. While small-town and rural America has maintained its appeal, that is simply not the setting where most Americans live and work.
To win the support of women and of wavering Democrats, Mr. McCain needs to acknowledge the party’s success in producing inclusive Republicans in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. On this issue, however, he seems to have lost his taste for maverick politics and straight talk.
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