According to Captain Ed and Mary Catherine Ham, John McCain wants to mend fences with bloggers and play nice. Ed thinks McCain has a ways to go:
John McCain has a record of courageous stands on behalf of the war on terror and on spending, two key issues for conservatives in the 2008 cycle. However, as MK points out, he has not taken a market-driven approach on campaign finance reform, instead relying on intrusive government control of political speech. How committed will he be on free markets as President in any sense, if not in political speech? He now sings the conservative tune on tax cuts, but we still remember McCain the Maverick opposing them when George Bush pushed them through Congress — and his part in blocking the efforts to make them permanent.
I won’t ding McCain too much for opposing the tax cuts, but he has to repudiate that Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act if he wants to mend fences with me. My chief problem with McCain is that I think he’s too convinced of his own correctness and infallibility, and that makes him shut his mind off to other ways of looking at things. It’s some of the same “I know what’s best!” traits that I despise in Hillary Clinton. My problem with John McCain is that, while he seems to support freedom as a political issue, he doesn’t seem to grasp freedom as a philosophical concept.
Back to Captain Ed:
He may well wind up as the best of the choices that present themselves during this long campaign season, and I would encourage open minds and ears for the next year. However, until McCain either makes a case for government oversight over political speech that convinces conservatives or pledges to reverse the BCRA, I don’t see him winning many converts, no matter how expert his campaign staff is — and they are certainly working their hearts out early for McCain.
Yup! Let’s not forget he needs to start acting like he’s from Arizona on the gun issue too.