Republicans, Conservatives, and McCain

Via the invaluable Jeremayakovka, here's an excellent piece by John Podhoretz in Commentary:

The truth is that [McCain's] flinty individualism has a profoundly self-destructive aspect to it. He has made his own pathway to the top of his party extremely difficult because he does not wish to play the game the way it needs to be played. He offends people he need not offend, and acts in ways that are considered disrespectful by people who only need him to show them a little kavod. If he becomes the nominee of the GOP, he will be required to mend fences he need not have broken down in the first place.

But his opponents are engaging in a terrible mistake as well. McCain likes to make common cause with politicians across the aisle from him. They can’t stand this. They prefer someone who fights Democrats to someone who makes deals with Democrats. Fair enough. But this is a difference of degree, not of essence. McCain is a deal-maker. Perhaps, having engaged with a real enemy who broke his arms and tortured him and sought to destroy him body and mind and soul, he doesn’t see an enemy when he sees a Democrat but rather just another American whose ideas on many things differ from his but with whom he might share some common ground.

Remarks. There are so many good points made here, I don't know where to begin. But I'll begin at the end, where JPod says: 'But the Republican party is not an ideological movement. It is a political vehicle for the American right-of-center. Those who confuse the Republican party with the conservative movement are indulging in a fantasy — that there is purity in politics and that there is something immoral about ideological impurity.'

Not all conservatives are Republicans, and not all Republicans would meet a strict test of conservatism. (I myself am a Republican but have never mistaken myself for a conservative.) To confuse political affiliation with ideology is to compromise both.

McCain understands that while war may be "the continuation of politics by other means," politics is not itself war. It is the process of maneuvering groups of people - including competing and overlapping interest groups - toward a common goal or set of goals.