Does the McCain have the advantage? Or more problems?

The Associated Press

Shore up the base? Or tack to the middle?

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Does the McCain have the advantage? Or more problems?

The Democrats are still duking it out, but Republicans seem to have settled on a front-runner: John McCain. Now he has an advantage: More time to build the case against the Democrats while they make their cases against each other. But he also has a problem: Persuading skeptical conservatives to support his candidacy.

Does McCain have the advantage? Or more time for his problems?

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The Editors/National Review Online

They say that McCain’s victories prove that opposition to amnesty is a losing issue. Actually, the anti-amnesty candidates — including Mike Huckabee, who has been running as a deportationist — have gotten majorities in most states. Even in Florida, where strong Hispanic support gave McCain a decisive win, the anti-amnesty candidates got nearly half the vote. McCain’s success proves that Republican politicians can survive supporting amnesty if they have compensating strengths. It does not prove that the issue helped him. As Ramesh Ponnuru writes in the upcoming issue of National Review, conservatives cannot reasonably ask McCain to abandon his convictions on immigration. But they can ask him to say that he will defer any action on amnesty, or guest workers, until a few years after enforcement has been put into effect.

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Bradford Plummer/The New Republic

One could, alternatively, imagine that the absence of a clear Democratic opponent would make it much harder for McCain to start attacking (back in 2004, the GOP was able to coalesce around the Kerry flip-flopping meme early on, which gave it time to sink in). Meanwhile, it seems that as long as the Democratic nomination is up in the air, dissatisfied conservatives are more likely to spend time airing their grievances with McCain than training their fire on his opponent.