McCain picks up two big endorsements

The Des Moines Register has endorsed McCain and Clinton, and the Boston Globe has endorsed McCain and Obama. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

I'd love to see McCain pull an upset in one or both states. But I wonder whether these endorsements will actually help him, given conservative attitudes toward the MSM. Reading the editorials, it's fairly clear they're written from a liberal worldview. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but I doubt it will sway too many Republican primary and caucus voters.

Of course, independents can vote in New Hampshire, and were largely responsible for McCain's upset win there in 2000. But the newfound closeness of the Clinton-Obama race makes it much harder for him this year, because more independents will presumably do what Sally Eneguess is doing and vote in the Democratic primary.

In other news, Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin has some harsh words for Mike Huckabee: "One big government conservative administration in the 21st century is more than enough." Ouch. That hurts. Though it's not as bad as having your foreign policy called "Carteresque" -- by conservatives. (Hat tip, again: InstaPundit.)

UPDATE: Finally, an explanation for Huckabee's meteoric rise: Chuck Norris!

UPDATE 2: Richelieu at the Weekly Standard writes:

McCain is rising in New Hampshire polls, and savvy on the ground observers there tell me McCain's campaign is catching fire. I still think McCain should have rolled the dice and committed TV money to Iowa to beat Rudy and Fred there and nab a third place finish, which would rocket him into New Hampshire as the big surprise Iowa winner. But if the Mitt vs. Huck tussle damages both, McCain could still potentially upset the field in New Hampshire and then be off to the races. McCain's great advantage is that, unlike Huckabee and Romney, his numbers are deep and rock solid. You either like him or you don't. So he enters the chaos of the post-Iowa period with a tough knot of real support in New Hampshire, which is not a bad secondary hand to play in a chaotic situation.

Comments

[Mad Max, Esquire]

McCain represents the Republicans best chance to win the general election...

Romney (Christian Right won't vote for him because he is a Mormon).

Huckabee (Christian Right will be the ONLY ones voting for him).

Giuliani (All the Republicans in the Red States who never saw the news accounts of what a frickin' scumbag Giuliani was to his former wife and kids are now waking up to the truth).

Thompson (zzzzzzz)

Tancredo (nuts)
Paul (slightly less liberal than Dennis Kucinich)

[Mad Max, Esquire]

There are moments when you see the tide change during a political campaign. For instance, the Dean Scream and McCain going nuts on Pat Robertson in South Carolina.

I believe the tide changed for good in Obama's favor after this debate exchange with Hillary "The Cackler" Clinton...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nKHBSFSosY

...It's time to send that plotting, cloying fraud back to where she doesn't belong...New York State (as opposed to places she actually lived before like Arkansas and Illinois).

[Aaron]

McCain and Thompson are currently vying for my coveted Least-Bad-GOP-Nominee award. Since the Thompson boom appears to be over before it even started, that leaves McCain.

and Max...

Paul (slightly less liberal than Dennis Kucinich)

where the hell do you get that from?

"where the hell do you get that from?"

The same place Mad Max gets all of his insights -- his ass.

[Mad Max, Esquire]

"Paul (slightly less liberal than Dennis Kucinich)

where the hell do you get that from?"

Guess who said the following:

* I consistently vote against using tax dollars to subsidize logging in National Forests.
* I am a co-sponsor of legislation designed to encourage the development of alternative and sustainable energy. H.R. 550 extends the investment tax credit to solar energy property and qualified fuel cell property, and H.R. 1772 provides tax credits for the installation of wind energy property.
* Taxpayers for Common Sense named me a "Treasury Guardian" for my work against environmentally-harmful government spending and corporate welfare.
* I am a member of the Congressional Green Scissors Coalition, a bipartisan caucus devoted to ending taxpayer subsidies of projects that harm the environment for the benefit of special interests.

...If you guess Kucinich, you are wrong.

[Mad Max, Esquire]

Paul again...

The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars. We must have new leadership in the White House to ensure this never happens again.

[Mad Max, Esquire]

And again...

I have been the national leader in preserving Health Freedom.

I have introduced the Health Freedom Protection Act, HR 2117, to ensure Americans can receive truthful health information about supplements and natural remedies.

I support the Access to Medical Treatment Act, H.R. 2717, which expands the ability of Americans to use alternative medicine and new treatments.

I oppose legislation that increases the FDA‘s legal powers. FDA has consistently failed to protect the public from dangerous drugs, genetically modified foods, dangerous pesticides and other chemicals in the food supply. Meanwhile they waste public funds attacking safe, healthy foods and dietary supplements

[Mad Max, Esquire]

Don't get me wrong. On some issues, like the abortion issues and the 2nd Amendment, he is essentially on the same page as Tim McVeigh and the Freemen. But on some of the issues that are more top of mind this election cycle, the guy sounds a lot like a Democrat.

[Brian Foster]

"But on some of the issues that are more top of mind this election cycle, the guy sounds a lot like a Democrat."

Well, yes and no. He's against subsidized logging, but he's against subsidized forest preservation as well. He sponsored bills to extend tax credits to other sources of renewable energy, but if elected President he'll try to eliminate the entire Internal Revenue Code. His approach to health care is not more government programs and funding, but ensuring availability of private-sector alternative providers, products and remedies under our current physician- and insurer-dominated system. While most Dems clamor for greater regulatory intrusion by the FDA and other agencies, you've just quoted Paul wanting to roll that back because of its ineffectiveness and skewed priorities.

I think even on these issues, any apparent similarity between Paul and the Democrats evaporates once you probe beneath the surface.

(Even re the war, which concededly is where he sounds most Democratic, his concerns are markedly different from the Dems.)

[Anonymous Hoosier]

Re: The endorsements mentioned all the way back in Brendan's post... what is it about McCain that causes liberal/media Democrats to like him? It makes sense that Brendan, Sen. Lieberman, and other Democrats who understand the war with our Islamic enemies like Sen. McCain. But the newspapers endorsing him now (except for the Union-Leader) are papers that believe this war is a scheme cooked up by BushMcChimpyburton. It can't still be that they are seduced by McCain speaking his mind on that damn bus. And if it is, can't McCain throw them off the bus? They're not helping him, because the conservatives to whom he ought to appeal can't trust him as long as the lib-media does.

[Aaron]

Max, Brian Foster beat me to this, but he's correct. Not one of those quotes from Ron Paul suggests he's a liberal. Unless you meant "classical liberal," but then the comparison to Kucinich makes no sense. Paul is a pretty straightforward conservative-libertarian.