By THOMAS F. SCHALLER|March 13, 2008
John McCain is running for president backward.
Last week, the lucky-in-his-enemies Arizona senator locked up the Republican nomination, ending a battle of partisan attrition. Mr. McCain won in part because conservatives could never find a worthy alternative to rally behind to defeat him.
The standard operating procedure at this point would be for Senator McCain to pivot toward the political center to position himself for the general election. Instead, Mr. McCain finds himself having to tack rightward to satisfy a disgruntled, skeptical conservative base.
As he moves in that direction, Mr. McCain faces twin challenges: winning over dissatisfied movement conservatives while not alienating the independent-minded voters who have always represented his base of support.
Thus far, Mr. McCain's fence-mending project with the right wing is off to an awkward, even ugly, start. The same week he secured the nomination, the self-styled "maverick" got himself wrapped around the axle of a no-win controversy involving one of America's most radical religious conservatives, John Hagee.
Perhaps you had never heard of Mr. Hagee until last week. He heads a San Antonio megachurch and is president of a new organization with the rather harmless - if misleading - title of Christians United for Israel. Ostensibly a defender of Jews and Israel, Mr. Hagee and his CUFI followers harbor some frightening ideas about the always-imminent Armageddon and the divine Rapture they predict will follow.
Essentially, Mr. Hagee believes the end times are not only near, but can't arrive soon enough. The shortest path to Armageddon, he predicts, is a major nuclear conflagration in which Israel is forced to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, thereby prompting the Russians, who depend on Iranian oil, to strike back, causing a nuclear holocaust that opens the skies for a rapturous moment of accounting during which he and his followers will be lifted to heaven.
If you think followers of Mr. Hagee's wacky prophecies are few, think again. His book, Jerusalem Countdown, has sold more than a half-million copies; tens of millions tune in to his radio and television programs.
At least Mr. Hagee's attitude toward Jews, albeit instrumental, is more sanguine than his feelings about the Roman Catholic Church, which he has called "the great whore" (he now says he was referring to the "apostate church" - Christians who "embrace the false cult system of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism"). He also characterized Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans as a wrathful god's verdict for a city scheduled a few days later to host a homosexual parade.
