Republican presidential front-runner John McCain yesterday urged his right-wing critics to “calm down” as he tried to persuade wary conservative activists to back his candidacy.
“I do hope that at some point we would just calm down a little bit and see if there are areas that we can agree on for the good of the party and for the good of the country,” said McCain, referring to radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, following his coast-to-coast Super Tuesday victories.
And McCain – tongue-in-cheek – tried to make peace with the shock jocks:
“I think they’ve made their case against me pretty eloquently.”
With the nomination for the White House near, McCain today will give an important speech to 6,000 members of the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington, DC.
McCain has won crucial primaries mostly with support from liberal-to-moderate Republicans and independents – but just a sliver of conservatives.
The McCain camp realizes he can’t win the general election against Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama if he fails to inspire conservatives to vote for him.
McCain skipped the CPAC conference last year, which rankled organizers.
“We all share common conservative principles. We should coalesce on the issues we agree on,” he said.
But McCain said it’s unrealistic to expect agreement on every issue. He added, like Reagan, it’s important to reach out to independents and Democrats to get things done.
Highlighting his problem with the conservative cognoscenti, Limbaugh pounded McCain on his show yesterday.
“McCain thinks he can thumb his nose – poke a stick in the eye of conservatives – and not pay a price for it,” he said.
Meanwhile the McCain camp released a memo yesterday suggesting that Mitt Romney should quit the race because it’s almost mathematically impossible for him to catch McCain in delegates.
Romney and Mike Huckabee said they will plow ahead, despite the long odds.