Is McCain facing a platform fight at the Republican convention?

The official national Republican platform is 100 pages long, and 91 of those pages reference George W. Bush. Not only will the party want to downplay the unpopular president’s role in shaping the party’s agenda for the future, but it will obviously be necessary to start promoting John McCain as the party’s leader.

But the prospect of re-writing the Republican platform is ripe with opportunities for intra-party conflict.

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September’s Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party’s official declaration of principles. McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush. “There is just no way that you can avoid anticipating what is going to come. Everyone is aware that McCain is different on these issues,” said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. “We’re all kind of waiting with anticipation because we just don’t know how he’s going to thread this needle.”

As a rule, fights over party platforms are rare and dull. A party’s presidential candidate generally reflects the policy agenda of the party’s voters, and while competing factions might want specific provisions and/or language included in the platform in a certain way, the squabbles are behind the scenes and largely inconsequential in an otherwise choreographed event.

But this year, it appears Republicans are starting from scratch and there are ideological differences between the party’s base and the party’s nominee.

The result could be rather entertaining.



The battle may not be avoidable…. McCain is “really out of step with the strong majority of his party,” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes McCain’s positions on climate change. “He might get what he wants. And he might get a change. But I don’t think it’s going to sit well with a lot of Republicans.” Officials in the Republican National Committee and in McCain’s campaign say they have much in common with conservatives. They say their conversations as they approach the convention suggest there will not be a nasty platform fight. […] Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a former Ohio secretary of state, said he does not expect a “bloodletting” in the platform committee. He predicts that conservatives and McCain will be reasonable and stay focused on a November victory: “I don’t think you are going to see any radical departures or inflammatory demands for change in one direction or another.” Those assurances are not enough for activists such as Echard, who have been on the front lines of GOP platform fights for years. She will be traveling to Minneapolis-St. Paul, site of the Sept. 1-4 convention, for two weeks in August, with the primary goal of making sure the 2008 platform reflects conservative principles.

So, what might they fight over? McCain apparently wants a less conservative approach on immigration, and Republican activists don’t. McCain wants some acknowledgement of the need for government action on global warming, and Republicans don’t. And McCain initially promised voters that he wanted to change the party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. He’s since broken that promise, but party activists have vowed to raise hell if McCain tries to change so much as a syllable of the party’s anti-abortion-rights language.

Stay tuned.