Virginia Republicans object to required backing of McCain Michael Roston

Published: Tuesday February 12, 2008



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Print This Email This Senator John McCain's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has taken on an air of inevitability after the Arizona Republican's showing on Super Tuesday gave him a commanding lead in delegates over Mike Huckabee and prompted Mitt Romney to exit the campaign. But in Virginia, where voters will select their preferred nominee for president today, some party leaders recently objected to a requirement that they support the veteran senator. Members of the Republican Party in Loudoun County, Viriginia met last week, and took up a variety of business, including a requirement that members of the party's committee support all Republican candidates. With McCain looking set to march away with the nomination, some party members objected. "I am really concerned that John McCain is going to become the nominee," Erika Jacobson of the newspaper Leesburg Today reported committee member Susan Falknor saying. "He has been against a lot of conservative values." News accounts showed Falknor moved to strike the requirement that members support McCain from a resolution passed by the party. While the Loudoun Easterner reported that she received a second, the motion was ruled out of order. McCain has a strong lead in polls in Virginia. But the dispute at the county meeting was a reminder of the deep dissension in Republican ranks over McCain's ascendancy. Although pundits have crowned McCain as the party's candidate in November, McCain lost weekend contests in Kansas and Louisiana to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and only narrowly won the vote in Washington state. The decision of the Washington GOP to call that contest for McCain prior to finishing the vote count prompted an angry reaction from Gov. Huckabee and his campaign. "All Republicans should unite to demand an honest accounting of the votes, so that Republicans can have full confidence in the results, and full confidence in the eventual Republican nominee," campaign chairman Ed Rollins said on Feb. 10. "As I said, we are prepared to go to court, and we are also prepared to take our case all the way to the Republican National Convention in September." Furthermore, a straw poll taken among attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference crowned Mitt Romney as the preferred Republican nominee after he withdrew his candidacy. And leading conservatives continue to slam the idea of McCain's inevitability. "This is not sitting well with the Republican establishment, folks," Rush Limbaugh declared on his radio show Tuesday. "We were supposed to now be unifying around and behind Senator McCain, after his sweep on Super Tuesday. But with Huckabee continuing to win these primaries, it illustrates that there is no unification going on."



