Thread: It pays to have the media in your corner:John McCain edition

It pays to have the media in your corner: John McCain edition

The Sunday talk shows were downright bubbly about John McCain's prospects after he won the South Carolina primary on Saturday night, with many pundits ready to anoint him the GOP frontrunner. When will the media figure out that many of the GOP candidates are focused on a strategy built on the bottom line of accumulating delegates -- you know, the people who actually choose the nominee -- as opposed to gathering media buzz?

And where is McCain in the actual delegate count? Third, far behind Romney and a little behind Huckabee.

Further proof of the candidates' focus on delegates over buzz: Rudy Giuliani is gearing up his buzz-free campaign at last in hopes of taking winner-take-all Florida's delegates -- which by my calculation would put him first in the delegate count -- after ignoring earlier states and media conventional wisdom. Rudy's arrival also undercuts the McCain-is-inevitable argument because McCain is no longer the only credible Republican running mostly on national security.

The idea that South Carolina established McCain as the frontrunner with great momentum also looks suspect when you actually look at the state's history:

John McCain came out on top in South Carolina by getting the same 1/3rd of the vote in the Palmetto State that he got in New Hampshire and Michigan. But did he "win?"

In 2000, running against George W. Bush and the entire Carroll Campbell machine in South Carolina, John McCain got 42% of the vote, and 240,000 votes out of 573,000 or so cast.

Tonight, he got 33% of the vote in a field where his top challengers--Romney and Giuliani--aren't even running, and 135,000 actual votes. If just the same people who voted for McCain in 2000 had voted for him today, he would have won 50+% of the South Carolina vote. That would have been truly impressive.

Instead, John McCain LOST the support of 100,000 people--and he's the winner?

That's from National Review Online's Michael Graham.

If the media didn't like McCain, do you think these numbers would have been mentioned to provide context? Of course. Instead, the media still buy the fantasy of the Straight Talk Express, and want McCain to be the nominee.

Want more proof of the media's blatant favoritism? Consider all the deserved bad press many of the top GOP candidates have gotten for their flip-flopping. McCain's flip-flops are just as bad -- on illegal immigration "reform" and on taxes -- but they're barely acknowledged. Why? Because John McCain is the Straight Talker. Even if he isn't.

Posted by Chris Reed at January 21, 2008 01:01 PM
http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblog ... 18698.html

And let's not forget that McCain got slapped by 9 points in Michigan, the state he won in 2000 and made a big effort in this year. But the MSM largely (& wrongly) dismissed Romney's victory due to his family ties there.