The McCain Insurgency

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John McCain’s insurgency is gaining after his New Hampshire upset, and so is the idea that George W. Bush, the annointed republican emperor-in-waiting has no clothes.

McCain’s Straight Talk Express pulled into South Carolina with a message for alienated voters and for the party establishment too: the choice is between character and experience or big money and political endorsements.

Four years ago the republican king-makers stifled the lock-and-loader Pat Buchanan after the New Hampshire primary and gave the ball to Bob Dole. This time around they loaded George W.’s coffers early and created the inevitability candidate who now looks quite “evitable” at the end of New Hampshire week?

How does a party answer a populist uprising against its own social conservatives and corporate friends?

The McCain Insurgency – in the first hour of The Connection .
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

David Brooks, senior editor at the Weekly Standard and Alan Wolfe sociologist at Boston University.