"This all seems to me to be a reflection of the fear that lots of old-line Republicans have of what lies ahead in 2008," said Norm Ornstein, congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, "and the ability of McCain to seduce them in a sense into a belief that he's the only guy that can win."
McCain, who spent Sunday in Phoenix with his wife Cindy, was not available for comment. But John Weaver, a senior consultant for McCain and his PAC, said in response that he was "pleased so many people are committed to assisting the senator in his effort to elect Republicans around the country and responding to his reform agenda."
Also co-chairing the event are Rob Allyn, a Texas PR man who was paid $46,000 to produce the Wylys' "Republicans for Clean Air" ads, and businessmen Albert Huddleston and Harold Simmons, who gave $100,000 and $3 million respectively to the controversial independent group, "Swift Vets & POWs for Truth." McCain called "dishonest and dishonorable" the "Swift Vets" group's 2004 campaign ads that helped sink the presidential chances of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
Political observers say that McCain is walking a delicate line.
"He's trying to somehow preserve that enormous strength that made him rock star and folk hero -- over and above his previous military service -- that he's a straight talker and straight shooter with principles and will take on the nefarious forces whoever they are," Ornstein says. "On the other hand, he understands that in order to win the presidency, the first thing you've got to do is win the nomination. And in order to win the nomination, you've got to be undisputed leader of the party not just a leader of a movement."
"Our party tends to nominate 'The Next Guy,'" says McCain friend and ally Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. "As much resentment as there was against Ronald Reagan in 1976 after Ford lost, he was the next guy and got the nomination in 1980."
George H.W. Bush may have slapped Reagan in the primaries, but he got the nod eight years later; same with Bob Dole who waged a bitter campaign against Bush Sr. in 1988 and got the nod in 1996.
"McCain's the next guy," Kirk says.
Like the Wylys and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, others co-chairing the May 15 event come from the Texas Republican power structure that helped propel President Bush into the White House. They include former Texas Republican Gov. Bill Clements, an early Bush supporter whose 1986 gubernatorial campaign put Bush political guru Karl Rove on the map; George Bayoud, Clements' campaign manager who worked closely with Rove and was Clements' gubernatorial chief of staff; Jeanne Phillips, a longtime Bush fundraiser who helped run the Bush high-donor fundraising operation and helped run the inauguration festivities in 2001, 2005, and for Bush's father in 1989; and businessman and so-called "corporate raider" Tom Hicks, who helped make President Bush a millionaire 15 times over when he bought the Texas Rangers from a business group Bush helmed in 1999.
