John McCain is now in the drivers seat to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Even though Maine Republican caucus-goers thoroughly rejected him last week, his Super Tuesday victories will make him hard to beat.

That’s good news for his Maine supporters, which include Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins. However it may not be good news for Republican hopes to retain the presidency. Why? Because in many ways, John McCain isn’t a conservative. This disconnect between the party’s base and the ideology of their probable nominee could doom his chances in November.

There are many people on the right that cannot stomach McCain. The fundamental problem is over the responsibility of the federal government in American life. As columnist Robert Robb has written, McCain harkens back to the turn of the 19th century for his political role model: “McCain is most clearly not a conservative on the issue of the appropriate role of the federal government.(he) has taken after Teddy Roosevelt, one of his political heroes. Roosevelt viewed the federal government as the ultimate arbiter in the political economy with a particular role in being a counterweight to accumulations of wealth or power.”

Two grievous transgressions that conservatives attribute to McCain are his leadership of campaign finance reform and his disloyalty on the Bush tax cuts.

McCain believes money can corrupt politics. That’s why he fought so long and hard for the landmark campaign finance law that was passed in 2002, known as McCain-Feingold. The most important part of it eliminated the ‘soft-money’ loophole that had allowed national party committees to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns.

McCain didn’t mince words about the need for governmental action in a July, 1999 speech: “we have a new patriotic challenge for a new century: declaring war on the cynicism that threatens our public institutions, our culture, and, ultimately, our private happiness. It is a great and just cause, worthy of our best service.”

Hold on. Our private happiness is threatened by too much money in politics? Government should try and fix the damage that money creates in our political system? That’s an activist talking; a person that believes that government should do something to regulate the marketplace. To many on the right, that’s not protecting economic freedom or freedom of speech. It most certainly isn’t conservative.

In a May 2007 column, radio-talk show host Dennis Prager agreed with this characterization. He wrote how he couldn’t support McCain because of the issue: “I understand why liberals support it – by limiting access to the political process, incumbents and, most significantly, the media are empowered.That a Republican senator – let alone one who calls himself a conservative would do so boggles the mind.”

Conservatives suspect McCain doesn’t really believe in tax cuts. He voted against the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. He was one of only two Republican senators to oppose Bush in 2001, one of three in 2003. Who were his rebellious comrades? Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island in both years and Snowe in 2003.

To core Republicans, those votes cut deep. Why would McCain oppose his own president on their party’s fundamental issue? McCain has justified his actions by pointing out his embrace of fiscal responsibility; that there were no corresponding spending reductions to offset the tax cuts.

One could make the case that McCain is an idealist; he genuinely believes in a balanced budget. However, there hasn’t been any balance since the Clinton years.

If McCain wants to return the GOP back to fiscal responsibility, why is he now calling on making the Bush tax cuts permanent? He must suspect the Democratic majority in Congress will only grow next year, with the amount of GOP retirements and the energizing of the Democratic base.

Future Congresses probably won’t pass enough deep cuts to produce balanced budgets.

Does it make a difference to Mainers if McCain is a conservative? While it matters to many Republicans, most Democrats could care less. The key to a McCain victory in Maine during the general election are independents, the largest segment of our electorate. However, if McCain makes himself too attractive to independents, he will continue to lose the grassroots conservatives.

He is in a tough position.

Karl Trautman is chairperson of the social sciences department at Central Maine Community College. He received his doctorate in political science from the University of Hawaii. He can be reached at [email protected].