It's Showtime for McCain

By Akeem Mellis

Well, it is now official for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). After overcoming many obstacles, including defeating fellow candidates that at one time had a significant lead over him, and being left for dead only just five months ago, the Arizona senator has clinched the GOP nomination.

The only relatively good GOP candidate left in the race, he ended what had looked like to be a long nominating process for Republicans. Congratulations to him. But while McCain has put away a populist Republican in Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, he'll now have to confront putting away one of two populists in disguise over the next eight months.

With one dream achieved, McCain must now prepare himself for the toughest and possibly most frustrating race of his life against either Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) or Barack Obama (D-Ill.). For him to now win the White House, he must mitigate two problems.

First is the obvious reality that conservatives – who were split in their presidential preferences, helping give McCain the nomination – are still ambivalent about his candidacy.

Second is the way he’ll have to mitigate the looming onslaught by his opponents that he would be an “extension” of George W. Bush – a claim that, upon further inspection on certain issues, couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Tie that with how to properly articulate a message that can keep Republicans and Independents together for him and it’s a hefty climb.

But McCain has nearly eight months to do all of this. A now significantly prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination will greatly help him. Already, he has started to speak the message he will deliver throughout the summer and fall of this year.

If John McCain can ride a nearly dead campaign to the nomination, surely he can beat the odds in November. It’s time for Senator McCain to put on another comeback performance.

Akeem Mellis is the president of the College Republicans. You can reach him at amelli3@pride.hofstra.edu.

OPINION: The End for Romney

By Akeem Mellis

WASHINGTON--Today, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave one of the better speeches conservatives have heard in a while. He defended the essence of conservatism and gave conservatives the best possible reason to choose him over Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

It’s a shame, however, that Romney then proceeded to capitulate in the face of unfavorable odds and ended the candidacy of the Republican party’s last and best hope to deny McCain the party’s nomination.

As an attendee to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, I watched Romney’s speech on site with rapt attention, joining other conservatives in the hopes that Romney would repeat what he did last year at the Conference, and start a spark among Republicans that can somehow restart and rejuvenate his campaign in the wake of Super Tuesday.

For a while, the speech Romney delivered today sounded like something that could do exactly that. He touched on familiar and time tested themes, like ensuring that America’s culture is preserved in the face of what Democrats would want to do.

And that was just to chip away at Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s supporters on the religious right. He then brilliantly pounded home his economic prowess, a key asset that neither Huckabee nor McCain has in the face of looming economic troubles.

Finally, he stood up to McCain’s strength on national security by illustrating how strong he would be on terror and keeping America on the offensive against terrorists. The person conservatives have flocked to as the only true conservative left in the primary showed them why they were right to support him.

This made his announcement immediately thereafter that he would withdraw from the race even more painful to watch and digest. A not-so successful Super Tuesday fueled today’s stunning end to his campaign.

While Romney did win his home state and several Western states outside Arizona, he lost big time on two fronts: the biggest prizes of the night in New York and California; and failing to make any inroads down in the South, with Mike Huckabee winning Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas.

These twin blows led to the campaign having “frank discussions” of whether or not he should continue, and today the decision was revealed. Now, there is no significant opposition to Senator McCain – unless you count Huckabee, who’s down big time against McCain in national polls right now.

So what’s next? Well it came almost immediately after Romney dropped out. Senator McCain finally showed up to CPAC after spurning it last year as his candidacy went into high gear.

While the goal of his speech was to unite conservatives still weary of his actions over the past 7 years, he should know that one speech won’t do the trick.

He’ll need the GOP base, and he needs it soon if he wants to win in November. His speech was a start, but there’s still a long way to go. But McCain’s work starts now, as his last significant opposition has exited stage left today.

Akeem Mellis is the president of the College Republicans. You can e-mail him at amelli3@pride.hofstra.edu.

OPINION: Fearing McCain

By Nicholas Bond

John McCain scares me. He scares me a lot.

It is not because he is an exceptional public servant over the last twenty years. It is not that he is a war hero whose record cannot be brought into question. It is not because he has shown time and time again an unwavering moral compass and a steely strength in his convictions.

It is that whomever the Democratic party, my party, chooses to challenge him in the general election, will do that which McCain could not do in a thousand years with a thousand speeches that had a thousand references to Ronald Reagan each:

they will make him Republican enough.

To this point, the only potential chink in the McCain armor has been that he is seen by many Republicans as “not Republican enough” because of his willingness to reach across the aisle and do what is required of his lofty position and even loftier ideals; but now this open wound on McCain’s body of work has been assuaged by either Democratic nominee.

This is not the fault of the Democrats but rather of the American people, who, despite what they say in polls and what they say in interview, fear so greatly change of the necessary grandeur and fear the work that must be put in to make this society equitable for all.

McCain is a fine candidate, and would be an obvious upgrade to the current administration, but it is the belief of myself and many others, that we must take this election by the horns, we must not just settle for “better than before” we must reach for that brass ring on the never-ending carousel of American life, and hopefully, Tuesday will be the day that we can make this happen.

I have faith in you, America. Now, go vote!

Nicholas Bond is the president of the College Democrats, and the Chronicle Sports Editor. You can e-mail him at

OPINION: McCain poised to win nomination without Heart of the Party

By Akeem Mellis

Can a candidate for their party's nomination for President of the United States actually win that nomination without the support of the base of the party? John McCain may surprisingly pull that off.

That is the ugly scenario GOP voters are looking at right now as Super Tuesday is here.

McCain, boosted by victories in the key primary states of South Carolina and Florida, has attained close to unstoppable momentum, a surge of support, votes and delegates that may once again give him the power to thwart the very group he has let down and stabbed in the back for the past seven years in order to get to this point in time:

Conservative Republicans.

They make up the majority of the base of the Republican Party, yet because of a series of misfortunes and surprises, have once again found themselves run down by the Straight Talk Express. But it is not entirely their fault.

One cannot blame them for the fact that the Senator from Arizona has done nothing but ignore them when it mattered the least, and has tried to cozy up to them when it mattered the most.

A cursory look at who in the Republican Party supports McCain is startling. In every primary state that McCain has been competitive in, he has not won the largest share of votes from self-identified conservative Republicans. Not even once.

Instead, it has been liberal to moderate Republicans carrying the day for him – including using Independents in open primary states like New Hampshire – with conservative Republicans doing one of two
things: split their support among the other numerous candidates in the field, or sit and wait for a "truly Reaganesque" candidate to save the day.

For diehard conservatives, the latter was lost when popular GOP Senators Rick Santorum and George Allen lost their Senate seats in 2006. And the former cost them when they failed to see the beginning of McCain's second rise from the pre-Iowa primary ashes to claim victory in New Hampshire.

We as a party knew how bad McCain was, and yet we waited and divided ourselves, especially when we saw that McCain's campaign was imploding in the late summer to fall.

But nobody can count out McCain. The choice is clear, but the time to stop McCain-- who, outside of National Security issues, has consistently failed the party time and time again to curry favor with the media – has passed the Republican Party by.

Some of us now look towards former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as a last hope to forestall a McCain nomination, but if the polls continue to trend against Romney, Super Tuesday could be the knockout blow.

We're now looking at a GOP electorate concerned about electability rather than who can represent conservative values the best. It's exactly what McCain wanted, for he's about to win the Republican nomination without the heart and soul of the party.

Akeem Mellis is the president of the College Republicans. You can e-mail him at amelli3@pride.hofstra.edu.