Friday, March 02, 2007

McCain and CPAC   [Byron York]

On all the talk about John McCain and CPAC — I just had a conversation about it with John Weaver, McCain's longtime strategist.  "We had a conflict," Weaver said.  "You can debate whether we did the right thing or not, but we chose a different set of events that we already had on the books.  It's not any more complicated than that." The conflict, Weaver explained, involved events that McCain attended yesterday in Utah and a long-planned fundraiser tonight in Arizona.

On the more general issue of tending the conservative base, Weaver said, "John McCain meets with conservative activists around the country and in Washington on a daily and weekly basis."  I asked whether McCain had come to CPAC much, and Weaver said just the time in 1974 (mentioned earlier by Bill Bennett) and another occasion when Nancy Reagan asked him to pick up an award.  So McCain is clearly not in the habit of going, I said to Weaver.  "There's no reason for that," Weaver said.  "There's no dissing of this organization or anything else."

I also asked Weaver about the senator's decision to announce his presidential candidacy on the David Letterman show.  "It was an audible," Weaver said, indicating that McCain decided to do it at the last minute.  "He said, 'If I get asked a question about whether I'm running or not, I'm going to answer the question.'"  Weaver explained that McCain, whose campaign employs 150 people and is raising money every day, simply decided to do away with the pretense that he wasn't running for president, and so Letterman got his answer.

03/02 02:22 PMShare