I'd vote for him over anyone the Dhimms are likely to run, but I wouldn't like it. We can do better and we need to.

McCain Campaign Staff and Bloggers:
The Lovers' Quarrel Conference Call
Mary Katharine Ham (Hat tip: Michelle)

All right, so some would argue that McCain and the bloggers have never had enough of a relationship to qualify the current disagreements as "lovers' quarrels," but the call and the conversation the campaign staff is starting to have is a bit, "baby, come back. You know I've always loved you."

Not that that's a bad thing at all. Bloggers, as the guys on the call noted, will have an impact on the '08 elections, and McCain, despite past missteps needs to start a conversation anew. And, if McCain does win the nomination, even folks who don't love him will want to support him to the best of their ability over the Democratic nominee, for the most part. So, the campaign guys hosted the first of several on-the-record Blogger Bitch-a-thons today (Boss, am I allowed to say that?), which I think is a wise move, indeed.

We need to have it out and have our feelings validated just a bit.

David All live-blogged the call, here, and while he knocks the Musak while we were on hold, I think it was one of my favorite selections, as these things go. Very lively.

Anyway, I think the calls are the right move for the McCain folks, and we hit on all the fun issues-- McCain-Feingold, alleged hostility toward bloggers from McCain, general annoyance. Some of the answers were good, but I didn't feel like conservative bloggers' real, politely presented, substantive issues with McCain were taken as seriously as they could have been. I mean, we've got some deep-seated issues, here, that have developed over many years for some of us. There were only a few of us on the call, and I wish we could have gone longer. 

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The Impact Of Blogger Outreach 
Ed Morrissey

Earlier today, I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call involving the John McCain campaign and several prominent bloggers. David All live-blogged the event, in which the McCain staff solicited our unvarnished opinions regarding McCain, his campaign efforts, his prospects for promotion through the blogosphere, and what we felt we would need from his campaign.

I won't attempt to recreate David's excellent coverage, so I'll give you my overall evaluation of the event. It shows that McCain and his staff understand the need to address the skepticism (and in some cases, outright hostility) of the conservative blogosphere. Even though McCain enjoys a substantial level of support among voters at the moment, his numbers among blog readers have been abysmal. One person on the call noted that a recent straw poll put him at the same level as Fred Dalton Thompson, who is closer to running for an Emmy than for President.

In prior elections, none of this would have mattered much. Bloggers had been seen as little more than hobbyists, people whose opinions made an inconsequential impact in the larger scheme of political campaigns. That has changed after the experience in the midterms, apparently. The presidential campaigns seem especially interested in bloggers as a direct conduit to voters, especially those with established credibility. That recognition appears universal even at this early stage of the primary campaign, as all three leading GOP campaigns have hired "new media" liaisons and aggressively courted coverage of their candidates. ...

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Mary Katherine On McCain 
Ed Morrissey

I linked to David All's live-blog of the conference call several bloggers held with the John McCain campaign earlier today. Mary Katherine Ham also participated in the call, and has a somewhat different take on the effort to engage conservative bloggers:

[...]

In my earlier post, I decided not to talk too much about McCain the candidate, but focused more on the professional campaign staff that I believe has done well by the Senator. However, MK has a good point in this analogy, and I think this is what separates McCain from Rudy Giuliani for conservatives.

Putting Mitt Romney to the side for a moment, one might expect conservatives to flock to McCain's banner for his stated positions on issues of import to our cause, and shy away from Rudy for his publicly stated positions on the same issues. Instead, in the early stages, it appears to be the other way around, and I'm sure McCain's campaign must be a little frustrated by that. The reason is the lack of constancy on McCain's part and the credibility that Rudy's consistency has built.

John McCain has a record of courageous stands on behalf of the war on terror and on spending, two key issues for conservatives in the 2008 cycle. However, as MK points out, he has not taken a market-driven approach on campaign finance reform, instead relying on intrusive government control of political speech. How committed will he be on free markets as President in any sense, if not in political speech? He now sings the conservative tune on tax cuts, but we still remember McCain the Maverick opposing them when George Bush pushed them through Congress -- and his part in blocking the efforts to make them permanent.

So far, we're not hearing how things will be different with a President McCain than they have been with a Senator McCain. Perhaps we won't, because the campaign staff will tout McCain's long service and the fact that he has engaged as a high-profile warrior in most of the public policy debates of the past decade or more, a reputation that makes him the anti-Kerry for 2008. They will see this as an asset, but conservatives will not. What they fear is the McCain of 2001-2006, and a pledge to remain that will definitely create a lot of opposition from the conservative bloggers who met today. ...

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About that McCain staff blogger outreach call
Paul Mirengoff

Yesterday afternoon, Senator McCain's top campaign staff held a conference call with about half a dozen conservative bloggers. David All live-blogged it. Captain Ed and Mary Katherine Ham have shared their reactions.

I hadn't intended to post on the conference, but now that my comments have been summarized by other bloggers, I think I should recount more fully what I said.

I expressed alarm about what I perceive to be strong dislike and distrust of the Senator not by bloggers but by blog readers. I cited the Pajamas Media poll, in which at least at one point, McCain was running neck-and-neck with Fred Thomspon and Ron Paul. I also mentioned the harshly negative feedback about the Senator we frequently receive at Power Line on our forum page and in emails.

I expressed this alarm "not as a McCain supporter, but as a McCain admirer." As I put it, "a strong McCain campaign is in the national interest and the interest of the Republican party, just as a strong Giuliani campaign and a strong Romney campaign are."

I identified three main themes that appear in the anti-McCain messages we get. The first, of course, is McCain-Feingold. I don't think there's much McCain can do about this. It's unrealistic and unfair to expect a "McCain outreach program" to include changing positions on fundamental issues.

The second problem is the sense that McCain has "sucked up" to the mainstream media over the years largely by criticizing conservatives. That's an almost unpardonable sin for many blog readers who, after all, started reading blogs because they so distrust and dislike the MSM. Whether other conservatives feel so strongly about this is unclear.  ...

The third problem McCain has -- and probably the most curable -- is his stridency towards those with whom he disagrees. ...