I'm worried about this general election.  Sure, the Bush administration has created the same favorable conditions for a Democratic victory that his father did, but that is not enough to launch either of our candidates into the White House.  McCain is the deadliest threat the Republicans could field, and now that Romney is gone, his nomination is almost certain.  Could our worst fears be realized though: can McCain coalesce the Reagan coalition?

The Reagan Coalition had been the cornerstone of Republican philosophy since his first election in 1980 bringing together neocons, the religious right, war-hawks and blue collar workers - the deadliest faction to the Democrats.  Granted, Reagan had a degree of luck in assembling all of these - he used Bush Sr. to appeal to moderates and capitalized on fatigue with LBJ's Great Society's costs for blue collar workers.  It was a masterstroke that built Reagan, but the fact that he only transfered money from social programs to the military did not hurt him at all.  Indeed, Reagan crushed Mondale in 1984 with his coalition.

Granted, comparing Reagan and McCain is a rather difficult task: they are a study in rather odd similarities and differences.  Both failed to capture the the Republican Party's nomination in their first campaigns for it; both took heavy criticism for certain ideas ("voodoo economics" and immigration reform).  But the stark difference is that McCain ran to the left of his competitors (as to contrast with Bush) while Reagan ran to the right of Bush Sr.  Fundamentally, they should be considered as members of different wings of the Republican Party - McCain's the less popular of the two.  Oddly enough, though, McCain has built a rather strange, winning coalition; CNN accurately points out that there is no typical McCain supporter.  But we do know this: hard line conservatives don't necessarily like him.

I don't really think that's a major problem for McCain though if takes Huckabee as his VP; combined they represent over 34 years of high-level government experience and can pull moderates, war-hawks, the religious right and independents together.  What about neocons and blue collar workers?

Huckabee will unsuccessfully attempt to pull neocons, and he might get a few but not the numbers Bush could pull.  I'm most worried about blue collar workers: if Obama or Clinton threaten to raise taxes back from where Bush put them, it might cause a backlash that heavily favors McCain, despite his flip-flopping on the Bush tax cuts.

Combine McCain's building strength with the sheer embarrassment that the DNC is going through and the small but vocal presence of hardcore Clinton and Obama supporters who will not vote for any Democrat but their candidate, McCain might manage a new Reagan Coalition.  We should all be worried now; if McCain builds momentum in office and turns the economy around combining his plans and Huckabee's, we might have another eight years of a Republican president.