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Meghan Mccain, "republican"

Unlike at least one of my colleagues, I can't claim to know Meghan McCain very well, but the couple of times I met her on the campaign trail, I liked her a lot. And I've been impressed by the post-election writing she's done on The Daily Beast and some of her TV appearances. That said, Chris Good's argument that Meghan might well become the model "new young Republican" strikes me as a stretch, mainly because it's not really clear that she is a Republican.

As she explained in this interview she did with Larry King last night: she's in favor of gay marriage; she's personally pro-life but won't "judge other people and what they do with their body" (which seems to make her effectively pro-choice); and, as she told Greg for his GQ piece, she voted for John Kerry in 2004. How, exactly, is Meghan McCain a Republican--other than the fact that she's the daughter of the GOP's most recent presidential nominee? In other words, all the things that make people like me admire Meghan McCain are precisely the things that will cause many Republicans to dislike her. So I'm not entirely clear how she overcomes that antipathy to become some sort of model young Republican. If her dad wasn't John McCain, I imagine Meghan would be a Democrat.

--Jason Zengerle