[Smurf-316]

Should conservatives back Mac?

The anger that greets the Arizona senator might be more justly directed somewhere else: at President Bush


By Jonah Goldberg

There's a fascinating irony to John McCain's de facto victory in the race for the Republican nomination. While the self-styled independent maverick is arguably the best "change" candidate the Republicans could offer in the general election (itself ironic given that he has been in Washington longer than any other GOP contender), McCain wasn't the change candidate in the primaries. And GOP voters wanted change, too.
There are lots of reasons, some good, some bad, for conservatives' angry dyspepsia toward McCain.

But that raises an interesting and remarkably undiscussed question for McCain's detractors: Who are you really mad at?

Most of the criticisms aimed at McCain can be directed at President Bush himself. Campaign-finance reform is a great example. Most conservatives think McCain's effort to regulate political speech is an unconstitutional abomination. But in fairness to McCain, he doesn't think that. You know who does? George W. Bush. The president signed the McCain-Feingold bill though he admitted that he thought it was unconstitutional. But as a "uniter not a divider.

Amnesty for illegal immigrants? To be sure, McCain was a big player last year in pushing legislation many on the right detest. But the biggest player of all was, again, Bush. Whatever your disagreements with McCain on immigration might be, it's pretty much impossible not to have the same disagreements with the president who campaigned in 2000 insisting that "family values don't end at the Rio Grande." Indeed, before the 9/11 attacks, Bush wanted to make Mexico, not Great Britain, our No. 1. ally.

You can go on like this for quite a while. If you point to McCain's very conservative record on judges, his detractors will dismiss it, saying they don't trust his instincts.

A Bush buyer's remorse
According to many pundits, McCain won the Republican Party's "anti-Bush" wing, made up of moderates and independents. But this is largely a media-driven narrative imposed on a somewhat different reality.

In 2000, conservatives supported Bush despite his insistence that he was a "different kind of Republican" and his insistence that he was a bipartisan bridge builder. He wasn't like those mean conservatives of the Reagan-Gingrich period; he was a compassionate conservative.

Conservatives supported Bush in 2000 for numerous reasons, including the fact that he seemed the best candidate to win back the White House. But one reason for his success in winning conservative support was that he just seemed like "one of us." He carried himself like a conservative. He spoke like a conservative. He was an evangelical Christian and pro-life Texan, who reassured much of the base by telegraphing that he was on the right side of the culture wars.

In terms of body language, the differences between McCainism and Bushism are very narrow, and the question of who is more conservative is more open than many on the right are comfortable asking. Hence, projection and guilt might explain at least some of the venom toward McCain. A lot of powerful emotions can be conjured by the sentiment: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

[TheKing]

Somebody provide me the cliff notes for this post.

[Smurf-316]

Originally Posted by TheKing

Somebody provide me the cliff notes for this post.

so you come over here once a month and want us to cater to your needs?
typical Lib!!!

[Cybergal]

Ya with that money coming from the federal government, he can pay for someone to click his mouse...........