L. Brent Bozell III (son of the late L. Brent Bozell, Jr. and the late William F. Buckley’s nephew) explains in the Washington Post why conservatives’ support of liberal Republican candidates has always led to disaster and disillusionment.

After eight years of Clinton’s corruption, and facing the prospect of at least four more years with Al Gore at the helm, conservatives threw our support behind George W. Bush in 2000. He initially delivered by leading the charge in cutting taxes, and his political stature further increased when the nation rallied behind its commander in chief after Sept. 11, 2001. He won reelection in 2004 because conservatives stayed with him, delivering millions of volunteers committed to the defeat of Sen. John F. Kerry.

But any hopes that Bush would deliver on a conservative agenda in his second term evaporated almost immediately. We watched with growing fury as he and the GOP leadership promoted one liberal initiative after another. Finally, we openly rebelled, turning on the GOP over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, amnesty for illegal immigrants and the Republicans’ shameless abandonment of fiscal discipline. What was once a powerful alliance between the Republican Party and grass-roots conservatives had become a political bridge to nowhere. With the GOP facing the loss of Congress in 2006, we shrugged in indifference. The movement that had “nowhere else to go” had gone.

And it has not returned.

How important are conservatives to the GOP? This year’s Republican primary debate was dominated by one question: Which candidate was most qualified to carry the flag of Ronald Reagan?

Ironically, the man who survived this intramural scrum is the one who arguably least qualifies as a Reagan conservative. He claims to be a champion of freedom but gave us McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform — which, by limiting free speech during elections, is perhaps the greatest infringement ever on the First Amendment. He claims to be a champion of U.S. sovereignty but offered us the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill that would give millions of illegal immigrants the chance to become citizens; that’s amnesty, no matter how much he denies it. He claims to be a champion of the unborn but has waffled in the past, supporting federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. This year, he won the endorsement of Republicans for Choice. He claims to be a fiscal conservative who will make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but he also voted against them. These are serious issues.

Read the whole thing.

Serious, indeed.

The possibility of a raprochement between John McCain and conservatives clearly exists, but McCain seems to be choosing instead to rely on drawing upon the votes of the middle-of-the roaders. He has been surrounding himself with prominent Republican liberals, and gives no evidence of intending a serious effort to repair relations with the GOP’s conservative base.

McCain clearly believes that faced with a choice between Lady Macbeth or B. Hussein Obama and himself, conservatives will inevitably pull the lever for McCain. He’s wrong. We can also simply stay home or cast some kind of protest vote.

John McCain thinks he’s Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt.

2:05 video

I thought the contrast of Churchill’s eloquence and McCain’s feeble powers of oration and squeaky voice did not work to his advantage, and I did not buy into McCain’s expressions of humble patriotism. I think McCain has a pretty visible sense of entitlement.

Rush Limbaugh argues that conservatives in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont should vote for Hillary Clinton today.

As usual, Rush is right. It’s better to keep Hillary alive in order to keep the democrats fighting right through their convention, which may even possibly feature the traditional democrat bloodbath.

And Obama is decidedly scarier than Hillary. He is a talented demagogue of extremely unsavory ultra-left background, who lucked into an unexpected seat in the Senate courtesy of Jeri Ryan‘s divorce, then was propelled right into presidential candidate status by one speech at the democrat convention in 2004.

McCain probably has a better chance of beating Hillary. And I’m not sure myself that we aren’t better off just taking our medicine in the form of Hillary and going into opposition for four years. Bad as she is, Hillary is a known quantity. Hillary will do a couple of very annoying leftist things, but will basically govern (the same way Bill did) by opportunistic and calculated triangulation. Obama is a comparatively unknown quantity, and has alarming abilities to gin up ecstatic emotionalism. We really don’t want Obama to win.

Matt Yglesias experiences a moment of satori, and suddenly understands why conservatives are not very happy about having John McCain as GOP standard-bearer.

Having heard this, I think it seems somewhat obvious in retrospect, but I met a smart conservative thinker last night who explained to me the conservative base’s fear about John McCain in understandable terms for the first time. Basically, McCain or no McCain this still looks like a bad year for the GOP. If he wins, it’s likely to be a personal win based on his persona and tarnishing Obama’s persona, in which the Democrats still pick up some House and Senate seats. Next up, it’s governing time. McCain’s not someone who enjoys a strong personal or professional relationship with John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, and he doesn’t owe any great debt to the GOP activist base. Under the circumstances, it’s plausible to imagine him striking a bunch of compromises with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on domestic issue in order to get a freer hand with which to conduct foreign policy.

That does seem plausible to me.

After Goldwater and Reagan, even liberal Republicans describe themselves “Proud Conservative Republicans,” but sometimes liberals slip up and reveal the truth: They are Proud Conservative Liberal Republicans.

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Mike Gallagher applies the New York Times’s own standards of journalism to “the Newspaper of Record.”

I have two sources, both of whom wish to remain anonymous, that report to me that New York Times Editor Bill Keller was spotted in a dumpster last weekend in the Hamptons snorting crack cocaine and smothering a pair of cocker spaniel puppies with a pair of sweat socks.

So now I’m reporting it to you.

Wasn’t that fun?

Of course this isn’t true – not that I know of, anyway – but it sure was easy to get out my laptop and write those words down so thousands of eyes could read them.

Evidently, the “Old Grey Lady” possesses the same standards as a supermarket tabloid that breathlessly reports that “sources” claim they saw Elvis munching on a Krispy Kreme donut in Myrtle Beach.

Read the whole thing.

The New York Times today gave John McCain a slightly belated Valentine’s Day bouquet, in the form of a major, clearly long-prepared profile of the candidate, discussing in great detail John McCain’s past ethics issues, and dropping lots of dark hints about a relationship between the Arizona senator and an attractive telecom lobbyist.

The Huffington Post managed to grab the lady’s profile from her firm’s web-site before it was taken down, and also provides a story of its own.

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Original Obama version.

Liberal Michael Kinsley, in Time Magazine, makes fun of the Republican Party’s current situation.

Republicans have pulled some dirty tricks before: Swift Boats, Watergate, you name it. But this time they have gone too far. In its desperate hunger for victory at any cost, the Republican Party is on the verge of choosing a presidential candidate, John McCain, who is widely regarded (everywhere except inside the Republican Party itself) as honest, courageous, likable and intelligent.

Have they no shame?

More important: Have they no principles? In a properly functioning two-party democracy, each party is supposed to nominate a person whom members of the other party will detest. Ordinarily this is not a problem. In recent years, the basic principles of each party have been anathema to the other. If a candidate in addition has a personality that gives the opposition fits, or a few character flaws it deplores, that is gravy. Indeed, since Ronald Reagan (who last ran for office a quarter-century ago), the parties haven’t even liked their own candidates all that much. The dilemma of liking the opposition candidate just hasn’t arisen.

There is a word for it when a political party chooses a presidential candidate with more appeal in the opposition party than in his own. That word is cheating. For heaven’s sake, if the Republicans want to keep the White House that badly, why don’t they just nominate Hillary Clinton and be done with it?

Read the whole thing.

Kinsley, of course, is wrong to blame Republicans.

The ascendancy of John McCain came about as the result of an open primary system which allowed democrats to play too prominent a role in selecting the GOP nominee, and McCain’s unbeatable momentum was largely the product of partisan flackery on the part of the MSM. Kinsley can blame us for allowing our own primary process to be hijacked this year, but he can’t blame us for John McCain.

Andrew C. McCarthy identifies the key flaw in the most popular Pro-McCain argument.

I have not supported Sen. McCain. I admire his perseverance and love of country. Still, I don’t think he is a committed conservative, and his penchant for demonizing all opposition is, to me, extremely off-putting. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, there’s nothing delusional about that.

In fact, as between the two of us, it’s McCain’s supporters who are deluding themselves. I take them at their word, for example, that a hallmark of the senator’s politics is his tenacity on matters of principle. Consequently, I am skeptical of his assurances that he would appoint conservative judges who will apply rather than create law. Why? Because he has a recent, determined history of beseeching federal courts to disregard the First Amendment in furtherance of a dubious campaign-finance scheme in which he believes passionately. Conservative judges would (and have) rejected this scheme, just as they would (and have) rejected another signature McCain position: the extension of Geneva Convention protections for jihadists.

Now, the appointment of conservative judges is a crucial issue — one McCain posits as central to why we should prefer him to Obama and Clinton. Thus supporters breezily wave off such concerns, maintaining that McCain both promises there will be no issue-based litmus tests for judicial nominees and has conservatives of impeccable legal credentials advising him.

But for me to conclude McCain would surely appoint conservative judges, I also have to believe campaign-finance and the Geneva Convention weren’t all that big a deal to him after all — a possibility that runs counter to everything McCain’s fans tell us about his fidelity to principle.

Read the whole thing.

McCarthy is perfectly right.

Throughout his Senate career, John McCain has demonstrated an eagerness for the good opinion of the media representatives of the establishment elect. He has been steadfastly acritical of simple-minded policies nostrums and violently hostile to theory. Why would anyone suppose that John McCain would suddenly break with the New York Times’ editorial page and start appointing controversial judges likely to roll back what the Times considers progress, including some of his own landmark legislation?

Conservatives are not going to support John McCain.

Unless he selects a spectacular conservative Vice Presidential candidate, that is, and promises to deliver a very long inauguration speech wearing no overcoat.

MacRanger responds to Bill Kristol‘s demand that conservatives shape up and get with the program.

Kristol hasn’t got a clue what Reagan meant to the conservative movement. He’s so enamored by the opportunity to get “his boy” sold to the unwashed masses of us who dare to keep the principals of conservatism intact, that he desecrates the legacy of Reagan.

Again, Reagan didn’t appeal to moderates and independents by becoming “like them” or by compromising with their middle of the road ideas. He simply communicated core conservative principals and brought them in. He could bring the three legs of the stool together because he found the common thread among them all, and that’s why we consider him the master.

McCain is a leg and a half conservative and anyone that sits on it is bound for a fall. Since Kristol misses the point on Reagan, he no doubt wouldn’t notice his ass hitting the ground.

And Mona Charen jogs our memories.

The problem with McCain is not just that he strays. George Bush has strayed from conservatism, too. So has Fred Thompson. Certainly Mitt Romney has as well. But Sen. McCain has a knack for saying things in just the tones and accents that liberals prefer. In 2000, he condemned the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” In 2004, when Sen. John Kerry was getting his comeuppance from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, vets who had known him during the war and couldn’t remain silent as the Democratic nominee distorted his war record, McCain weighed in by calling the Swift Boaters “dishonorable and dishonest.” When the Bush Administration was being vilified as a nest of Torquemadas for using waterboarding on three occasions, McCain came forward to condemn waterboarding as torture. …

There is a strutting self-righteousness about McCain that goes hand in hand with a nitroglycerin temper. He flatters himself that his colleagues in the Senate dislike him because he stands up for principle whereas they sell their souls for pork. Not exactly. He is disliked because on many, many occasions, he has been disrespectful, belligerent and vulgar to those who differ with him.

Bradley Smith, former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission and the leading legal scholar on campaign finance issues, experienced the McCain treatment firsthand. Because Smith opposed limits on political speech, he was denounced as “corrupt” by the senator (as was Commissioner Ellen Weintraub). Smith, who lives modestly, jokes that his wife has complained about the absence of jewels and furs.

Though he served on the commission for five years and made several attempts to meet with McCain to discuss the issues, Smith was rebuffed. The two did accidentally meet outside a hearing room in 2004 when they were both scheduled to testify before the Senate rules committee. At first, McCain grasped Smith’s outstretched hand (Smith was in a wheelchair, recovering from surgery), but when he recognized his campaign finance opponent, he snatched his hand back, snarling, “I’m not going to shake your hand. You’re a bully. You have no regard for the Constitution. You’re corrupt.”

Smith, a soft-spoken scholar, ardent patriot and lifelong conservative Republican, cannot, as a matter of honor, pull the lever for McCain. He is far from alone, and that is the Republican Party’s heartbreak in 2008.