McCain's opposition to the swiftboating of Kerry may be personal. He may be concerned that an equivalent to swiftboaters will come forward to tell what they know about his time as a POW. Certainly rumors have been swirling around for decades.

So, McCain's heroic maverickness is gone, absorbed by a Hillary-like lust for power. And we thought everything was going to be different.

If Rudy really wants the job, he will win. Republicans aren't going to vote for a hypocritical war hero who will opt out of the rules that mark his 'greatest political achievement'. Someone called him "McVain" here the other day - that about sums it up.

And if McCain does lose in the primaries, whoever is running better be prepared to crush him, because the press and the Democrats will stoke those third-party fires like never before.

The other day I had the pleasure (here in Arizona) of hanging up on a McVain volunteer asking for a financial contribution, after giving him an earful. He was speechless but didn't seem that surprised. Johnnie boy may share with Algore the distinction of not even carrying his own state.

Conservatives can squack all they want about McCain, but he is the only one who delivered the federal judges for them. With Frist, Alle, Santorum and Brownback running the show in the Senate, all the judges were stuck there for years. The morons could not even get a vote for Owens, Brown and the like. It is only when McCain, along with Lieberman, stepped in that they got through.

Not that the Rabid Right will ever recognize the facts. Right now, they are in such a pathetic state that they are alternatively courting Giuliani (whose positions are a carbon copy of the Democratic Party platform) and Romney ( a religious cultist who changes his positions depending on which office he is running for), when not pining for ciphers such as Brownback, Gingrich, Huckabee and Tancredo.

In their stupidity, the Rabid Right does not even recognize that it is Rudy, not McCain, who is laying the groundworks for an independent run. He has filed for his exploratory exercise, and has deliberately not indcated his political party.

Childish petulance is going to cost us everything. We need to keep reminding ourselves that the components of a winning coalition must practice mutual respect and deference.

The stakes are as great as world war. The peace-creep left is going to maneuver Middle East policy as though Israel is to be abandoned. Deal after futile deal is going to be made until all the babies are out of the sled and the wolves close in.

In the end the country will not be able to chew the Israel arm off to get out of the trap, and there will be war.

Those tempted to shatter the Republican coalition over their wish to throw the Christians to the lions would do well to consider these things.

Lou, where will opponents for an all out war come from? Not one nation on earth can come close to matching us and we won't be standing still while we wait for them to catch up, as if they ever could.

If the dems get back in in perpetuity, there won't be a war, the whole world, including the Islamists, will sink into the dreary poverty of socialism.

If Rove didn't use it it doesn't exist.

Posted by: oj at February 4, 2007 3:46 PM

Erp, the problem is that the axis of weasels, foreign and domestic live in a dream world in which our weapons are "illegal" or at least not to be used without a permission slip. This enables aggressors to tempt annihilation. Having been given the sort of guarantee that the November criminals gave the North Vietnamese at the time of the greater Dolchstoss, they will attack Israel and the result will be millions of deaths.

The very point of my original comment is that the enemies' delusion will make war necessary. Yes, we can kill all of them easily, but the peace-creep gambit is what is going to make it necessary to do so,

Yes, but if we really go all out, the peaceniks will rethink their positions.