Assuming John McCain gets the GOP nomination, it will show how whimsical history can be. It would be the first time in living memory that a Republican presidential nomination went to a candidate who was not merely opposed by a majority of the party but was actively despised by about half its rank-and-file voters across the country -- and by many, if not most, of its congressional officeholders. After all, the McCain electoral surge was barely able to deliver a plurality of one-third of the Republican vote in a three-, four- or five-way split field. He has won fair and square, but he has driven the nomination process askew.
This result reminds me of a nursery rhyme: "For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."
In the current instance, the lost nail was a viable conservative candidate.
Blankley argues that there were two viable, unifying, genuinely conservative candidates that separate quirks of history (see the article for details) marginalized long before the campaigning really began: Jeb Bush and Sen. George Allen. With those two being ruled out, that left us with the current crop of no-one-likes-them candidates, with John McCain being center stage. Here's the key quote:
So, the mischievous gremlins and elves inside the wheel of history have served up John McCain to lead Ronald Reagan's party into November battle. McCain is both the finest war hero since Eisenhower to run for president and the one senior Republican who has gleefully put his thumb in the eyes of his fellow Republicans and conservatives for a decade and a half. He is the apostate leader of a party tending toward ossified orthodoxy.
Conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh, worry (with good cause) that this fluke of Republican history might permanently deflect the course of the party away from conservatism.
Bingo! That's the real problem right there. It's not so much an argument with McCain the man as with McCain the man who has re-branded conservatives to something we are not. I personally believe this would not be an issue if he ran as a moderate Republican, being honest about his positions. The vitriol he is reaping is because he is lying through his teeth, and everyone knows it.
Anyway, Blankley then relates the story of how conservatives came to power (beating out the moderates in the party, one of whom, ironically, was George Romney, Mitt's father) during the 1964 nomination, largely due to another quirk of history, and ends with the critical question:
If we conservatives sit on our hands this November, as moderates did 44 years ago, will we marginalize ourselves within the party (as the old Romney moderates did)? Or will we be saving the party for the grand old cause?
That is truly the question that we (assuming McCain does indeed win the nomination) have to answer in November. Will we sit out, refusing to support McCain, who is most certainly NOT a conservative, risking that our seat at the power table within the Republican party will be excised? Or will we hold our noses and fight for a Presidential nominee who, while being awfully bad for our philosophy, would still be the least bad choice?
Speaking for myself, I have no idea what I will do. I'm glad I have a few months to ponder.
There's my two cents.
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