“How does it advance conservative philosophy to get hilabama elected?”
How does it advance the cause of conservatism to get McCain elected?
We conservatives are on defense right now. So, think like a defensive team. When you stop the other side from scoring a huge touchdown that will move their agenda hugely forward you've done some good. Obama winning in 2008 is like the Liberals winning the superbowl.
If we can stop the left-liberals from getting the most liberal President in American history elected, we will have stopped a huge win.
What's on the line? Judges - good vs bad ones, lower tax rates vs Obama's tax hikes, Obama's plan to turn every college kid into a liberal-sheeple-community-activist on taxpayer dime!!, Obama's retreate and defeat out of Iraq, Obama's plan to sit down with our enemies and apologize for America.
We advance conservatism by stopping 2 more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs. McCain has promised Alito/Roberts types. He wants credentialed judges for SCOTUS, a good metric for conservatives to see what's up.
Simply stopping Obama's agenda will be a huge win for conservatives. Now McCain himself is not perfect, but we conservatives can be a 'loyal opposition' that supports him on the 70-80% stuff that is good, and opposes him on stuff like immigration where we part company. We did that with Bush on immigration and it worked for us - we stopped amnesty. McCain has promised border security *FIRST* so we have a few years to move the ball on that in the *right* direction before we have to refight that battle.
All in all, McCain will be not much more annoying than Bush. A bit more of a nanny-stater, but better on spending and will have good instincts on Iraq and GWOT overall. Three more reasons he will be better than Obama btw.