[Salo]

If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism. I am not willing to allow conservatism to mean: pro-amnesty, pro-human-caused Global Warming, anti-first amendment, pro-terrorists-have-civil-rights or any of the other left-wing quackery John McCain has embraced over the years.

I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President.

[nyconse]

Another thread is discussing another allegation that McCain gave favors to lobbyist...the media has massive dirt on McCain. He will not win. The best we can hope for is somehow a new candidate will emerge...I don’t see how but this would be the best scenario. McCain will not win. He should never have been the candidate.

[Perdogg]

What is this obsession with defining conservatism? To some people Ronald Reagan wasn’t conservative enough.

[Bob J]

“If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism.”

Baloney, he will define his presidency. Conservatives define conservatism.

[org.whodat]

If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism. I am not willing to allow conservatism to mean: pro-amnesty, pro-human-caused Global Warming, anti-first amendment, pro-terrorists-have-civil-rights or any of the other left-wing quackery John McCain has embraced over the years.

BTTT

[gitmo]

If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism.

No, he won't define conservatism. Neither Bush defined conservatism, nor did the many pseudo-cons running in this primary.

[Checkers]

“I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President.”

Yeah, I’d like an answer to that, too.

[Polybius]

If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism. I am not willing to allow conservatism to mean: pro-amnesty, pro-human-caused Global Warming, anti-first amendment, pro-terrorists-have-civil-rights or any of the other left-wing quackery John McCain has embraced over the years.

We Conservatives make up 60% of the GOP but only 24% of all registered voters in America are Republicans. That makes us Conservatives a pretty small percentage of America as a whole.

The mood of America as a whole swings back and forth like a pendulum and the pendulum is not heading towards the right in 2008. American primary voters, not "the GOP" decided that, over all, they preferred Moderate Right of Center McCain to a Conservative candidate this particular year.

McCain will not redefine "conservatism" any more than George Bush, the Elder redefined Ronald Reagan's personal brand of conservatism. (Although many now forget, many Conservatives during the Reagan Administration believe that Reagan himself was a Conservative-In-Name-Only. Ronald Reagan actually signed into law a blanket illegal alien amnesty with none of the waiting periods and penalties that McCain proposed.) McCain will define his own "maverick" brand of the Moderate Right of Center political philosophy that constitutes the other 40% of the Republican Party.

I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President.

Does any true American patriot really give a rat's ass about the "Party" when you have to choose between Party and America?

Joe Lieberman wants desperately to win a war that is vital to U.S. interests and safety while Ron Paul wants to bug out of the war and hand Victory to our enemies in the naive America First mentality that brought us the disaster of World War II in Europe.

If Joe Lieberman (D) and Ron Paul (R) were the choices for President in November 2008, I would vote Lieberman without a moment's hesitation to win the war and "Republican Party loyalty" be damned.

The way the political pendulum swung in 2008, our viable choices in November are a Moderate Right of Center candidate that will do what it takes to win a strategically vital war and the most Far Left of Center Senator in Congress who has declared a war that has already been won as "lost" and will abandon 70% of the World's known oil reserves to the military control of suicidal Iranian Islamist fanatics who are seeking nuclear weapons and ICBM's capable of delivering those weapons to America aka "Satan Incarnate".

**********

Obama 13 months ago:

Published Jan. 30, 2007 ...... Obama wants troops home by spring ’08 ……. Illinois senator, presidential candidate introduces bill to force redeployment

**********

Hillary 13 months ago:

Published January 17, 2007 ........ Hillary Clinton opposes Iraq troops 'surge'

**********

McCain 14 months ago:

Published December 27, 2006 ..... Novak: McCain's 'aggressive surge' stance backfiring ........ conservative columnist Robert Novak suggests that Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) "aggressive" push for a U.S. troop expansion -- or "surge" -- in Iraq may be costing the top 2008 GOP contender in the polls, especially when matched against another presumed front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). "The decline in the polls of [McCain], as measured against [Clinton], reflects more than declining Republican popularity ......... "It connotes public disenchantment with McCain's aggressive advocacy of a 'surge' of up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq

"I understand the polls show only 18 percent of the American people support my position. But I have to do what's right, what I believe is right and what my experience and knowledge and background tells me is the right thing to do in order to save this situation in Iraq ... In war, my dear friends, there's no such thing as compromise. You either win or you lose." - Sen. John McCain's reaction to the Iraq Study Group Report, 2006

**********

Three months ago in Iraq:

Troop Surge, Iraqis’ Anger Puts al Qaeda ‘On the Run’

**********

Come November, I will vote for Moderate Right of Center John McCain to win the war.

I refuse to lose the war because I am having a temper tantrum that the 80% of America that does not consider itself "Conservative Republican" does not happen to share my first choice for President this particular year.

[Gondring]

If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism. I am not willing to allow conservatism to mean: pro-amnesty, pro-human-caused Global Warming, anti-first amendment, pro-terrorists-have-civil-rights or any of the other left-wing quackery John McCain has embraced over the years.

Good point. You are suggesting that there's something beyond the Republican party..some things called conservatism and the future.

I'll fight against liberalism, regardless of the letter after the names.

[TheWriterTX]

"I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President."

Salo...in a word...BRILLIANT.

Thank you for summing up, so succinctly, what takes others paragraphs to identify.

[Paul Ross]

I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President.

Bingo.

Mr. McCain is hoist by his own petard.

The Senator who prides himself on being a "Maverick"....now has reaped the whirlwind. He has reaped what he has sown....meet the Maverick Voter.

There are any number of additional reasons to vote against him, his being a communist Manchurian Mole deservedly being highest on the list, but his unabashed HYPOCRISY on all the issues of any real merit has to be a rather close runner up.

Note how he always brags about being the "Mr. Anti-Pork-Barrel" guy. In that capacity, he torpedoed our country getting 100 brand spanking new KC-767 strato tankers to replace the 60 year old KC-135s that our airmen our risking their lives to fly. We would have got those 100 planes for only $18 billion.

Senator "Anti-Pork-Barrel" (along with John Warner) then forced an "open competition" with EADS/Airbus to provide the planes (ostensibly "to get a better price and save the taxpayer's money") , causing a delay of six years in the bidding...and an extra 10 years in deliveries of the first aircraft...

The Air Force ...obviously stalled ....but under intense Senatorial pressure to pick Airbus changed the RFP less than a year ago after 5 years into the competition...(one wonders from where such Senatorial pressure could be coming from, eh?)...to favor a bigger plane the actual logistics folks didn't want.

Now, those 100 planes will cost at least $40 billion.

$23 BILLION MORE than Boeing's original deal.

The KC-45A will cost $35 Million more per plane than Boeing's current proposal, an additional $10 billion in imposed infrastructure costs, and operate with 24% LESS fuel efficiency than the Boeing KC-767.

Meanwhile "Mr. Integrity" is pocketing money from Airbus...

[Kimberly GG]

“If you elect McCain as President, he will define conservatism. I am not willing to allow conservatism to mean: pro-amnesty, pro-human-caused Global Warming, anti-first amendment, pro-terrorists-have-civil-rights or any of the other left-wing quackery John McCain has embraced over the years.

I also don’t see why I should be expected to be more loyal to the republican party than the candidate we nominated for President.”

Thanks. My sentiments EXACTLY.