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.
He might not win, but that is no reason not to vote for him. Obama is objectively worse for the country, we have duties to the country, ergo we have to vote against Obama. The rest isn't reasoning, it is avoiding reality as unpleasant. Not a conservative trait.
If he shouldn't have been the candidate, the time to decide that was the primaries. All the candidates conservatives now say they can stand failed to get even 10% of the vote. Everyone with a real shot at it was a squish, just different regional varieties of squish. So is the president, who isn't popular enough to win again today because the country has move left, perceiving our policies of the last 7 years as failures.
That may be as unfair as you like, it is the political reality. There isn't a conservative majority in this country. Only centrist squish republicans are competitive at the national level. Heck, even at the state level, only in the most conservative states can a republican running for statewide office (as opposed to a safe uniform house district) afford to be a real conservative.
McCain may not be the best squish for the job, just the squish that won. But the real objection from the right is to the reality that only squishes need apply. They are right to dislike this, but wrong to think disliking it changes anything. It doesn't. The republican party is either going to be welcoming to the squishes, or it will be as dead as the whigs. Being a great American institution of practical people, it is going to be welcoming to squishes.
Deal with it, already.