I guess at best we should hope for a repeat of Gdubya and not of his father.. not much consolation for the conservative cause in either case, but,, when ya got lemons, ya make lemonade, right? or do you 8-?
I hate to be a sourpuss,, but neither party or at least its lead “actors” seem much intetrested in conservatism , and if so, only to a limited degree and when it serves their own purposes.
1. I disagree with several of your concerns;
2. That McCain is the best available candidate;
3. That McCain is not a bad candidate at all although he won't match Reagan;
4. That her Satanic Thighness is a disciple of Saul Alinsky;
5. That Obama is a disciple of people far worse than even Saul Alinsky like William Weatherman Ayres and Bernardine the SDS Queen Dohrn and Jeremiah Racist Wright and a crony of gangster Tony Rezko;
6. That third party looney tunes are no more likely to actually be elected than was the despicable Al Qaeda shill paleoPaulie: chances none and less than none;
7. Depriving National Right to Life Committee weasels of the ability to shake down trusting old ladies with the usual pack of lies about what wonders that one final BIG contribution will make is hardly a blow to pro-life efforts and keeping megazillions of gullible election money down to a dull roar is no threat to free speech unless the ability to provide fancy perks, first class airfares and swell hotel suites to RTL staffers is somehow a statement in political discourse. Having represented as an attorney 1100 pro-life arrestees (without fees), I know from pro-life and McCain-Feingold is no threat;
8. The list of 26 issues you have with McCain is replete with the usual bunch of half truths, gross exaggerations and essentially irrelevant trivia.
9. Politics is for grown ups, the folks who recognize reality and deal with it as effectively as possible. If we don't have an ideal candidate, don't blame McCain, blame what used to be the conservative movement for failure to meet basic recruitment and training obligations for about twenty-eight years. Many in my early boomer generation, having accomplished our generational goal of electing Ronaldus Maximus, retired to normal life, normal marriages, had kids, got jobs and/or built businesses.
10. Politics is not the sport of designer self-worship for those too lazy or clueless to build a genuine movement. Sitting around whining about the faults of the available candidates won't get anything positive done. Neither will third party votes that have the effect of electing outright Marxists and enthusiastic babykillers over "mavericks" and less than ideal Republicans.
11. If McCain got a 65% from the 2006 American Conservative Union of David Keene who waffles on the war and supported Bush the Elder over Reagan in 1980 BTW, what did Hillary get as an ACU rating? What did Osama Obama get as an ACU rating in 2007 and 2008?
12. The conservative movement is so weak today that an anti-war twerp and Al Qaeda mouthpiece like paleoPaulie gets away with calling himself "conservative." Today's paleoPaulie would have been crushed like a worm by the actual conservative movement that was known as the New Right in the 60s and 70s.