McCain is now officially the skunk at the GOP garden party. With all the wailing and rending of garments among the GOP punditry and the fat pink white boys at CPAC, it looks like McCain could potentially bury the GOP for quite a while. If "conservatives" opt not to vote in November due to their hatred of McCain, it could seriously cripple down-ticket races.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080208164846.6tft9815&show_article=1 Please please please let this man campaign for McCain long and hard.
Claymore: As a newly crossover voter in support of Senator Obama I think I see what's going now across the aisle with the GOP and conservatives; hear me out here: The age of McCain is what these real conservatives are seeing as their last remaining wedge issue in this presidential horserace. The nation of now disenfranchised conservatives who have no candidate to support - which is good for us Democrats - see McCain's age as their only remaining raison d'etre; hope for the disenfranchised conservatives shifts from supporting the President to supporting the Vice President for their future; they seemingly having ordained foreknowledge that McCain will win against Sen. Clinton or our Sen. Obama. Thus, for them, who Sen. McCain picks as his successor (read clearly as Vice President) becomes a massive issue at their GOP Convention for the life-boat conservatives. I heard the President at CPAC say as much this morning. If McCain becomes president [unlikely but possible] the conservative VP (president in waiting) is only a red-faced cough/burp/choke/fart away from returning the reigns of power to the GOP and the Conservatives; to wit, Dick Cheney with a future. Sadly the lot in life now for the conservatives, from my vantage point across the aisle, is one of disenfranchisement; crossing party lines, supporting candidates they don't really support, being on life support, the full nine yards of political leprosy! I imagine they see themselves T.S. Eliot thusly: We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men... Yet if somehow McCain wins, those conservatives will be yet again on the cusp of regaining power; thus for now they will sit small, speak quietly, support other candidates, and watch the race with a tangental unattachment in an out-of-body transcendental mysticism sort of way. It then behooves Senator Obama and his big-tent campaign to reach out and give these disenfranchised conservative voters a reason for living during the duration of McCain penning his final bucket list. It is the humane thing to do for the Democrat Party we all support.
That was a slip-up, ITN. You should get used to quoting guys like Gore Vidal and Dalton Trumbo from now on.