Ford vs. Carter again?

Our electoral situation feels like the 1970’s again. McCain is Gerald Ford, Obama is Jimmy Carter with a college kid cool factor. His speech at Invesco will have a JFK-like media aura about it, and even many Republicans, especially in the party hierarchy, will join in the swooning. Conservatives are in the wilderness for the time being, as Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan and every other political great often was.

Don’t give money to the Republican Party. Give it to your church and do what you can to help revitalize Christian faith in the U.S., beginning at home if necessary.

Conservative resurgence will not come without spiritual resurgence; conservatism and the national strength and identity it brings are fundamentally spiritual.

When we find faith again, we will find another Reagan. Not much else to talk about between now and November.

Who's best fiscally in the 5th?

It’s Republican primary time, when ambitions, conservative promises, and Reagan invocations are in full flower. And the only way to tell real conservative defenders from perennial conservative pretenders is to examine their records. Let’s start with the record of incumbent congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District. Mr. Lamborn is finishing his first term in Congress and in that time, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted against the Democrat agenda in Congress more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). This includes social, economic, and fiscal votes.

Mr. Lamborn was also one of five members of Congress – that’s five out of 535, and only three of the 435 members of the U.S. House – that the nation’s leading fiscal conservative group, Club for Growth, has given a rating of 100% for 2007. Club for Growth tracked votes on a range of tax, fiscal, and regulatory issues in the last Congress and determined that Mr. Lamborn voted correctly every time. See the entire 2007 Club for Growth scorecard here:

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2008/05/the_2007_congressional_scoreca.php

This is no new pattern. Over the twelve years he was a member of the Colorado legislature, Mr. Lamborn consistently led both the Colorado House and the Colorado Senate with his record of opposition to big-government spending, pork projects (these days fashionably referred to as “earmarks”), and tax increases.

With this kind of record, it is striking that Mr. Lamborn has a Republican primary opponent, Jeff Crank, attempting to criticize him on his fiscal record. It is well-known that, in justifying his own candidacy against a man who for a decade and a half has consistently defended all the things Mr. Crank claims to believe in, Mr. Crank has settled on one fundamental, earth-moving issue that gets the blood boiling of every principled Republican everywhere: franking expenditures.

That’s right, franking expenditures.

The franking privilege dates to the founding of the United States and covers expenses members of Congress incur in sending mail to their constituents. The purpose is obvious: communication between congresspeople and their constituents is a good thing. Clearly, this privilege like any legitimate privilege can be abused, so there are processes in place in Congress by which all franked mailings must be approved. Mr. Lamborn is a first-term congressman whose constituents need to get to know him and what he is doing on their behalf – again, this is not empty campaign-speak, but a rationale endorsed by the framers of American government – and all his mailings have been approved by congressional leadership. All such mail, moreover, is paid for out of a congressman’s official budget; what he does not spend on constituent communications he is fully authorized to spend on other things, and what he spends on constituent communications is not available for other things.

The use of this kind of issue against someone with the fiscal record of Mr. Lamborn says more about Mr. Crank than it does about the Congressman: from the standpoint of conservative policy, there simply is nothing more substantial on which Mr. Lamborn can be criticized.

Mr. Crank raised the franking issue most recently in a May 30 opinion column in the Colorado Springs Gazette, where he also offered glowing promises to, if elected, “rock the boat” of the Washington establishment, eliminate earmarks, eliminate the federal departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy, and cut federal spending by 20%.

Aside from the fact that even Ronald Reagan was not able to accomplish such heroic feats, if Mr. Crank were sincere in these convictions, he would be supporting Mr. Lamborn for Congress rather than running against him.

No Republican in the last two years, and very few Republicans in Colorado in the last half century, have more consistently, philosophically, and courageously opposed Washington (and Denver) excesses than has Doug Lamborn. It is the lack of people in Washington like Mr. Lamborn, and the interest of too many self-proclaimed conservatives in running against them, that is at the heart of the very Washington excess Mr. Crank now decries. It is also at the heart of the national Republican malaise that is quickly heading the GOP toward an electoral cataclysm in November.

Mr. Crank waxes poetic against earmarks. Again, if this conviction were superior to his personal ambition, Mr. Crank would be supporting Mr. Lamborn. Here are all Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests for fiscal year 2009, a list the Lamborn office has made public. All directly relate to defense spending, a core purpose of government, all Mr. Lamborn has offset in the budget by equivalent cuts in other programs so that there is no net increase in the federal budget, and all ironically recall Mr. Crank’s criticism of Mr. Lamborn during the 2006 campaign for allegedly not being as strong as Mr. Crank on defense:

Land Acquisition for Peterson Air Force Base Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center ACES 5 Ejection Seat Expeditionary Alternative Power Generator Radiation-Hardened Memory Technology Digital Engine Technology Military Information Management Software Space and Electronic Warfare Analysis Tools High Altitude, Long Endurance Communications and Surveillance System Improved Ground Access to Peterson AFB Improvements to Ft. Carson Gates 5 & 6

With requests like these, and with Mr. Lamborn now occupying a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, it is no wonder the defense criticisms have given way in Mr. Crank’s rhetoric to complaints about franking. As with his fiscal record, Mr. Lamborn’s history at the state level on issues of national security and defense was as impeccable as his federal record has now become.

As a side note, if Mr. Crank should criticize Mr. Lamborn for the above funding requests and call them “earmarks” as if they were pet pork projects, Mr. Crank should explain why as a lobbyist on behalf of a defense company in 2005 he requested, according to public lobbying records, “increased spending for the HH-6OL program” in defense authorization bills. The name of Mr. Crank’s lobbying company was Rocky Mountain Government Relations, and the HH-6OL is the Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter now in use in the Army and National Guard. Earmark, or legitimate modernization of the armed forces that defend us and that are such central issues in the Fifth Congressional District?

In addition to franking, Mr. Crank can regularly be heard calling for better “leadership” in Washington, presumably implying that Mr. Lamborn’s leadership is somehow defective. For starters, here is a short summary of Mr. Lamborn’s legislative resume, a kind of resume of which Mr. Crank has not the beginning: Colorado House of Representatives, 1995; House Republican Whip, 1997; Colorado Senate, 1998; Senate President Pro-Tem, 1999; U.S. Congress, 2006; U.S. House Armed Services Committee, 2007. Mr. Lamborn is also a member of two other U.S. House committees.

Moreover, here is a quotation from a letter written to Mr. Lamborn last week by the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Crank’s former employer, concerning Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests. The letter is dated May 28, 2008 and is signed by the Chamber’s CEO.

“Your policy of only making requests that promote our nation’s defense, as well as providing full disclosure on these projects reflects not only their legitimacy, but also their important role in improving our nation’s defenses…It is with great pleasure that we offer our support, on behalf of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, for not only the appropriations you’ve requested, but also the manner in which you have done so. In a time where real transparency is lacking in Washington, your actions provide a refreshing change of pace.”

Sound suspiciously like leadership?

It should be noted clearly what many noted during the 2006 primary contest between Mr. Lamborn and Mr. Crank. Nobody doubts that Mr. Crank maintains a coherent conservative philosophy of government and a genuine desire to serve his country. Given Mr. Lamborn’s stellar record at both the state and federal levels, what is in doubt is Mr. Crank’s ability to subordinate his ambition to his desire to see the things he believes implemented in government. There simply is no improvement he could possibly make to the record of Mr. Lamborn, and plenty of ways he would not likely match Mr. Lamborn; indeed, at least according to the Club for Growth, there are only a handful even among current members of Congress who are in Mr. Lamborn’s league.

There is only one wise route for Fifth Congressional District Republicans on the ground to follow this August: ignore empty criticisms and empty promises, and say a prayer of thanks that in this age of messianic Democrats and the empty-headed crowds who love them, Colorado and Colorado Springs have a congressman with the kind of real wisdom, real mettle, and real leadership that will far outlast the latest political fad and the latest self-promoting Republican challenger.

We need more Lamborns & Schaffers

The GOP picture in Colorado’s 5th congressional district is a picture of soulless politics and in microcosm of a national GOP headed for a November electoral disaster. Editor: So warns Dave Crater, Air Force veteran, CU law student, and founder of the Wilberforce Center for Colorado Statesmanship. Here's the article developing his logic for that somber verdict:

Loser GOP is Short on Doug Lamborns

“ ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth…’ Just what does that mean? Not simply that they introduced something onto this continent. If so, where was it before they brought it in? And how could it be called a new nation if merely transferred? No, ‘bring forth’ cannot mean anything like ‘introduce from abroad.’ Lincoln is talking about generation on the spot. The nation is rightly called new because it is brought forth maieutically, by midwifery; it is not only new, but newborn. The suggested image is, throughout, of a hieros gamos, a marriage of male heaven (‘our fathers’) and female earth (‘this continent’). And it is a miraculous conception, a virgin birth. The nation is conceived by a mental act, in the spirit of liberty, and dedicated (as Jesus was in the temple) to a proposition. The proposition to which it is dedicated forms the bridge back from Lincoln to Jefferson, from the Address to the Declaration…” -- Garry Wills, Inventing America (Doubleday, 1978)

This is unfashionable language. So earthy; so full of male, female, procreation, and midwifery; all a very messy and laborious and old-fashioned business.

It is not even fashionable among many who believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and the hieros gamos that produced it. A growing number of such, at least among educated elites, get nervous any time biblical language is used to describe the American founding or the continuing presence and spiritual power of American influence in the world. “Politicizing the gospel,” the accusation goes, or as the misguided authors of the recently published Evangelical Manifesto put it (www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com), the gospel should not be “confused with or reduced to political categories such as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal.’”

Translation: we want Christian engagement with culture and politics, but we are tired of evangelicals being so widely identified as political conservatives. This compromises the gospel. We want civility. We want political choices to be more separate from theological choices so that more political liberals feel more comfortable being around us. We want a definition of “Evangelical,” which should be spelled with a capital “E” like every other religious option is, that is politically bigger-tent. We want to be more inclusive. We are tired of controversy.

Nice stuff, not unlike the “reach across the aisle” language and strategy on which GOP presidential candidate John McCain has built a lucrative national career. Who doesn’t want unity? Who doesn’t want the two sides of the aisle to come together once and for all? Who doesn’t want to be credited with having helped make the group hug happen? Why trouble ourselves with the laborious midwifery of an unfashionably conservative political heritage when an easier, more comfortable route is, at this hour as at every hour, so readily crafted and so ripe for the taking?

If Christ had followed this sure-winner public relations strategy, he might not have gotten himself crucified.

I’m not the only one with a better idea. GOP candidate for U.S. Senate and all-around Republican good guy Bob Schaffer captured it nicely on Saturday in the best applause line of a highlight-laden speech to the Colorado GOP state assembly: “Now, if we’re going to compete successfully against Democrats, we need to have a little bit of introspection and look at our own party as well. We could sustain a little bit of reform within the Republican Party, too. I’ve always believed that principles matter most, and I believe that it’s important even to take on leaders in our own party who have a tendency to drift from those principles that have defined our country.”

Ouch. The normal Schaffer grace, but a shot between the eyes to Republican leaders, all the way up to President Bush, whom Schaffer went on to tell the delegates he had publicly opposed on legislative disasters like No Child Left Behind and McCain-Feingold, which (my comment here, not Schaffer’s) is now hurting McCain’s campaign as badly as it is hurting free speech across the fruited plain. Note this is not any vague Scott McClellan sellout to the left; it is principled criticism from the right.

Schaffer’s simple truth was red meat for a leadership-starved Republican grassroots. Other ringers from Schaffer included a more-sincere-than-usual-from-Republicans-these-days appeal to the “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” of the Declaration – which went nicely with Mrs. Schaffer and the five Schaffer children, three of whom are training to become military officers, standing next to him – as well as a refreshing acknowledgement of the Almighty as the source of all good political things. It was a reference, given it is a piece of political theology almost always heard from conservatives and not liberals and which is the foundation of conservative political philosophy, that might have been a bit too flag-wavey to keep the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto smiling.

Watch Schaffer’s entire speech here.

But this is prologue. I imagine Schaffer would agree that good speeches are nice in their place and discomfitingly rare in today’s soul-starved GOP, but the energy and heart of the Grand Old Party and the larger American conservative movement are forged and proved on the ground, when and where nobody’s watching and applauding, and when the principles we claim to espouse are given flesh and blood by backbone in the trenches. The real question is not whether we can find someone with the combination of guts and talent to give the speech Schaffer gave. The question is whether and where we can find a few more with the spinal stiffness to argue and vote to implement these sentiments in public policy, to do so even when nobody’s applauding and flattering, and to offer no weak, self-doubting apologies or excuses in the process.

Tough stuff. Not nearly as nice as big-tent John McCain Evangelical Manifesto inclusiveness. But as one of the nation’s – indeed, the world’s – favorite evangelical preachers, one who didn’t sign the Evangelical Manifesto and probably wasn’t invited to, is fond of saying, “Hard preaching makes soft people.” Converse: soft preaching may make for good media, but it makes for exceedingly hard hearts. Both may win you an election and get you out of short-term controversy; both will, whether you are an individual or a political party, eventually cost you your soul and your long-term political influence.

Fortunately for restless Colorado conservatives everywhere who don’t just say they agree with Schaffer that principles matter most, but so believe in their heart of soft hearts, Schaffer is not alone in holding high and proud the banner of principled political conservatism. Amidst the back-stabbing, ambition-soaked, slander-drenched, platitude-heavy, hard-hearted Republican atmosphere in El Paso County is an honest and sincere man with real convictions who happens to be a U.S. Congressman.

Name, Douglas L. Lamborn. Born 1954, Leavenworth, Kansas. Schaffer-like, has both a wife and five children. Bachelor’s in Journalism, National Merit Scholar, Juris Doctor, University of Kansas. Colorado House of Representatives, 1995. House Republican Whip, 1997. Colorado Senate, 1998. President Pro-tem, 1999. Impeccable conservative voting record at the state level. U.S. Congress, 2006. House Armed Services Committee, 2007.

According to Congressional Quarterly, through the August 2007 recess, Mr. Lamborn actually did what every Republican candidate for office tells party regulars he/she will do if elected: he voted against the Democratic agenda in the U.S. House more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). One of five members of Congress – that’s 5 out of 535 – to receive a 100% rating in 2008 from the Club for Growth, perhaps the nation’s leading free-market think tank and political advocacy group. “True Blue” rating from the Family Research Council for a 100% voting record on issues of social conservatism. That means a) men get to be completely and joyously satisfied with women as their only marital option, b) women not only get acknowledged as fully equal to this high calling but enjoy the same reciprocal satisfaction in their marital options, and c) cute babies get to be safe in the womb again.

In short, here’s a politico with soul and a soft heart. For his labors, he has two GOP primary challengers, both claiming to believe in all the same things Mr. Lamborn has now spent a decade and a half advancing in public policy via the messy and laborious midwifery always required so to advance. Their reasons for running? Lamborn spends too much money communicating by mail with his constituents. We therefore need to elect his opponents to “show real leadership” and “take our Colorado common sense values to Washington” and “reach across the aisle to get things done” and .

Other vague condemnations and abandonments of Lamborn, both explicit and surreptitious, have been common and ugly throughout the Fifth Congressional and Colorado GOP hierarchies. Lamborn’s resulting distrust of the local GOP structure led him to petition on to the August primary ballot instead of going through the normal caucus process.

Bob Schaffer experienced something of the same royal treatment in 2004, when he ran for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate against moderate beer magnate Pete Coors and was opposed by many of the courageous state Republican leaders who, with no alternative candidate and thus no reason this time to have the proverbial finger in the proverbial wind, are now supporting him.

Yet somehow, even according to Mr. Lamborn’s opponent, Lamborn leads his competitors by at least ten percentage points in current polling. Read more here. Perhaps the grassroots is not as unhappy with Lamborn-style, Schaffer-style principled political conservatism as media pundits and GOP leaders and self-serving challengers would have us believe.

The GOP picture in Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District is a picture of soulless politics and in microcosm of a national GOP headed for a November electoral disaster: persecute and marginalize family-man conservative heroes and celebrate cocktail-party mediocrities. Downplay decades of proven commitment and up-play glowing promises and smooth talk. Talk at campaign stops about what a great conservative and loyal Republican and fan of Ronald Reagan you are; talk on the phone about how useless Doug Lamborns are and how we’ll never be a winner party again until we are rid of them.

The nation was born maieutically, by midwifery, by men like Bob Schaffer and Doug Lamborn. Men like their critics may have won a few short-term victories in government, but their brief time passed and they ended their average lives as outsiders. The Grand Old Party was similarly born in the crucible of antebellum anti-slavery politics, where Abe Lincoln got scalded just as viscerally and irrationally and faithlessly as genuine Lincoln-style conservatives are getting scalded in today’s version of the party Lincoln founded.

Let us not dissemble: the GOP, both nationally and in Colorado, is far enough along its leftward path that only a stark electoral drubbing will awaken the collective party senses and once again create the political and cultural atmosphere where a new Reagan can rise to prominence and conservatives can re-take the party hierarchy, where a party and a nation once again remember the virgin birth – both the one in Bethlehem and the one in Philadelphia – and where both pledge anew, for the defense of a great set of eternal propositions about God, man, and government, not only their words during election season, but their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Electoral College on Dems' hit list

It's time for a civics lesson. “Civics” is the old-fashioned word for how to understand your country’s politics and government. Since your country is the world’s leading superpower and the mightiest nation from any standpoint the world has ever seen – to say nothing of the fact that your country is simply yours – her politics and government are worth understanding. Oops. I fell into another anachronism, albeit a beautiful one. I referred to our country in the feminine. Ever wonder where this curious habit comes from? It comes from an older age when public discourse was dominated by men, and men – good ones, at least – love their country in a similar way to that in which they love a woman.

They want to provide for her, protect her, vindicate her honor when it is called into question, and – as she does for him – help her to improve and grow where she needs improvement and growth. Oh, and they think about her frequently and are extraordinarily proud of her. Even in our egalitarian age, isn’t this so much richer than referring to your country as “it”?

Here’s another way in which our ancestors were wiser than we: remember that odd system called the Electoral College? It comes up every four years when we elect a president. Presidents are elected most immediately by states, not by popular vote. Popular votes determine which candidate wins each state, but then people called electors cast their state’s official presidential ballots. Whichever candidate wins a majority of electoral votes becomes President, regardless of who has the most popular votes. Because the number of electors each state gets is determined by its population, usually the two vote tallies coincide, but, as Bush v. Gore in 2000 showed, this is not always the case. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the Electoral College vote.

This system runs deeper and influences presidential elections, and thus the direction of national politics, more significantly than almost anyone realizes. It is one of the foremost examples of the genius of the American founders and of the depth of political understanding the entire founding generation held. Why did they do it?

It’s very simple: the American founders did not want to create a democracy. Democracy is chaotic and too easily results in the tyranny of the majority. Since a simple majority of any group of people is often wrong and, not infrequently, very wrong – witness the massive crowds attending the rallies of Barack Obama, who in his speeches either says nothing but feel-good platitudes or promotes the worst kind of liberalism directly opposed to the wisdom that made this country great – the founders, foreseeing how easily crowds can be seduced by a good but empty speaker, created a system of institutions that filters and moderates popular impulses.

It also preserves our constitutional system as a federal republic, and keeps it from degenerating into a direct democracy controlled only by big cities and big states. If there were no Electoral College, candidates would never come to Colorado and Wyoming – they would spend all their time campaigning in New York, California, Texas, and Florida, and in Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles. In a direct democracy, carrying nothing but California, New York, and the big cities could get you very close to the presidency.

In fact, that’s exactly what Al Gore did in 2000. If you look at one of those red/blue maps you saw so many of while the 2000 hanging chads were still being counted, you’ll notice that all of the major urban areas are blue. All of the rural areas in between the concentrated blue areas are red. In terms of square miles, Bush won going away. In terms of people, Gore won. The electoral college – as it was designed to do – protected the interests of massive rural areas and their durable American values against the heavily concentrated populations of more educated but less virtuous urbanites, in the process protecting the interests of small states against big ones and the very meaning of what it means to be a state in the United States.

All of this classical American political wisdom the Democratic Party wants to do away with, and has already done away with in its own state primaries and caucuses. If you are following the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, you are noting that the winner of a particular state doesn’t matter all that much because delegates are assigned proportionally to the popular vote. If you win 53% of the popular vote in a state, you get 53% of the delegates for that state. This destroys the meaning of delegates and, to a large degree, of states – delegates become merely a direct proxy for the popular vote. The candidate who wins the Democratic nomination will have won the largest number of individual votes, not the largest number of states and state delegates. This is not a republic, but a directly democratic form of government, which is why the Democratic Party is called Democratic.

In contrast, note how Republicans conduct their primaries. For the most part (there are exceptions), winner takes all. If you win a state, you get all that state’s delegates. This is how a federal republic operates, which is why the Republican Party is called Republican. This is, moreover, how the founders designed the presidential election system to work (the Electoral College is set up in Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and was modified by the 12th Amendment), and is the kind of connection that explains and is explained by the fact that Republicans, with notable exceptions like Sen. John McCain, generally defend historic American political values while Democrats, their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, typically oppose historic American political values and want to reconstruct the Constitution in their own image.

Hillary Clinton is already on record calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. If you want to see how this looks, just look at how the Democratic Party is conducting its primaries and caucuses now. Not only is there very little federalism or states rights in it, but on top of the popular vote the party has constructed a system of “superdelegates” who are not tied to any state; they are party elites who can vote for whomever they wish. The number of superdelegates is so large that they can easily sway an election, regardless of the popular vote; indeed, after Tuesday’s election victories by Hillary Clinton, we are assured that this year’s Democratic nominee will be chosen according to which way the superdelegates swing. The Republican Party has no superdelegates.

This is educational: while Democrats pay lip service to serving the people in their efforts to deconstruct historic American political structures, what they do in reality is replace those political structures with increased power at the top. The people are not empowered; the rhetoric of empowering the people is used, just as Stalin and Mao and Trotsky used it, to clear the way for government by a small band of elites. This is the most pernicious effect of direct democracy the American founders foresaw, and against which we are protected as long as we defend the structures they put in place. The Electoral College while it filters popular government, does so to protect government of, by, and for the people.

So the next time your friend, coworker, family member, neighbor, priest, pastor, or friendly neighborhood professor bad-mouths the generation of Americans who founded your country, remind them she – not “it” – is great for a reason, and no other generation of nation builders has ever been so supremely successful in their efforts to endow their posterity with the blessings of wise liberty.

Overselling McCain doesn't help

Distinguished former state senator Mark Hillman yesterday on these Backbone America pages joined the chorus of Republicans advocating for an “at least he’s not Hillary or Obama” vote for John McCain in November. Hillman pays lipservice to Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and James Dobson, all of whom are being candid about McCain, but then portrays a vote for McCain as the only move consistent with our principles. Withholding such a vote, he claims, is “suicidal self-indulgence” and “personal pride and prejudice,” and will result in “surrendered freedoms, suffocating tax burdens, and national insecurity” that will be “as much our responsibility as that of those we ‘helped’ to elect.”

This isn’t the way to persuade conservatives, Senator.

This kind of pragmatism-masquerading-as-principle thinking in the GOP is precisely why some of us are considering sitting this presidential election out and focusing on down-ballot candidates who are genuinely people of principle. Enough is enough, and if this weak-kneed party is ever going to develop real backbone again, it’s going to take a revolt of conservatives from within, not a tame, obedient rollover for every lame GOP beltway insider who arises.

In the meantime, if you want to tease conservatives to the polls in support of McCain this year, I suggest a better strategy is to start being candid about what a weak candidate he is, dispensing with both the recitations of how strong he is on this or that issue and the helium about “this election is about principles that will guide our country for the next four years” – that conviction is the reason McCain is in trouble in the first place.

I submit a better strategy is a more humble one: I’m voting for McCain, but I understand if you’re not. He’s weak, and, currently, our party is weak. It’s not clear at all in this case what the right thing to do is. The late William F. Buckley and National Review did something similar in 1956, running a tepid endorsement of Eisenhower entitled not, “We Like Ike,” but “We Prefer Ike.” He was, they thought, given his acceptance of the New Deal and merely mild opposition to Communist expansion, only the lesser of two evils.

That kind of candor has the potential to be persuasive, especially given John McCain is to the left of Eisenhower.

On McCain’s alleged toughness on national defense, here is a story about his joining Democrats in supporting the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Says the story:

“McCain wants to close Guantanamo, he says, because its existence is damaging U.S. credibility abroad. He also wants to speed up trials. ‘He would want to speed up the tribunal process for prisoners, because he doesn't support indefinite detentions,’ McCain spokesman Danny Diaz says.”

This is straight liberal dogma about Guantanamo and puts McCain to the left of all other 2008 presidential candidates except Ron Paul on the issue and to the left of a vast majority of national Republicans.

On McCain’s alleged fiscal and economic conservatism, Sen. Hillman mentions in passing Sen. McCain’s opposition to Bush’s tax cuts. Here is Club for Growth’s take on the matter, entitled “John McCain Is No Supply-Sider.”

Then there was the “Gang of 14” circus led by McCain that, as he did on so many other occasions, undercut Senate GOP leadership in its attempt to prevent Democrat use of the filibuster in opposition to the judicial nomination of Judge Samuel Alito and future such nominations. Senate Republicans had a 55-45 majority in the Senate at the time and could have changed Senate rules to prevent the filibuster from ever being so used again. (The Constitution requires only a majority vote for confirmation of the president’s judges, not the super-majority required to defeat a filibuster.) McCain led the movement to stop that change and was hailed by the media, as he has been on so many other occasions, as a “bipartisan, moderate” hero.

And we are supposed to believe his judicial appointments will be heroic constitutionalists?

The judicial nominations of Reagan and the two Bushes have included Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. True, they have also included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito -- as well as several other legal greats who, thanks partially to wimpy Republicans like John McCain, didn’t make it through the confirmation process. But they clearly included a few mediocrities as well, and given McCain is to the political left of Reagan and both Bushes, the likelihood that he will appoint anyone like Scalia or Thomas, for instance, with a Democrat-controlled Senate is simple naivete. The kind of justices McCain would appoint is entirely up for grabs.

Then there is McCain-Feingold. And we are supposed to be worried about the freedoms we will surrender under Obama or HRC? McCain said just last week that, if he could do it, he’d shut down 527’s as well.

The list could go on. There is no question there are some areas where McCain’s record is better than Obama’s or HRC’s – the list could probably be counted on one hand and definitely on two – and if McCain were running as a Democrat, we could without angst hope for his successful nomination as the best that party had to offer. The problem is that he is running as a Republican, bringing a long record of weakness and betrayal toward conservatives and the conservative movement with him under that banner. This creates a deceptive, mendacious candidacy that, like the presidency of Richard Nixon, holds the potential to do so much long-term damage to the GOP and its prospects for forming sustainable governing majorities in the future that many rightly wonder now if a Democrat victory in November is really the worse result.

If this seems like overstatement, think Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. McCain is to the left of both of them. Then think Bill Owens in Colorado.

The usual election-year pragmatism that is becoming current in GOP circles, and that will become more current as the election approaches, is laying the groundwork for the inevitable reaction among GOP elites if McCain does lose to Obama or Clinton in November: conservatives are to blame, and this further shows what Neanderthals they are (especially those nasty evangelical Christian types) with no political sense. If only they’d come out for McCain, he might have won. Let’s join Sen. Trent Lott and “do something about this talk radio problem” so it doesn’t bite us again.

So the 2008 history of the GOP goes: nominate a blue-blood, media-hungry Republican who’s been running for president for over a decade, whose record is pathetic on most things conservatives care about most deeply, sap thereby the central source of principled strength in the party, send out officious memos to state party chapters and conservatives everywhere telling them not to criticize Obama too toughly, and put pressure on everyone, everywhere to get on board the McCain bandwagon or be responsible for electing Obama or Hillary.

What a winner of a strategy. What a heroic, unflinching adherence to what we believe even in the face of adverse political tides!

I have a better idea. Let’s get conservative again. Let’s start actually being people of principle who put principle over pragmatism instead of just telling people that’s what we do. Let’s start learning from the people who are opposing McCain instead of bad-mouthing and marginalizing them. If we start to do this again, perhaps we’ll understand afresh what “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” means, what the sources of America’s greatness are, and how we can recover them again once the disastrous candidacy of John McCain is, mercifully, at an end.