Gay Conservative

Sorry, Steve.  I was trying to be good.  But I can’t.  Mark Davis is Dallas-Fort Worth’s resident conservative talk show host (highest-rated in the state of Texas).  And he is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News.  He and I are of the same mind on the whole McCain thing.

I hate to post full articles, but (for the second time ever), I will post this one because I feel that everyone needs to read it.  He is only reiterating what I have been saying here.  And I have been reiterating what he has said in this neck of the woods.

One of the stock lectures conservatives deliver to liberals involves accepting the marketplace and dealing with it as it is without whining about it.

Whether in politics, the economy or popular culture, the lesson preaches the value of changing the marketplace if possible; if it’s not possible, the responsible thing to do is deal with it like an adult.

A lot of people who have delivered that lecture would now do well to listen to it.

The marketplace is speaking loudly. Republican voters are choosing John McCain as their party’s nominee for president. Plenty of people are not thrilled by that, me included. But the day is coming soon that I will have to face some facts. I highly recommend to my conservative brothers and sisters that they come in off the ledge and start to look at the big picture.

Easy to say, hard to do. You should see my e-mails. “I can never vote for McCain,” say scads of people who identify themselves as lifelong Republican voters. My attempts to help them prioritize are not being received well.

When I mention the clear truth that Mr. McCain’s ideological mixed bag is infinitely superior to the universal wrongness of whatever Democrat he faces in November, it is as though I suggested al-Qaeda isn’t such a bad bunch of guys.

“How can you abandon principle so easily?” comes the anguished cry.

Abandon principle? I’m practicing it! When one battle is lost, you look to the next one.

Last week, the bar moved. The window for determining the Republican nominee is virtually closed. Now that it has locked out any realistic rival to Mr. McCain, that process is over and the contest moves to its final phase: the general election.

Spring and summer are times of healing in presidential election years. It’s when you see candidates who have clobbered each other for a year or longer suddenly clasp hands and unify because they realize the differences in their views pale compared to those with the other party.

If JFK can run with LBJ – if Ronald Reagan can run with George H.W. Bush, if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can come close to slow dancing on a debate stage after their January tension – surely conservatives unhappy at batting .500 with their nominee can get a grip by November.

They’d better. The failure to do so comes at a price.

I am inundated with nightmare scenarios from disgruntled conservatives beaten down by the fear of a Republican president who is soft on the borders, unwilling to battle environmental extremism and too fond of muzzling free speech through “campaign finance reform.”

I remind them of the portion of our history featuring a Republican president just like that. It’s the portion we’re living right now. A conservative base willing to forgive George W. Bush for these things because of his steadfastness on the war seems far less willing to give Mr. McCain a pass – and Mr. McCain, already proven on the war issue, also might prove to be a spending-cutter, which Mr. Bush never was.

But this was the year conservative America wanted more. We wanted a president with Mr. Bush’s determination to combat terror, cut taxes and appoint Supreme Court justices who respect the Constitution. And we wanted our immigration laws followed, terrorists interrogated aggressively and our economy protected from the ravings of the global warming panic cult.

We won’t get those, and we’re miffed, just as we were with President Ford in 1976 and Bush 41 in 1992. The Nixon pardon and “no new taxes” broken promise created Republican malaise that gave us the Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton presidencies.

Everybody has plenty of time to complete this momentary hissy fit for not getting the piece of candy we wanted from the nomination jar. But once the race is set in stone, it will be time for conservatives to dust off, grow up and get over it.

John McCain spoke to CPAC today in order to set the record straight on his positions (popular and unpopular) in front of one of America’s premier group of conservatives.  I rushed home from work and sought out the video feed so I could hear what he had to say.  This speech, in my mind anyway, was one that had the potential to make an impact one way or the other on his campaign.

You can watch the video for yourself.  It’s over 25 minutes long, but I strongly feel that anyone who wants to offer commentary on McCain’s pursuit of the GOP nomination needs to watch this in order to speak intelligibly about the subject (whether pro or con).  I’m not going to go into specifics on this post.  I’ll discuss those in the comments section with anyone who views the video.  I just feel that it’s part of the educational process, and is worth the 25 minutes required regardless of how you feel afterwards.

The one thing I will say is this — if McCain is standing up there before CPAC lying through his teeth, then he deserves our scorn and utmost wrath.  If not, then I fail to comprehend how a Republican can sit this out against Obama and Hillary.  The thought occurred to me that he might parse words in the future (like Bill Clinton’s overanalysis of the word “is”).  That would be reprehensible.

You can say a lot of things about McCain, but he is really not a liar.  He takes some really unpopular positions, knowing full well that he is screwing himself over with the base.  I don’t see that he has a need to lie about things.  He hasn’t been afraid to be honest in the face of hisses and boos in the past.

He made some pretty strong statements in his speech.  I guess it is up to each of us to decide whether or not to believe him.  Nevertheless, I urge you to watch the speech, and I look forward to hearing your comments.

I had no intentions of antagonizing, Steve.  But this came up on RCP.  Jeff Jacoby, along with Mark Steyn, is one of my favorite conservative columnists.  He is not lukewarm.  He is not moderate.  He is a fierce conservative columnist that writes for the Boston Globe.  He has been the impetus for many of my blog posts.

I won’t go as far as Jacoby in advocating McCain over Romney, but his logic is right-on and deadly accurate.  This article comes from a staunch conservative writer.  It’s time to take notice.

I don’t usually post full articles, but here you go.

IT IS NOT news that much of the conservative base bitterly opposes John McCain and is appalled that the man they consider a Republican apostate could soon be the GOP’s presidential nominee. From talk radio to the blogosphere to the conservative press, many on the right are outraged that what Mitt Romney last week called “the House that Reagan Built” – the modern Republican Party – might anoint as its standard-bearer the candidate who by their lights is the least likely to follow in the Gipper’s footsteps.

Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Now, I don’t believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.

Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real – as opposed to the mythic – Ronald Reagan.

The conservative case against McCain is clear enough; I made it myself in some of these columns when he first ran for president eight years ago. The issues that have earned McCain the label of “maverick” – campaign-finance restrictions, global warming, the Bush tax cuts, immigration, judicial filibusters – are precisely what stick in the craw of the GOP conservative base.

But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling.

On the surpassing national-security issues of the day – confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq – no one is more stalwart. Even McCain’s fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. “The world’s bad guys,” Hewitt writes, “would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror.”

McCain was never an agenda-driven movement conservative, but he “entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” as he puts it, and on the whole his record has been that of a robust and committed conservative. He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the best of reasons: “They worked.” He is a staunch free-trader and a champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined in and personal retirement accounts expanded.

McCain’s conservatism has usually been more a matter of gut instinct than of a rigorous intellectual worldview, and he has certainly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on some serious issues. For all that, his ratings from conservative watchdog groups have always been high. “Even with all the blemishes,” notes National Review, a leading journal on the right (and a backer of Romney), “McCain has a more consistent conservative record than Giuliani or Romney. . . . This is an abiding strength of his candidacy.”

As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.

A perfect conservative he isn’t. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If “the House that Reagan Built” is to be true to its best and highest ideals, it will unite behind John McCain.

Where do you go from there? I’m not posting this to denigrate the Reagan legacy, but Jacoby’s point was that Reagan was not an infallible conservative.  He just did great things (mostly conservative) that made him an icon.  I don’t know that McCain would do the same things, but if he is the nominee, I won’t blink an eye.

 NOTE – McCain personally opposes same-sex marriage, but he (like Fred Thompson) feels that it is a matter that should be left to the discretion of each respective state. Just wanted to get that out of the way.