Can John McCain Be Stopped?

Like most conservatives, I spent Super Tuesday curled in a fetal position in my bunker. The idea that John McCain will get the Republican nomination is beginning to sink in and it is more than many of us can bear.

Many conservatives hate John McCain even more than we hate Hillary Clinton. Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter have said that they might vote for Hillary if it came down to a choice between her and McCain. James Dobson the head of Focus on Family, released a statement outlining the reasons he could not support McCain, including McCain's opposition to a Constitutional amendment protecting marriage, his vote for embryonic stem-cell research, his opposition to tax cuts, his sponsorship of the campaign finance reform bill and his membership in the Gang of 14, which prevented the appointment of some conservative judges. Even worse, says Dobson, McCain "has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language." Dobson is hoping that Dick Cheney will decide to run for President.

Townhall columnist Lee Culpepper believes that McCain doesn't have the character to be President. "None of us know for sure what McCain experienced during his time as a POW," wrote Culpepper. "All we know is that he survived and came home while many other POWs did not. What was it about McCain that was different? Was it family heritage or was it his proclivity for compromising to get what he wants?" It's a good question. What kind of compromises did McCain have to make to survive his brutal captivity in Vietnam? Perhaps if McCain had not survived being a POW that would have reassured conservatives that we can trust him. I'm sure Lee Culpepper wouldn't have made it back alive.

It's not just the possibility that McCain made some sort of deal with his captors in Vietnam and is actually a Manchurian Candidate that makes conservatives not trust him. McCain has consistently been soft on illegal immigration, the most important issue to conservatives today. Although McCain now says he realizes that Republican voters want border security first, he seems reluctant to support rounding up millions of illegal immigrants and deporting them and throwing thousands of people who employed them in jail, which is what most conservatives want. Although McCain has done some pandering to conservatives in this campaign, earning an endorsement from the late Jerry Falwell, for example, unlike Romney he seems to feel really bad about it, which worries us about his sincerity. McCain needs to show that he really has had a change of heart on immigration, perhaps by calling a Hispanic reporter "Macaca," for example.

Another issue that worries conservatives about McCain is torture. Conservatives believe that we are not torturing people enough, while McCain says that he is against it. Sure, he did capitulate to the Bush administration and worked out a "compromise" that would let them waterboard a few people, but it's clear that his heart really wasn't in it. Conservatives are glad that McCain not only supports the War in Iraq but wants us to be there for 100 years and his joke about bombing Iran reassures us that under a McCain administration, there might be more wars we could rally around. Maybe McCain would even settle a few old scores by invading Vietnam and doing it right this time. But it's difficult to see how we could win these wars, or the War on Terror, if we cannot torture more people.

If McCain is bad now, just wait until the general election when he goes even further to the left to appeal to independent voters. Will he change the name of the Straight Talk Express to the Gay Talk Express?

Some conservatives are hoping that it is not too late to stop McCain and they have thrown their support to Mitt Romney, but so far it hasn't worked. Romney would be doing a lot better if Huckabee dropped out. And he would be doing even better if Huckabee and McCain dropped out. Unfortunately, it's likely that both will stay in the race so he needs to make some changes. So far he has spent only $1.6 million per delegate, which is pretty insulting to a typical Republican delegate. Democrat delegates can be bought with donuts and a cup of coffee, but Republican delegates don't come so cheap. And although Romney has changed his positions on many issues to appeal to conservatives, he's going to have to do a lot more. He now opposes abortion, gay rights and illegal immigration, but he has remained stubbornly consistent when it comes to his religion. The base of the party thinks that Mormonism is a cult, which is why he has been having so much trouble getting the evangelical vote. If Romney announced that his views on religion had "evolved" the way his views on abortion did, and he left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and converted to Southern Baptist that might be the key to victory. (Update: Romney has announced he is pulling out of the race.)

If Romney can't save us from McCain, who can? Many conservatives supported Fred Thompson as the real conservative in the race. Unfortunately, once he announced he was running, he plummeted in polls. But now that he has dropped out of the race, many conservatives are looking at him again. He seems to do so much better in the polls when he is not actually campaigning, so there is a possibility he will have a late surge. If we could keep him on the ballot but make sure he promises to stay home, he could achieve an upset victory.

But while there still is a glimmer of hope that McCain will not get the nomination, most conservatives are resigning themselves to the idea that he will. If we are forced to make a choice between McCain and Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, what should conservatives do? John McCain's mother has said that conservatives should just hold their noses and vote for McCain and one company has introduced John McCain noseplugs to make it a little easier. Michelle Malkin is trying to rally her troops to vote for conservatives farther down the ballot in the hopes that someday one of these conservatives can be groomed to run for President, but many conservatives will probably be too deflated to summon the energy to get out of the house on election day.

Instead of voting to make things not quite as bad as they could be, however, a better strategy for conservatives would be to make things as bad as they possibly could be. One of the things we learned in Vietnam is that sometimes you have to destroy the village in order to save it. And the only way to save this country and the Republican Party at this point may be to destroy them. Though John McCain would destroy this country, he might not destroy it enough. So some patriotic conservatives have decided to become "suicide voters," pulling the lever for Clinton or Obama instead of McCain. I think this is a good plan and, taking a page from Malkin, conservatives should also vote for the most liberal candidates they can find in every contest in November. Let's hand over the entire government to the liberals and then see how the American people like it. They deserve it after treating us the way they have when conservatives have done so much for this country. And after a few years of liberal government, I'm sure they will come running back to conservatives, begging us to return to power. So from now on, I am going to be supporting the most liberal candidates I can find. That oughta show 'em.

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