Political writer David Limbaugh makes a less than convincing case in his current column that what is going on in this 2008 Republican primary season is a fundamental bid by a Phoenix-like “neo-Rockefeller” wing of the GOP to wrest control of the party, than (forgive the expression) just a proverbial pissing match between Reaganites and McCainiacs over their respective definitions of what constitutes true conservatism.

He writes:

… what we are witnessing is a resurrection of the historical GOP turf war between the Reagan conservatives and the disgruntled Rockefeller moderates. This neo-Rockefeller branch of the GOP sees this moment — McCain’s inevitable nomination, albeit by default, and the politically confused state of evangelicals under the tutelage of Mike Huckabee — as an opportunity finally to retake the GOP from the Reagan conservatives. Think of it as GOP Rearrangement Syndrome. And their strong support of the war has given them a narrative around which to forge their new coalition — as if they have a monopoly on hawkishness.

They want to remake the party in their image. They are the neoconservatives, the national-greatness types who profess to believe in conservative ideals but have no problem achieving them through liberal ends — i.e., more government. They apparently believe that history has passed traditional conservatism by, that big government is here to stay — and not to be resisted — and that Reagan conservatives should make the best of it and try to direct government toward conservative causes.

Why am I not buying into his analysis? Because the neo-Rockefeller wing of the party rebounded in the 2000 election season with George W. Bush’s victory, albeit contested, over Al Gore. McCain’s not leading any transitional phase away from Reagan conservatism. George Bush already did. George Bush’s two-term presidency cleared the way for John McCain’s presumptive nomination, precisely because they’re birds-of-a-feather and moderates are and have been in entrenched control of the party.

Fact is, McCain’s presidency, should he prevail over Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, will in most respects — particularly vis-a-vis the war in Iraq and a patent indifference to porous borders and illegal immigration — likely walk in the footprints of Bush ’43’s. Indeed, the “paradigm shift” that Limbaugh speaks of has been largely effected over the past seven years. To be sure, it’s not just now in its nascent phase.

Frankly, I find Jonah Goldberg’s Op-Ed piece in USAToday more compelling. Reagan conservatives are not apoplectic over the prospect of a McCain-led transformation of the Republican Party away from Reagan’s principles of small government, fiscal constraint, and the federalism of the Founding. Rather, they’re still suffering from irreversible buyer’s remorse and an acute feeling of disenfranchisement vis-a-vis Bush, who campaigned in 2000 and 2004 as a conservative, but in many regards was anything but, both realities of which have been exacerbated by John McCain’s rise to presumptive nominee status, not recently jump-started.

Writes Goldberg (with my emphasis added):

There are lots of reasons, some good, some bad, for conservatives’ angry dyspepsia toward McCain. I have bouts of it myself. From campaign-finance reform, to his proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants to his general tendency to burnish his own maverick street rep by triangulating off conservatives, McCain just seems to relish breaking ranks too much.

But that raises an interesting and remarkably undiscussed question for McCain’s detractors: Who are you really mad at?

He continues:

Most of the criticisms aimed at McCain can be directed at President Bush himself. Campaign-finance reform is a great example. Most conservatives think McCain’s effort to regulate political speech is an unconstitutional abomination. But in fairness to McCain, he doesn’t think that. You know who does? George W. Bush. The president signed the McCain-Feingold bill though he admitted that he thought it was unconstitutional. But as a “uniter not a divider,” Bush felt it wasn’t his place to veto an unconstitutional law — his oath of office notwithstanding — that was very popular, particularly with independents, centrist Democrats and the New York Times crowd.

Amnesty for illegal immigrants? To be sure, McCain was a big player last year in pushing legislation many on the right detest. But the biggest player of all was, again, Bush. Whatever your disagreements with McCain on immigration might be, it’s pretty much impossible not to have the same disagreements with the president who campaigned in 2000 insisting that “family values don’t end at the Rio Grande.” Indeed, before the 9/11 attacks, Bush wanted to make Mexico, not Great Britain, our No. 1. ally.

You can go on like this for quite a while. If you point to McCain’s very conservative record on judges, his detractors will dismiss it, saying they don’t trust his instincts. Didn’t McCain say something about Justice Samuel Alito being too conservative? they ask. Well, didn’t Bush’s instincts guide him to naming White House insider Harriet Miers before conservatives revolted and forced him to choose again? McCain opponents note that while the senator talks a big game about cutting pork from the budget, he’s still a big regulator and friend of activist government. This is fair, to some extent, but they forget that it was President Bush who pushed through the biggest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society with his prescription drug benefit — a plan McCain opposed and promises to scale back.

And here’s the money quote:

According to many pundits, McCain won the Republican Party’s “anti-Bush” wing, made up of moderates and independents. But this is largely a media-driven narrative imposed on a somewhat different reality. There is, in fact, a much broader anti-Bush sentiment in the party. The “right wing” of the GOP is suffering from a deep buyer’s remorse of its own.

I read a piece several days back in which the writer couldn’t understand why there appears so much animosity from the ranks of conservatives towards John McCain, while President Bush seems to get a pass. My thought then, after reading the column, is the same as it is today: Bush isn’t getting a pass; rather, conservatives gripped by the dilemma that faced them in 2000 and again in 2004 in voting for the lesser of two evils (Gore and Kerry, respectively), are wholly preoccupied with the comparably vexing prospect come November of choosing a Republican conservative apostate over left-of-Left Obama or left-winger (masquerading as a centrist) Hillary Clinton. This penchant of the Republican Party for producing lesser of two evils’ choices is getting old and is, for some of us anyway, a compromised path we may no longer be willing to tread. This may be the year for a line to be drawn in the sand.

As Jonah Goldberg concludes (again, with my emphasis added):

Conservatives supported Bush in 2000 for numerous reasons, including the fact that he seemed the best candidate to win back the White House. But one reason for his success in winning conservative support was that he just seemed like “one of us.” He carried himself like a conservative. He spoke like a conservative. He was an evangelical Christian and pro-life Texan, who reassured much of the base by telegraphing that he was on the right side of the culture wars. As political positioning, this was brilliant stuff. Aesthetically, he played to the hearts of the right while politically he promised to be something of a centrist, almost Clintonian, president without the seedy soft-core porn baggage.

In terms of body language, the contrast with McCain couldn’t be more stark. Bush has always been the sort of politician who relishes being loathed by The New York Times. McCain simply loves being loved by the Times and the national media generally. It’s his base.

But substantively, the differences between McCainism and Bushism are very narrow …

I couldn’t agree more and that’s why many Republican conservatives are, at best, demoralized and, at worst, livid.

Besides, if it weren’t the case that the neo-Rockefeller “moderates” are already in control of the GOP, then why does Huckabee’s pseudo-conservative campaign persist, why did Romney’s turn-on-a-dime conversion have the traction that it did, and why were the candidacy’s of Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, and Fred Thompson so poorly received?

As Charles Krauthammer has correctly observed:

… there’s an even more profound reason why no Reagan showed up this election cycle and why the apostate sheriff is going to win the nomination. The reason is George W. Bush. He redefined conservatism with a “compassionate” variant that is a distinct departure from classic Reaganism.

Bush muddied the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Teddy Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture into education that would have been anathema to (the early) Reagan. It was Bush who signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. It was Bush who strongly supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the Medicare drug benefit. And it was Bush who conducted a foreign policy so expansive and, at times, redemptive as to send paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and traditional conservatives like George Will into apoplexy and despair (respectively).

Who in the end prepared the ground for the McCain ascendancy? Not Feingold. Not Kennedy. Not even Giuliani. It was George W. Bush. Bush begat McCain.

Follow-Up: Newt Gingrich, I trust, wouldn’t characterize his clarion call to conservatives this past Sunday at CPAC as indicative of the “Rearrangment Syndrome” that David Limbaugh avers is underway, but rather a strategic reassessment of why the wheels have come off the track and the degree to which the Republican Party has been culpable in the derailing of the Conservative Movement. Excerpts from his speech:

… I believe that this is a time for the conservative movement to issue a declaration of independence…

First of all, I think we need to get independent from a Washington fixation. There are 513,000 elected officials in the United States and the conservative movement should believe in a decentralized United States, where every elected official has real responsibility, and we should be developing a conservative action plan, at every level of this country, and not simply focused over and over again on arguments about the White House …

I also think that we need to declare our independence from trying to protect and defend failed bureaucracies that magically become ours as soon as we are in charge of them. We appoint solid conservatives to a department and within three weeks they are defending and protecting the very department that they would have been attacking before they got appointed.

Gingrich continues:

In a fundamental way, the conservative movement has to declare itself independent from the Republican Party.

All heady stuff until he, too, caves and declares that conservative Republicans should vote for John McCain come November. Turns out Gingrich is more concerned about being “competitive” and “adapting,” than about being principled and winning those resistant to conservatism over to our side based upon the merits of a political philosophy that guided the Founders. Guess it’s just as well he didn’t enter the fray.

Follow-Up II: Jeffrey Lord, writing for The American Spectator, makes sense here:

If Reagan was a maverick — and I personally believe he was about conservative principle, not about being a maverick — he was a conservative maverick. He approached the 1976 campaign against the incumbent President Ford by running where he in fact was — to Ford’s right. McCain spent both the 2000 primary season against then-Governor Bush and notable parts of his Senate career championing causes not of the right but of the left.

This is why some — but by no means all — of the people I spoke with at CPAC have such hostility to McCain. Had he spent his time in the Senate taking the same conservative philosophical approach to immigration, the First Amendment, the Bush tax cut and global warming as he did to earmarks and the military surge in Iraq he would be receiving hosannas from conservatives. He chose to do otherwise, and thus the problem.

Follow-Up III: Jim Geraghty at NRO’s The Campaign Spot points to this factoid from a recent Gallup Poll:

The most ominous number in the poll for McCain comes on the question, “Would you be satisfied if John McCain ended up the winner in the Republican race, or would you have preferred to see one of the other Republican presidential candidates win?” Right now it’s 51 percent satisfied, 45 percent “would have preferred another.”

I’m damn sure part of that 45%! And I keep wondering when John McCain is going to show us conservatives credible assurances that he’ll here hear us out and act on our principles and beliefs, rather than those of Ted Kennedy and the liberal cabal in Congress he’s grown so cozy with in recent years.

By the way, we’ve been hammered with repeated criticism of our principled (rather than pragmatic) stand against McCain’s candidacy, as well as entreated — indeed, intellectually muscled — by scores of Washington elites arrogantly pointing to the growing chorus of endorsements for the Arizona Senator; but, I ask, who in the MSM and Republican circles is writing about that 45%? That’s a pretty significant number and our viewpoints deserve some attention.

The first “comment” on this post from Gawains Ghost is, I suspect, indicative of the roiling agitation out there among a good portion of WE THE PEOPLE. We’re kindred spirits!

Follow-Up IV (02/13/08): Jonathan Adler, writing for NRO’s The Corner, has a question with regard to Huckabee’s candidacy:

I understand why conservatives have misgivings about McCain — I share many of them — but what I do not understand is how some find Huckabee to be a more acceptable “conservative” candidate. McCain has his share of heresies, to be sure, but they pale in comparison to those of the Huckster — and Huckabee’s foreign policy experience is scarcely greater than Barack Obama’s.

For the record, Jonathan, I’ve questioned Mike Huckabee’s conservative credentials in this blog since the onset. I suspect that many votes cast for Huckabee since the “suspension”of Mitt Romney’s candidacy have been protest votes against McCain.

Follow-Up V (02/13/08): Rene Guerra, in an Op-Ed piece published by The New Media Journal, makes the same argument I have made in this post:

As for the Republican Party, it started taking a noticeable tack to the Left immediately after Reagan left the White House; “A thousand points of light” illuminated the way, some say. Others would argue that the Republican drift to the Left actually started during the Nixon Era.

Regardless of when the Republican Party started drifting to the Left, the fact that not a single heavyweight, across-the-board conservative sought the nomination for 2008 indicated, not only that the Republican Party is increasingly abandoning conservatism, but also that it is moving to the Left faster than what anyone could have thought. That the moderate John McCain has practically won – fair and square, no doubt – the nomination, only confirms it.

The chorus of recent endorsements for Senator John McCain (RINO-AZ), designed to underscore his purported conservative credentials and convince “wayward” conservatives to close ranks behind his candidacy, have been punctuated by more strident voices who insinuate that the ongoing threat of Islamofascist terrorism should compel those unconvinced of McCain’s allegiance to Reagan’s principles that voting against him or sitting out the November election in a fit of pique are tantamount to turning a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.

NRO’s The Corner runs this pithy piece of Victor Davis Hansen’s:

Recently, Al-Qaeda terrorist, Abu Maysara, a senior adviser to Abu Ayyoub al-Masri, was killed, and his translated diary reveals profound Al-Qaeda depression at its dramatic recent battlefield defeats and the loss of the hearts and minds of Iraqis to their Americans and Iraqi allies. Nonetheless, Speaker Pelosi now assures us of the surge that “There haven’t been gains …The gains have not produced the desired effect… This is a failure. This is a failure.”

I have the greatest respect for Professor Hansen, read his columns regularly, and several books of his sit on the shelves of my personal library. But terrorism comes in many forms and guises and it’s not limited to the virulent forms of Islam.

Why rally to John McCain, who aligned himself with liberal Senate icon Ted Kennedy in a failed attempt to pass so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation — i.e., amnesty and a path to citizenship for 20 to 38 million illegal aliens afoot in our land — without so much as a thought given to the grave implications for Americans of porous borders, unsecured maritime ports, and pitifully piecemeal internal enforcement of employers who hire them and visa-holders who overstay when those visas expire.

Consider this: close to 30% of the prison population in this country is comprised of illegal aliens; over 4,000 American citizens are murdered annually by illegal aliens (take a look — please, do take a look); in Los Angeles, CA, alone, according to Heather Mac Donald, “95% of all outstanding warrants for homicide target illegal aliens” and “up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants are for illegal aliens.”

There has been a longstanding, accelerating human invasion across our southern border and the federal government and the Washington elites who claim it for their own have failed to adhere to the dictates of Article Four of the United States Constitution:

… and [The United States] shall protect each of them [the States] against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Fact is our porous borders and unsecured ports these 6+ years after the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 belie the claim of the Bush Administration that this president has been the “Security President.” And presumptive Republican candidate for the White House John McCain has no more right to the claim that he’s eminently national security-minded than does Bush ‘43. McCain extols his virtues based upon his early endorsement of the “surge” strategy in Iraq, yet has done not a thing in the United States Senate to stop the surge of humanity across our southern border — even into his own state! If you question that statement, kindly take a look at John McCain’s Arizona (courtesy: YouTube). After all, this is the senator who now, in his final quest for the Oval Office, has only reluctantly stated that he’ll “build the goddamn fence.”

Surges, other than just those in Iraq, have implications for international terrorism too.

Here’s an excerpt from a post by ParaPundit:

Let us leave aside the fact that Bush’s immigration plan will not make the borders any less chaotic or any more lawful. The fact is that there is a huge surge happening across our southern border with Mexico and the United States government’s response is totally inadequate. Surely Al Qaeda must have noticed by now that the US border with Mexico is poorly policed and that many Middle Easterners could sneak across it without even getting spotted by any Border Patrol agents.

He goes on to link to this seminal essay by Mark Krikorian, which I encourage you to read if you think there’s no linkage between porous borders and international terrorism. And as The Phyllis Schlafly Report properly argues (with my emphasis added):

The terrorists are foreigners, most or all of whom should not have been allowed to live in our country. As FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted, at least some of the hijackers were “out of status,” i.e., they had no proper immigration documents. It should be repeated over and over again: The terrorism threat is from illegal aliens who are allowed to live in our midst — and this is a failure of our immigration laws and our immigration officials.

The criminals who were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, of the murders in front of the CIA headquarters in 1993, and who were involved in a 1998 plot to bomb New York’s subway system were Middle East aliens who should not have been in the United States. They were either granted a visa that should never have been issued or had overstayed a visa and should have been expelled. The 1996 Khobar Towers bombings, the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen were all carried out by radical Middle East groups.

Since easy access into the United States has been repeatedly exploited by aliens bent on terrorism, it should have been no surprise that it was used by the World Trade Center/Pentagon hijackers.

The policy of opening our borders to anyone who wants to sneak into our country illegally — or to remain illegally after entering legally — must be exposed and terminated. This is the most important security precaution our government must take.

Take a look also at this post of Frank Laughter’s at Common Sense Junction or of this one at Immigration Watchdog (as well as this one) and tell me if terrorism is bred only in the Middle East and that fighting it exclusively overseas truly keeps us from having to confront it here at home, as President Bush claims and John McCain agrees. If you’ve bought into that propaganda, you’ve been misled.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) knows what’s best for America, as reported by The Dan Stein Report: follow the “Rule of Law” and get the double-layer border fence, mandated by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, built.

Our nation’s greatest and most obvious vulnerability remains our porous and unprotected southern land border. Yet every day, unknown numbers of human and drug smugglers, criminals and potential terrorists continue to illegally enter the United States through our border with Mexico. The exposure of our southern border demands that we take immediate action to implement the most effective enforcement mechanisms available. And while technology and manpower are an important part of this effort, the best and most effective method of preventing illegal foot and vehicle traffic from entering the United States is border security fencing …

Neither George W. Bush as a two-term Republican president, nor John McCain as a two-term Republican member of the House of Representatives and a four-term member of the United States Senate, thought this necessary and look at the terrible consequences of what their gross indifference to and deplorable advocacy of an open borders’ policy has done for America.

Bottom-line, don’t be too quick to embrace John McCain.

Indeed, be mindful of what David J. Stoddard has written, if you’re contemplating closing ranks behind John McCain and particularly on the strength of George W. Bush’s endorsement:

After 9/11, America staggered in shock.

Meanwhile, Mexico fully expected the U.S. Government to secure our southern border. For roughly three months the human traffic over our Mexican Border slowed to a mere trickle while people waited to see what America was going to do.

After it became apparent that real security measures were only taken against our own citizens, the Mexican Border traffic resumed with an unprecedented intensity. After all, illegal aliens, particularly illegal Mexican aliens, don’t present a threat to U.S. Citizens. Do they?

Read newspapers from all over the country. You’ll see stories of drunken illegal aliens driving automobiles into innocent citizens. Other stories tell of murders, rapes, robberies, child molestations, home invasions and illicit drug deals. Illegal aliens are selling poison on our streets, killing our police officers, murdering our citizenry and then fleeing back to Mexico where they are coddled and even celebrated. The U.S.-Mexico Border is no more secure today than it was on 9-11.

Why were they allowed to enter and remain in America? It is because of the total lack of enforcement of our perfectly good immigration laws. While it is true that some illegal aliens may have come with the benign intent of finding a job and working, it is equally true that it is against the law. Our politicians wink. The cheap labor lobby smirks. The common citizen pays the bill in blood and money.

How many citizens have been victimized over the last two decades of neglect on our borders?

Follow-Up: Michelle Malkin quotes Andy McCarthy on why you should not allow the McCain sycophants (my choice of words) to marginalize you for not throwing your arms around this self-styled conservative.

Follow-Up II: Mark Krikorian, writing for NRO, provides a key insight into the likelihood of McCain persisting in his penchant for kow-towing to Mexico’s interests in perpetuating the illegal emigration of its poor, uneducated, and criminal element to the United States. An excerpt:

The contempt for American citizenship that McCain has shown by naming this political bigamist to a post in his campaign isn’t even the whole problem. One might also ask how McCain could even consult with a person of such extreme views, let alone name him Hispanic outreach director. McCain’s support for amnesty and accelerated mass immigration is bad enough, but you can, at least in theory, be for those things and still support firm borders and patriotic assimilation.

But McCain’s Hispanic outreach director is a man who has spent years opposing the very legitimacy of America’s borders and Americanization in the most public way possible. The man has been on every TV-news show in creation rejecting as passé the very idea of sovereign borders and patriotic assimilation into the American mainstream. (Digger’s Realm has compiled a greatest-hits video.)

Read it all.

Follow-Up III: And here’s a well-thought litany of why one voter is not buying into John McCain’s brand of conservatism (courtesy of Free Republic).

Follow-Up IV: Shall we get bogged down in legal semantics on the differences between “crime” and “terrorism” or shall we accept intuitively that the following is most definitely a form of terrorism and that both the victims and the friends and loved ones of the victims have indeed been terrorized?

Organized, well-financed and violent Mexican kidnapping cells are targeting a growing number of U.S. citizens visiting communities popular with San Diegans and other California residents.

Last year, at least 26 San Diego County residents were kidnapped and held for ransom in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach or Ensenada, local FBI agents overseeing the cases said yesterday. In 2006, at least 11 county residents had been kidnapped in the three communities.“Some of the 26 were recovered, some were hurt and some were killed,” said agent Alex Horan, who directs the FBI’s violent-crime squad in San Diego.

“It’s not a pleasant experience. Victims have reported beatings, torture and there have been rapes. . . . Handcuffs and hoods over the head are common,” he said.

And what of the dreaded MS-13 gang — would their rampant violence constitute a form of terrorism? Need more examples? Apparently, John McCain does. Recall this …

Sen. McCain voted against the Cornyn Amendment (SA 1184) to S. 1385 to establish a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists, and other criminals. The Cornyn Amendment would have permanently barred from admission into the United States, and denied immigration benefits (including legal status under the amnesty in this bill), to: (1) absconders (i.e., aliens already ordered deported); (2) aliens deemed inadmissible or deportable as security risks (e.g., terrorists); (3) aliens who fail to register as sex offenders; (4) aliens convicted of certain firearms offenses; (5) aliens convicted of domestic violence, stalking, crimes against children, or violation of protection orders; (6) alien gang members; and (7) aliens convicted of at least three DUIs. The Cornyn Amendment failed by a vote of 46 to 51.

Some “conservative” Republican McCain is!

Follow-Up V: Senator McCain’s all-too-convenient (and not necessarily credible), but belated interest in securing our borders sure wasn’t around in 2004 when this was published (my emphasis added):

Colonel Anderson says these Special Interest Aliens originate in the Middle East or Northeast Asia. They travel through Spain to what’s called the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, then, to Mexico City.

They pay to learn Spanish language skills, and by the time they reach the U.S., they’re acting and talking like Mexicans to fool border agents.

And, Anderson says, they’re entering the United States right through our backyard. “This is the main alley. It’s called “Cocaine Alley” or “Terrorist Alley.” Whatever you want to call it, Arizona is the prime place.”

Cochise County is the center. It’s the point of gravitus, center of gravity for all illegals,” says Anderson.

Anderson says some Special Interest Aliens are well-funded. paying tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into this country. They manage to get passports from non-terrorist nations.

And here’s the shocking part: if they are caught, they are often released on their own recognizance, never to be seen again.

According to Retired Border Patrol Agent David Stoddard, “There are Middle Easterners coming across the border as we speak.”

Isn’t it fair to say that John McCain has either been indifferent to the threat or asleep-at-the-wheel as a member of the United States Senate from Arizona — a border state no less?

Follow-Up VI: And this column from Michelle Malkin, published by FIRE Society:

After spearheading a disastrous, security-undermining illegal alien amnesty bill last year with Teddy Kennedy, “straight-talking” GOP Sen. John McCain claims he has seen the light. In TV appearances, he vows to put immigration enforcement first. On the campaign trail, he offers a perfunctory promise to strengthen border security and emphasizes the need to restore Americans’ trust in their government’s ability to defend the homeland.

“I got the message,” he told voters in South Carolina. “We will secure the borders first.”

But how can McCain cure citizens’ distrust when his own credibility on the issue remains fatally damaged? He doesn’t believe his own election-year spin. And he knows we know it. This is cynicism on steroids with a speedball chaser.

Not all of us have forgotten how the short-fused Arizona senator cursed good-faith opponents in his own party (”F**k you!” and “Chickensh*t” were the choice words he had for Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn during a spat over enforcement provisions). Not all of us have forgotten that he voted against barring felons from receiving amnesty benefits under his plan. Not all of us have forgotten the underhanded, debate-sabotaging manner in which McCain/Kennedy/Lindsey Graham/Harry Reid conspired to ram their package down voters’ throats.

His admission of the shamnesty failure is grudging and bitter. While he now tells conservative voters what they want to hear about the need to build the southern border fence, he takes a contemptuous tone toward physical barriers when talking to businessmen. “By the way, I think the fence is least effective,” he told executives in Milwaukee, according to a recent Vanity Fair profile. “But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it.” Straight talk? Try hate talk.

Follow-Up VII: This from William Gheen, who heads ALIPAC:

A McCain win will not stop the escalating problems from illegal immigration. Each day, more Americans will be murdered by illegal aliens. More atrocities will befall American citizens, more jobs and wages will be lost, more tax dollars will be stolen from us, and more illegal aliens will be in our face making demands of us, especially with the coming visit of Mexican President Calderon who comes to address his citizens on America soil.

Follow-Up VIII (02/12/08): I really like this post of Carol Platt Liebau’s, in which she makes the following incisive observation:

Andrew McCarthy astutely points out a strange and disturbing phenomenon: The penchant of McCain supporters to antagonize the conservatives McCain must win over in order to have any shot at the presidency.

Some, it seems clear, are simply national-security-before-all-else people, and for them, McCain’s serial apostasies on campaign finance, immigration, the Bush tax cuts, treatment of terrorists and the rest don’t matter. They can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that good people might sincerely and vociferously object to elements of the McCain record that seem largely immaterial to them. Those people just need to wake up and realize that they’re doing their man no favors by questioning the good faith of those who disagree with him, and them.

But I suspect there are a fair number of others who are not only supporting McCain, but trying to use him to win an internecine struggle within the Republican Party — and those people are antagonizing conservatives on purpose.

Congratulations to “ACE” of Ace of Spades HQ for garnering this special award at this year’s CPAC!

Well-deserved. Nice going, Ace!

His blog has been in my site’s blogroll from day one and I syndicate his site and read him (and contributors to his blog) throughout the day.

Here’s video of his acceptance speech, courtesy of Townhall.com. At long last, Ace has emerged “from the shadows,” as Ted Kennedy would say.

Patrick J. Buchanan, in a piece published at VDARE that leaves two questions hanging tantalizingly in the balance, distills the arguments over whether conservatives should support or not support John McCain’s run for the White House.

First, should conservatives support John McCain, if for no other reason than better it be him nominating Supreme Court justices, than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? As PJB writes:

But if Hillary or Obama wins, the likelihood is good that either would nominate the next two justices to the Supreme Court. And there is no doubt that any Clinton or Obama nominee will be in the mold of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Antonin Scalia, and the long battle for the Supreme Court will be lost irretrievably.

Second, should conservatives support a neocon who, as Buchanan categorically believes, wants to be a “war president?”

There is another consideration. McCain has said he will stay in Iraq another 100 years if necessary, that Russia should be thrown out of the G-8, that he will do whatever it takes to halt Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. He has told us: “There’s going to be other wars. … I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars.”

John McCain seeks to be a war president. Indeed, it is the role of commander in chief of a nation at war that seems to commend itself most to John McCain. But is that good for America, let alone the right?

And, I should add, Buchanan poses these two questions squarely within the context of whether or not John McCain is trustworthy based upon the Senator’s mixed voting record and longstanding predilection to stick it in the eyes of conservatives. As Buchanan warns:

The most powerful case against McCain is that, put brutally, he is not to be trusted.

Many on the right believe that if he wins, he will have no further need of conservatives and will revert to the McCain of McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Lieberman, the John McCain of the Gang of 14, who will never nominate justices like Sam Alito, because that would alienate his true constituency, the media, who are at his feet every time he undermines the conservative cause.

Seems to me that Buchanan has described well the dilemma faced by conservatives this election year, and particularly for those of us who place Conservatism — its principles and guiding political philosophy — before allegiance to the Republican Party and its recurring call, election after election, for “the lesser of two evils” pragmatism. As I wrote in this post:

It is not an unalienable right of any political party operating in a country with a democratically-elected, representative government to enjoy blind fealty from its members, and particularly so here in America. But to listen to Republican Party leadership these days and its presumptive candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination, we conservative Republicans are simply to shut-up, “calm down,” and toe the mark in this election year, as if such a gravitational pull is an ineluctable force of nature, rather than simply a matter of choice.

What the Republican Party chooses to produce these days, you see, and most certainly dating back to “read my lips — no new taxes” George Herbert Walker Bush ‘41, is the lesser of two evils. That’s its preferred product-line and designed to marry up big tent, moderate Republicans against bigger tent, progressive-liberal Democrats. Doesn’t always work, of course (witness Bob Dole), but that’s the plan and the RNC is sticking to it. And even when the wheels fall off, as they most assuredly have in Campaign 2008, the “conservative Republican base” is expected to remain ever faithful to the product-line, to tone down its complaints, and to remain irrevocably team-players.

The dilemma faced by conservatives is thoroughly vexing. Perhaps Buchanan wasn’t more definitive in his column, because he’s hopeful that a third party candidate will soon emerge and become the standard-bearer for conservatism. I suspect, absent such an unlikely eventuality, that conservative Republicans will reluctantly close ranks around McCain to defeat Clinton or Obama. But even Newt Gingrich appears to be fence-sitting or otherwise hedging his bets these days given this inconclusive recommendation, cited by blogger Ed Morrissey:

I asked him (Newt Gingrich) about John McCain and how conservatives should approach his apparent nomination. He responded by saying that conservatives should not wed themselves to the GOP. However, he also reminds us that one can support a candidate while opposing some of their policies, and that John McCain is much better than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

I, for one, will be unwilling to pull the lever for McCain. Period. Hand-wringing vacillation is not my style. The man will no more get the borders and maritime ports secured and internal enforcement ramped up in a compressed time frame sufficient to protect the country (while inducing the self-deportation of a large number of illegal aliens) than open-borders’ Bush ‘43 has on his watch. And before you say it, I know that’s true of Clinton and Obama as well. But tell me: how else do we instill some discipline in the errant Republican Party and particularly among its contrary political elites in Washington than by voting against them? This “lesser of two evils” nonsense always plays to their advantage, not to the GOP’s base.

So I’ll write in Fred Thompson’s or Duncan Hunter’s name as a nod to true conservatives and focus instead on Congressional candidates — those that ought to be installed, retained, or chased. Either way, Democrat or Republican, the Oval Office occupant will dismay us for the next four years. Of that I am convinced. And it’s a damn shame, too, and a telling comment on misplaced loyalty to the major political parties that incumbents get returned to office (or, worse, elevated to higher office) 90%+ of the time.

Indeed, I agree with John F. Kennedy (as quoted by PJB):

“Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Follow-Up: Donald A. Collins, writing for VDARE, makes this pertinent, post-Super Tuesday observation about the surviving candidates in the presidential race from both parties:

The absence of a solid immigration voice is deplorable.

Follow-Up II: Point/counterpoint — in making the case to vote for John McCain in November, columnist Robert McFarlane, writing for the Wall Street Journal, attributes this quote to Ronald Reagan (H/T: The Anchoress):

Going over the cliff, flags flying, is still going over the cliff.

Follow-Up III: Here’s an example of conservative Republicans closing ranks around McCain, as I have written many would, and as Ed Morrissey cites.

Follow-Up IV: Nonetheless, many conservatives will persist, I’m convinced, in saying: “No Way McCain.”

As Republican voters and True Conservatives, we oppose any effort to promote, support, or endorse Senator John McCain as the Republican nominee for President in 2008. As Republican voters and True Conservatives, we will only support candidates who promote the philosophy and principles of conservatism in government; who promote smaller government, fiscal discipline, and greater economic and personal freedoms; and whose records of public service are evidence of their principled beliefs.

Senator John McCain has consistently demonstrated a record of public service counter to the philosophy and principles of conservatism and the Republican Party …

Do check out the site.

Follow-Up V: Digger at Diggers Realm appears to share in my disdain for the leadership/experience/track record pedigrees of the candidates the Republican and Democratic political parties have offered up as choices, both now and in past years. He writes:

From George Bush I to George Bush II to Bill Clinton to the current crop of candidates from both parties, they are not who the people would choose. These candidates are who the parties have presented for people to choose from. There’s a big difference.So, no, I won’t be voting in The Primary. I refuse to participate in validating the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and their continued forcing on the public candidates who are not looking out for the best interests of this country and are instead looking out for the best interests of a few select special interests that they support or owe favors to.

And does this sound like my position too?

I will be voting in November, in the real election. It is important that all of us show up in November, even if you are not going to be casting a vote for president, because every House seat is up for grabs along with 34 Senate seats. If you don’t show up in November then you have not had your real say.

Follow-Up VI: Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse, and despite being “fed up with the stupidity of the Republican party,” makes the case for not sitting it out in November and refusing to pull the lever for John McCain:

I know exactly where these people are coming from. It’s not that I am insensate to their abhorrence of Mr. McCain. The Arizona senator will see to it that conservatives are largely frozen out of policy and personnel decisions. If he doesn’t do that, the media will be all over him for not living up to his label as a “maverick.” Judging by many of his campaign aides, I fully understand the anger directed at him.

But it cannot be said enough that elections are about choices. And politics is a business that is bound to break your heart if you live it long enough. This is why cynicism is so dominant among the pros and political press. Unless you drop your silly illusions about ideological or personal purity of one candidate or another, you will end up like those who are stomping their feet like three year olds and refusing to come when mommy calls.

It’s a good, thought-provoking read and despite the unnecessary shots taken at principled conservatives who, at least at this juncture anyway, cannot contemplate sacrificing Conservatism and all it stands for on the altar of Senator John McCain. I encourage you to read Rick’s post in its entirety. As Pat Buchanan has written, the results of Campaign 2008 to date pose a bitter dilemma for conservatives. If you’re struggling as to what to do, join the crowd. You’re not alone!

Follow-Up VII: If only Newt had entered the fray …

But as Sharon Soon reports from CPAC, Newt Gingrich argues:

I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20% of the time than a President Hillary or Obama that we fight with 90% of the time.

Follow-Up VIII: ParaPundit links to and quotes Mickey Kaus’ parsing of John McCain’s speech to CPAC, as well as Kaus’ heads-up that Barack Obama is even left of Hillary on the political spectrum. Good read.

Follow-Up IX: Michelle Malkin reports that Fred Thompson is imploring conservatives to fall in line behind John McCain.

Follow-Up X: Ragnar at The Jawa Report appears to be in my camp (or I in his). Don’t pass this link up, as the visual feast will give you heartburn and sometimes a visceral sense of indigestion serves to lead you in the right direction! He writes, in part:

I know some of the right-wing blogosphere has decided to let bygones be bygones with McCain, close ranks with the GOP for the good of the party and the maintenance of troop levels in Iraq. I’m not going to say they’re wrong for doing that. I’m sure they’ve weighed the available options and decided, in their own judgment, that closing in behind McCain is the best choice. For my part, I’ve weighed the issues and decided that it isn’t. I’m willing to respect the judgment of my fellow bloggers. I just disagree.

I’m not telling you to not vote for John McCain. I’m telling you to get informed, weigh your options carefully and use your own judgment.

Well said, Ragnar.

Follow-Up XI: Polipundit’s analysis of the McCain bandwagon is that it’s being pulled by a mule (pun intended), rather than a sleek team of horses.

Follow-Up XII: Now Rick Moran is pointing to “McCain’s crippling weakness:

Mike Huckabee continues to win southern primaries, taking the Louisiana contest yesterday while also demonstrating strength in the bible belt by taking the Kansas caucuses. Not only does the Huckster reveal his strength by winning these races, at the same time he shows the entire world McCain’s crippling weakness.

The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president cannot win the base of his own party.

McCain’s problems have gone far beyond the tactical necessity of winning over conservatives. He faces a strategic dilemma of the first magnitude. And Mike Huckabee isn’t making things any easier for him.

Read it all.

Follow-Up XIII: Randall Parker at ParaPundit is reading my mind:

Bush gets double bonus points with a McCain nomination: Iraq and immigration amnesty. McCain wants to keep[ fighting in Iraq and McCain has tried very hard to get immigration amnesty passed. Even now McCain has only backed off on immigration to the point of saying that border enforcement comes before amnesty. But McCain and Bush just want to make it easier for Hispanics to enter legally. They are not for immigration restriction. They are for immigration increases.

We are approaching my nightmare scenario: John McCain versus Barack Obama. Who is worse?

Along these same lines, Frank Laughter of Common Sense Junction, at his pithy best, obviously feels much the same way! 

John McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee in the 2008 race for the White House, tried to mend fences with the GOP’s core conservative base today in an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The speech, on the whole, appeared to be well received, as I watched his address on the FOX News Channel.

However, it should be noted that on a significant national issue that has materially estranged “the base” from the Arizona Senator — namely, illegal immigration — no anti-amnesty pledge was made to the Republican Party faithful. Nor, apart from a general pledge to secure the borders first (sans any timetable), was there any specific pledge given to support and implement both the spirit and the letter of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Notably absent as well were any mention of the candidate’s positions in terms of maritime port security, internal enforcement of current federal immigration laws (e.g., employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens), anchor babies, Mexico’s persistent interference and meddling in the internal affairs of the United States, the efficacy of enforcement procedures aimed at the self-deportation of the undocumented (or those carrying forged documentation), visas for foreign workers (e.g., H-2B visas), or, for that matter, the withdrawal of federal funding to sanctuary cities.

Here’s all that Senator McCain had to say vis-a-vis illegal immigration and border security:

Surely, I have held other positions that have not met with widespread agreement from conservatives. I won’t pretend otherwise nor would you permit me to forget it. On the issue of illegal immigration, a position which provoked the outspoken opposition of many conservatives, I stood my ground aware that my position would imperil my campaign. I respect your opposition for I know that the vast majority of critics to the bill based their opposition in a principled defense of the rule of law. And while I and other Republican supporters of the bill were genuine in our intention to restore control of our borders, we failed, for various and understandable reasons, to convince Americans that we were. I accept that, and have pledged that it would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.

For me, John McCain’s lip service on illegal immigration and homeland security was as transparent, as was his silence deafening on substantive issues within the context of those subjects.

He didn’t sell me today that he’s still anything other than the man who aligned himself with Ted Kennedy to force-feed amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens on what was initially an unsuspecting public.

Follow-Up: Polipundit was similarly unimpressed and provides some evidence of why he thinks John McCain is being disingenuous.

Follow-Up II: Jim Geraghty of NRO’s The Campaign Spot says that McCain’s speech to CPAC “didn’t quite soar” and “wasn’t quite a home run,” but then follows with this:

Not sure what it was missing….

I trust, Jim, that I have answered that question for you!

Follow-Up III: Ramesh Ponnuru, writing for NRO’s The Corner, makes the following observation that squares, in part, with mine:

He seemed to shift a little bit on immigration. Previously he has talked about having border-state governors certify that the border is secure before going ahead with an amnesty and a guest-worker program. I hadn’t heard him say this before: “[O]nly after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.” Two possible shifts here. First, he is talking about a “widespread consensus”—a few governors wouldn’t be enough. Second, he seems to be talking about separate guest-worker/amnesty legislation that would move after we have started to enforce the law. That is a small concession on his part, in one way: It doesn’t violate his own principles. But it is potentially a big deal, because it means that enforcement won’t be held hostage to passage of amnesty and guest worker legislation.

I’d prefer it if McCain took one more small step. It isn’t enough that the border be secure; the illegal population has to start shrinking. (A lot of illegal immigrants came here legally and overstayed their visas, so securing the borders doesn’t solve the problem.)

Follow-Up IV: Blogger Rick Moran must have been reading my mind (or anticipating my post!):

Although his speech was interrupted several times by applause, there were an awful lot of CPAC’ers sitting on their hands. They were polite. They listened carefully to what McCain had to say. But they were in no mood for unity and good will. This became evident when McCain talked about his differences with the base over illegal immigration. The cascade of cat calls and boos that greeted his mention of that issue showed McCain that he has a long way to go until people believe his pledge to secure the borders first.

Raising the issue took some courage and McCain should be praised for taking his critics head on. But nothing he said would have changed anyone’s mind on the issue.

Follow-Up V: Mitt Romney told his audience at CPAC:

Another aspect of American sovereignty is the security of our borders. The current system is a virtual concrete wall against those who have skill and education, but it’s a wide open walk across the border for those that have neither.

Wouldn’t you say the tone and tint of that statement are far more conservative-sounding than the remarks of John McCain’s I’ve published above? Romney’s right: “McCain-Kennedy isn’t the answer.” Wasn’t then and will not be tomorrow!

Follow-Up VI: Ace makes a lot of sense to me with this thoughtful (perhaps prescient) prediction on John McCain:

Having mostly won without conceding an inch to conservatives, and being on the fast track to the nomination, I don’t see why on earth Mr. Straight Talk would suddenly tack to the right now. The rule is tack to the right in the primaries, tack to the center once the nomination is secured to better position oneself for the general. The John McCain we’re seeing now is likely the most conservative version of him we’re ever likely to see.I think some conservatives are in the bargaining phase of the five steps of grief. The trouble is, we have nothing much to bargain with. Even when we were at our strongest bargaining position, McCain offered us nothing at all.

Follow-Up VII (02/08/08): Venerated conservative political columnist Mark Steyn, writing for NRO’s The Corner, commenting on the mood among participants at CPAC:

… the despondency over the way this primary season has gone was palpable.

I suspect, Mark, it’s not any better out in the hinterlands. The Democratic Party now has three horses in the race.

Follow-Up VIII (02/08/08): From an Associated Press (AP) story, as published in today’s edition of the Houston Chronicle:

For the first time in three decades, Republicans are likely to nominate a presidential candidate who lost the conservative and evangelical votes in the primaries.

Follow-Up IX (02/08/08): Here’s a “must-read” column by Mona Charen on why many conservatives will be unwilling to pull the lever for John McCain.

Follow-Up X (02/08/08): Carol Platt Liebau on the difference between Rudy Giuliani and John McCain and why the latter, over and above his left-leaning policy decisions/votes, pushes many conservatives to the brink:

Lots of the same people speaking out most vociferously against McCain are those who would have embraced Rudy Giuliani, although some of his views are no more orthodox than McCain’s.

The difference between the two is that Rudy made it clear that the disagreements weren’t personal — that he respected conservatives even when he thought they were wrong. In contrast, with John McCain, everything is personal — and those who don’t fall right in line with his views aren’t just wrong, they’re really not good people.

This attitude sticks in the craw of conservatives because they’ve encountered it too often on the part of the MSM and Democrats.

In a similar vein, Michelle Malkin reprints an e-mail she received from a “Republican staffer on the Hill” that corroborates much of what Carol is pointing to above. An excerpt:

His votes and stances are a matter of record and have been fully explored in many places. But we, as Hill staffers, have seen his personal vitriol up close and personally. Whether it has been personal confrontations with Senators or his cussing out of and demeaning comments toward staffers – whether it was his arrogance and dismissal of concerned conservatives displayed during the “Gang of 14” or his or his staff’s constant, repeated – often vindictive and very personal – undermining of conservative principles in the immigration debate – John McCain has proven time and time again that his worthiness to lead our Party, much less our nation, is more than questionable.

I believe it matters who you choose to follow. The “lesser-of-two-evils” argument is always compelling, but I simply have come to the conclusion that John McCain, for all his patriotism, is not the kind of man I want to follow and that I want to represent me, my country and my Party.

Follow-Up XI (02/08/08): CQ Politics columnist John Bicknell provides an interesting insight on the rift/friction between the Arizona Senator and conservatives in the Republican Party’s base:

Conservatives who have opposed McCain during the campaign have cited his positions on a range of issues — immigration, campaign finance, climate change, tax cuts, legal rights for detainees — where he has sided with Democrats.

But the positions McCain has taken are only part of the problem for conservatives.

As president, with a Democratic Congress, it is the other part — the stylistic part — that will prove to be a much greater problem for conservatives.

When McCain has been on the conservative side, as he has been on the vast majority of issues, he gives it full-throated support. He is not afraid of giving offense to appropriators when he sticks up for cutting spending, and he has not been shy about deriding Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq, to cite two potent examples.

But when he is with the Democrats, he is really with them. McCain is not someone who simply reaches across the aisle to form coalitions with the other side. He walks across the aisle, puts on the other team’s uniform and sings the other team’s fight song.

It is not an unalienable right of any political party operating in a country with a democratically-elected, representative government to enjoy blind fealty from its members, and particularly so here in America. But to listen to Republican Party leadership these days and its presumptive candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination, we conservative Republicans are simply to shut-up, “calm down,” and toe the mark in this election year, as if such a gravitational pull is an ineluctable force of nature, rather than simply a matter of choice.

What the Republican Party chooses to produce these days, you see, and most certainly dating back to “read my lips — no new taxes” George Herbert Walker Bush ‘41, is the lesser of two evils. That’s its preferred product-line and designed to marry up big tent, moderate Republicans against bigger tent, progressive-liberal Democrats. Doesn’t always work, of course (witness Bob Dole), but that’s the plan and the RNC is sticking to it. And even when the wheels fall off, as they most assuredly have in Campaign 2008, the “conservative Republican base” is expected to remain ever faithful to the product-line, to tone down its complaints, and to remain irrevocably team-players.

What’s wrong with this picture? Simply this: conservatives in this country adhere to transcendent principles of natural law and the American Founding, not to the mundane machinations of a political party gone astray. Their allegiance is to the United States of America, first and foremost, and the Republican party only remains attractive to them if it is a reliable political instrument for securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

In Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address, he observed:

We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

To borrow from Ronald Reagan, I argue that no political party has any power other than that granted to it by its registered members. And, in terms of the Republican Party today and its abandonment of its core conservative base, it is high time we “check and reverse” the direction of a political party that has jettisoned its moorings and finds itself adrift in a left-leaning current of unprincipled political opportunism.

I offer two suggested readings to you that somewhat parallel my argument.

First is this piece from Ken Marrero, published by NewsByUs. Excerpts follow:

2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of my favorite novels, Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. I first read it over a decade ago. It was then, and remains, one of the most influential pieces of literature in my personal and professional development. It’s the story of a small group of men and one woman who become influential members of society owing to their contributions in key areas such as business, finance and the like. Over time, they find they are the most successful and prosperous when they base their success on meeting the needs others have in their area of expertise. This personal value is turned against them when the people abandon their own responsibility for their well being and begin to make demands on this small group, not based on the need for their expertise, but on their personal need for security and success. Initially, the group tries to meet those needs despite the personal cost to them. Ultimately, however, they are convinced by one of their number, John Galt, that such behavior will surely destroy the people and it will destroy the group if they permit it. He argues the best course of action is to withdraw from an ungrateful and selfish society and take their talents elsewhere, leaving society to fend for itself. When they do, society crumbles. Hence the name of the book - “Atlas Shrugged”. When the one holding the world on his shoulders shrugs, what happens to the world he holds?

I’ve come to the conclusion that Conservatives and the Republican Party find themselves at a similar crossroad. For 50 years or more, Conservatives have held down their end of the Party and the bargain. They have voted faithfully for the Republican candidate, regardless of who he was, because they had a philosophy of society and governance that focused on the development of the individual based on creating a framework in which individual effort and responsibility were rewarded despite the risks involved.

So it is now up up to the GOP to put up or shut up. They can either demonstrate Conservatives are welcome in the party and will be heard or they can decide the GOP can get along just fine without them.

Do read it all.

The second piece is by redoubtable conservative blogger-columnist-commentator Michelle Malkin. She offers a compelling viewpoint. Excerpts follow:

The contest for the GOP presidential nomination is over. The conservative movement is not. Sen. John McCain’s campaign resurrection and Super Tuesday victory leave a diverse group on the Right—from the libertarian Club for Growth to First Amendment defenders to immigration enforcement proponents—dispirited. But the failure to nominate a true Republican unifier does not spell ideological defeat.

If you can’t stomach John McCain, channel your support and energies to Republicans who do represent your values and who have treated the conservative base as allies instead of enemies. There are a new generation of combat veterans running for office who haven’t made a career of trashing the base. Check out staunch economic, social, and national security conservative congressional candidates like Iraq/Afghanistan veteran Eric Egland in California’s fourth district. Check out the Vets for Freedom (vetsforfreedom.org) group for their endorsements.

Opposed to the amnesty bill? Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and John Cornyn of Texas all fought the McCain-Kennedy-Graham-Martinez-Bush open-borders disaster. All of those Senators are up for re-election this year. Send them some money. Then send a few more bucks to the enforcement proponents on the House side as well.

Do read it all.

Where am I? As I wrote in this post published yesterday:

So I’m convinced now, and to borrow from Ronald Reagan, that my Party has abandoned me, I’ve not abandoned my Party. To be sure, I’m not and never have been interested in the Republican Party becoming a “big tent” full of lefties and the so-called moderates who pander to them. If the GOP is in the process of reinventing itself to make it more attractive to those farther left on the political spectrum, then I want no part of it. I’m a Conservative first and a Republican second. I believe that Conservative principles, as embodied in the American Founding and the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, must transcend the mundane and pragmatic pull of politics.

Accordingly, and if Senator John McCain prevails in becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for president, as it appears he will, I will most certainly vote, but in doing so will devote myself to unseating Congressional incumbents who have stood in the way of securing our land borders and maritime ports in their hellbent efforts to grant amnesty and a path to citizenship for border-jumpers and visa over-stayers. I will not cast a vote for McCain, but rather write in Fred Thompson’s or Duncan Hunter’s name. Indeed, I will not be a participant in America’s determined, enervating move to the Left.

Follow-Up: Governor Mitt Romney’s speech at CPAC is sure deserving of a read. As information, he abandoned the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination today.

The sports’ section of today’s edition of the Houston Chronicle includes a front-page feature story on the big soccer game last night at Reliant Stadium (home of the NFL’s Houston Texans) between the men’s national teams of the United States and Mexico — a game the Chronicle’s Bernardo Fallas enthusiastically describes as “the latest installment of what has become one of the best soccer rivalries this side of the globe.” The headline notes a sellout crowd of 70,103 was on hand and that the match ended in a 2-2 tie.

Noteworthy is that on page C3 of the print edition, under the heading “U.S. - Mexico Summary,” is this excerpted footnote to the game (my emphasis added).

The American men have grown accustomed to having more Mexican fans than U.S. fans in the stands, even in home games.

The near sell-out crowd at Reliant Stadium was about three-quarters pro-Mexico.

So nearly 53,000 fans packed into Reliant Stadium last night were there to support Mexico’s national soccer team over that of the United States’. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that those fans were all of Mexican heritage, but I think it’s fair to suspect that most were. Nor does it necessarily mean that all were Mexican nationals here working in southeastern Texas legally (i.e., documented) or illegally (i.e., undocumented), but, again, I suspect most were. And you should know that somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 illegal aliens (certainly not all from Mexico, but a majority nonetheless) reside here in the Houston area. So those in the stands among them were hardly “living in the shadows” last night.

But what it may well mean — and, admittedly, this is conjecture on my part — is that whatever the composition was of the huge, pro-Mexico crowd, among them bona-fide American citizens of Mexican heritage, documented Mexican nationals here on work visas, undocumented Mexican nationals who have jumped our southern border or purposefully over-stayed their temporary work visas, or the smattering of Mexican nationals no doubt visiting here just to enjoy the game, the near singular loyalty shown to Mexico’s national team by most fans in attendance may be indicative of their residual political allegiance for the government of Mexico, as well as of their over-arching fondness for the homeland.

After all, this wasn’t an example of a large metropolitan area or region in the United States betraying the traditional divided sports’ loyalties shown by fans of competing, professional, sports’ franchises that one can see, for example, in New York City between the Yankees and the Mets, or in Los Angeles between the Lakers and the Clippers, or even right here in the Lonestar State between the Houston Texans and the Dallas Cowboys.

No, here last night, a distinctly different phenomenon was at work. We were seeing competition between two “national teams” — those of the United States and Mexico — and must one not wonder why the overwhelming majority of fans present for this match-up chose to root against the U.S.? After all, the venue was not Mexico City, but America’s 4th largest city!

If cultural assimilation is something devoutly to be wished, as Teddy Roosevelt once reminded us, then should that not extend to sports as well?

In the first place we should insist that the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equity with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming an American and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

Sure, and before you say it, nationalism needn’t always be the irrevocable concomitant when nations compete. Americans who enjoy the Summer and Winter Olympics have assuredly shown, from time to time, divided loyalties between competing athletes from different countries and even when one of those countries was the United States of America. I, for one, was fascinated by the athletic prowess of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci when she competed in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, and I admittedly knew precious little about the sport or about her. But when the United States competed against the Soviet Union in hockey in the 1980 Winter Games (and I’m not a hockey fan) how could I or any American choose to support Russia?

What I am driving at is simply this (I can hear the hue and cry of natavism already): when 10% of Mexico’s native-born population has emigrated, legally or illegally, to the United States, shouldn’t it concern us that many, perhaps even the vast majority, still think of themselves as Mexicans, first and foremost — Mexicans who resist assimilation, politically and culturally, and perpetuate that divide by refusing to learn and speak English?

Hey, maybe German immigrants to the United States rooted in droves for Germany’s Max Schmeling when he fought America’s Max Baer at Yankee Stadium in 1933. But I doubt seriously that the House That Ruth Built rocked with frenzied German fans. My maternal great-grandmother and grandmother were native-born Germans who came to America, learned our language, adopted our customs, became two of its proud citizens, and with the exception of a fondness for preparing Spaetzle (which I recall eating at Grandma’s as a little boy) became Americans through and through.

Heather Mac Donald, in a seminal article on illegal immigration from Mexico, wrote:

Mexico’s governing class is not content simply to unload the victims of its failed policies on the U.S., however. It also tries to ensure that migrants retain allegiance to La Patria.

Pride in La Patria seemed all too evident last night at Reliant Stadium.

El Presidente Felipe Calderon should be proud. As he has boasted: “Wherever there is a Mexican, that is Mexico!”

Follow-Up: The Latino population of Harris County in 2005, according to this information, was 37.5%. And according to this 2005 demographic population study, 624,652 Mexicans and 182,838 “Other Hispanic or Latino” residents reside in the city of Houston in a total population of 1.94 million. As of 2007, according to this report, Houston’s population has grown to 2.14 million, with 41.78% (or approximately 894,000) listed as being of “Hispanic ethnicity.”

Postscript: This sad news followed the soccer match, as reported by Robert Crowe of the Houston Chronicle:

Two men are expected to survive gunshot wounds following an incident after a soccer match at Reliant Stadium Wednesday night.

After the U.S. and Mexico game ended, a man got out of a vehicle and fired two rounds into a large crowd, striking Raul Edgar Belmon, 28, and Manuel Elgua, 36, as they left the west entrance of the stadium, authorities said.

“Right now the motive remains unclear until we re-interview the two victims and the witness,” said HPD spokesman John Cannon. “Hopefully we’ll have somebody come forward and contact us or Crime Stoppers.”

The victims said they were chanting “Mexico, Mexico” as they left the stadium when suddenly they saw a man get out of a maroon car and fire toward them. Witnesses said they saw what appeared to be a beer bottle or can thrown from the crowd toward the car before a man got out of the passenger side and fired shots.

Purblind voters across the country prevailed last night in advancing the miasmic candidacies of two left-of-Left liberals, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the candidacy of liberal-light John McCain, who persists in masquerading disingenuously as a conservative Republican, while marching to the beat of his own drum as a wannabe Democrat and rank apostate. As blogger Rick Moran accurately depicts McCain’s relevance to conservative principles:

This is a man who has demonstrated not once, not twice, but many times that he values media affection over principle or party.

At this nightmarish, post-Super Tuesday juncture of the 2008 presidential primary season, Reagan conservatives feel twisted as pretzels and at their wits’ end. I, for one, have traveled a circuitous route. For the longest time, I had a photograph up of Newt Gingrich in the right sidebar of my blog. Under his picture was the caption: “My early pick for 2008.” But when Gingrich belatedly decided not to enter the Campaign 2008 fray and remained instead a self-styled philosopher-king in the GOP’s conservative circles — i.e., an erudite pontificator, rather than a much-needed doer — I looked for an antidote to the former Speaker of the House’s perplexing, Hamlet-like vacillation.

I found it eventually in Rep. Duncan Hunter’s (R-CA) squarely conservative values and voting record, albeit in a Republican candidate bereft of charisma, national name recognition, and requisite political gravitas in conservative Republican circles. But this was after all the man who had sponsored the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and had promised to get a border fence constructed in six months’ time after becoming president, so I was onboard. But, alas, Hunter’s candidacy never gained sufficient traction (no real surprise) and eventually he was forced to bail out. Indeed, neither Hunter nor Tom Tancredo (R-CO) — an equally attractive conservative candidate championing border security and tough, much-needed measures to deal with illegal immigration — caught fire in the early caucuses and primaries. So Tancredo, too, in time, bowed out.

So where was I to turn next? Conservative principles suddenly seemed to be in dry dock. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee clearly wasn’t the answer. Of that, I was convinced. And Mitt Romney was for me the Republican equivalent of Kerry, the Flip-Flopper, although his speech at the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, was a triumph. So, and although he seemed complacent about his campaign and entered the race late, I decided, reeling in frustration, to turn next to Fred Thompson, the former Republican senator of Tennessee, hopeful that he could spark, as Hunter and Tancredo had not, a conservative rally within Republican ranks. But, he did not get the job done either to the chagrin of FredHeads everywhere.

What then? Damn! Now thoroughly convinced, as I was, that the wheels had come off the Republican Party, I cast about futilely and decided upon a desperate move — one that I thought might return the thorny, over-arching national issue of illegal immigration to center stage (where it belonged), as well as to pose the threat of a viable Third Party candidacy to bring the GOP back to its senses from its growing infatuation with John McCain. Indeed, I turned to CNN’s Lou Dobbs, an avowed populist, but one who has been front-and-center on illegal immigration and its deleterious effects for years. As I wrote in this blog:

I’d like to see a tsunami of cold, hard, political realism engulf the GOP and its current slate of chameleon-like candidates, all of whom are already taking WE THE PEOPLE for granted through their endless iterations of self-serving mendacity. I’d like to see the political party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan put on firm notice that American conservatives are fed up and not about to take it anymore or to buy into any form of unctuous Hucksterism on the campaign trail. For many of us, “voting for the lesser of two evils” is simply no longer an option. After all, to do so is not compromise; it’s betrayal. This time around, we’re going to draw a line in the sand, for anything less is to fail the American Founding.Maybe, just maybe, a Dobbs’ candidacy could be a magnet for a true, principled conservative to emerge, and particularly if, as it presently seems, the Republican Party could be thrown into a brokered convention.

With that, I put up a “Draft Lou Dobbs for President” panel in my site’s right sidebar (it’s still there) and hoped that ALIPAC’s influence (and Lou’s multitude of faithful followers) might just encourage him to make a run. But, and really no surprise here, that draft movement never materialized and conservatives like me were still left treading water and stubbornly resisting the notion that most anyone within Republican Party ranks who could fog up a mirror would be preferable to Clinton or Obama.

That stubborn determination to just say “No!” to the John McCain juggernaut even led me to temporarily supporting Mitt Romney this week in an effort to help thwart a Super Tuesday sweep for Arizona’s asleep-at-the-wheel, amnesty-advocating, RINO Senator. But that, too, proved to be yet another in a series of failed attempts and just so much wishful thinking.

So, where am I left absent someone on the Right to carry the banner into battle? Nowhere, it would appear.

So I’m convinced now, and to borrow from Ronald Reagan, that my Party has abandoned me, I’ve not abandoned my Party. To be sure, I’m not and never have been interested in the Republican Party becoming a “big tent” full of lefties and the so-called moderates who pander to them. If the GOP is in the process of reinventing itself to make it more attractive to those on the farther left on the political spectrum, then I want no part of it. I’m a Conservative first and a Republican second. I believe that Conservative principles, as embodied in the American Founding and the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, must transcend the mundane and pragmatic pull of politics.

Accordingly, and if Senator John McCain prevails in becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for president, as it appears he will, I will most certainly vote, but in doing so will devote myself to unseating Congressional incumbents who have stood in the way of securing our land bord