I can’t support this troll under any circumstances because of his actions toward MIA familiesand his repeated pandering towards the worst elements of the dhimmierats while dissing the rank and file of the GOP.

Anyone who supports McCain should be prepared for a really, really awful periof during which the GOP is reduced to a dhimmierat lite party.

As to your “party bitch” bogeyman, I’m not sure why you think it’s even possible to be “your party’s bitch” if you’re not formally aligned with any political party. My chief loyalty, and presumably your only one, is to the United States of America, not to any particular political party, and certainly not to any idealizations of what any particular party ought to look like. The choice is now between McCain and Obama. I never had an option to help make the choice better, because the McCain nomination was a fait accompli by the time that North Carolina’s primary rolled around. You had an option to make it better, but you chose not to exercise that option. Neither of us has that option now. The only question is who will govern the United States for the next four years, McCain or Obama. If you think the country would be better off governed by Obama, then by all means, vote for Obama. If you think it would be better off governed by McCain, “the least repulsive Democrat running,” then you should vote for McCain. The Pilate option, which got us eight years of President Clinton in the 1990s, and four too many of President Carter in the 1970s (resulting in serious damage to the country that eight years of Reagan, four of Bush 41 and eight more of Bush 43 have still not been able to reverse), is not a viable strategy.

I know you don’t like McCain on immigration, but isn’t he pretty much in your sweet spot on everything else? Strong on the war, fiscal conservative, social liberal?

You’ll have to elaborate on what you mean by “social liberal.” I wouldn’t use that phrase to describe myself, and certainly wouldn’t apply it a solid pro-lifer / anti-gay-marriage-er like McCain. I’m with McCain on the war and judicial nominations (without whom social conservatives are dead in the water) and fiscal conservatism, but McCain-Feingold is about as far from my sweet spot as it gets. If it were, I’d seriously consider voting for Obama on that issue alone despite strongly disagreeing with him on anything else. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t face that dilemma since Obama is wrong on that issue too. Given the choice between a guy who is wrong on a lot of issues and a guy who is completely full of crap on all of them, the rational choice is clear.

I don’t know about Hawkins, but I also refuse to vote for John McCain, and I can tell you that if the winner of the primary had been an aggressive social conservative and you had refused to vote for him, I would think that you were perfectly justified because the party had refused to compromise with the social liberal part of the coalition.

“Justified” or no, I wouldn’t have done it unless the nominee were so bad that I actually thought his Democrat opponent would be better for the country, as would be the case if the Republicans had nominated Ron Paul. I loathe Huckabee, but still would have held my nose and voted for him over either Clinton or Obama. And no, I don’t see my coalition losing a primary as anyone “refusing to compromise.” The compromise is that both sides implicitly agreed that if the other wins the primary, we’d all support him in November. If you and Hawkins were planning to welch on that deal all along, you shouldn’t have been in the party to begin with.

The McCain situation is even more egregious because the biggest supporters in his victory was not Republicans, but Democrats –the national media. This is the second Republican presidential nominee in a row that was picked by the media with the silent approval of the party elite because they thought it helped their chance to win even if it didn’t help to advance the Republican agenda.

Dude, you seriously need to brush up on your history. The last Republican presidential nominee was chosen by party insiders over …. who was that, again?

How well do you think Bush worked out?

Better than President Gore, and a hell of a lot better than President Kerry. I shudder to think what today’s Supreme Court (and next year’s, and the year after that, ad almost-infinitum) would look like if either Kerry or Gore had been in office in 2005. Even if Bush had been in office, but McCain had not done his Gang of 14 deal (which at the time infuriated me to no end), the Supreme Court still wouldn’t look as good as it does, as Roberts would likely be on it but Alito would not. Of course you don’t care, since to you, Roberts, Alito and the “clones” McCain promises to appoint in his term are just “social liberals,” right?

That’s domestically. Internationally, an Obama win would leave Iraq where Afghanistan was at the end of Clinton’s term. The “let’s win by losing” crowd loves to cite Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan as though this were some kind of overall success story for the right. It wasn’t. Eight years of Reagan weren’t nearly enough to undo all the damage caused by four years of Carter. As of January 1989 (and, for that matter, May 2006), we still have a Department of Education, the Ninth Circuit is still hard-left loopy (due almost entirely to a slew of Carter appointees), Iran is still the number one state sponsor of terror, and we didn’t get the friggin’ Panama Canal back.

I don’t know about Hawkins, but I also refuse to vote for John McCain, and I can tell you that if the winner of the primary had been an aggressive social conservative and you had refused to vote for him, I would think that you were perfectly justified because the party had refused to compromise with the social liberal part of the coalition.

The McCain situation is even more egregious because the biggest supporters in his victory was not Republicans, but Democrats –the national media. This is the second Republican presidential nominee in a row that was picked by the media with the silent approval of the party elite because they thought it helped their chance to win even if it didn’t help to advance the Republican agenda. How well do you think Bush worked out?

As for the shoe being on the other foot, hello? It is. Go ahead and search my archives for references to “amnesty” or, in President Bush’s case, “non-amnesty amnesty.” You won’t find anything in there to suggest I was a fan of either President Bush or Senator McCain’s past positions on the issue. I’m OK with the current version, as Hawkins also appears to have been. The only question is why he’s so eager to find a “lie” where any objective reader finds nothing more than slightly inartful wording (and that only because the word “comprehensive” has been so badly misused in the past ,not because there’s anything inherently wrong with the word).

Someone who always votes for their own party, no matter how bad they get shafted, just because it is better than the other party has no power in their own party.

Anyone who chooses not to vote for the candidate he believes would better serve the country is worse than a party’s bitch; he’s a petty jerk who put his own bruised ego ahead of the interests of his country. There is a time and place for everything, and it’s called the primaries. Refusing to vote for the Republican candidate who won the primary fair and square doesn’t just make you “not the party’s bitch,” it makes you a petty jerk who considers loyalty a one-way street. Surely if the primary had gone the other way, Hawkins would expect all Republicans, including the ones who originally backed McCain, to set aside their differences and get behind the party nominee. He would rightly excoriate any former McCainiacs who took the ball and went home just because “their” candidate hadn’t won the primary. In fact, he’d probably cite this behavior as proof they (and, by extension, McCain himself) weren’t real Republicans at all!

As to your snide comments about Hawkins, I suspect that the shoe would be on the other foot if the Republican candidate were a social conservative and a fiscal liberal who made only token gestures to your side and then seemed to back down even from that. Someone who always votes for their own party, no matter how bad they get shafted, just because it is better than the other party has no power in their own party. You have to take a stand some time or you are just the party’s bitch. Hawkins has found the time when he has to make his.