That makes McCain far better than Romney.

I am OK with McCain, even though I know I will not agree with him on several issues.

I am not OK with Romney, because I get the strong impression that he will do what’s popular at the expense of what is right.

If Hillary wins, then the GOP Senate and House would fight her agenda tooth and nail. We’d get gridlock, and bad bills, like the McCain/Kennedy Immigration bill would die in the Senate. Hillary is also smart enough to finish the job in Iraq and steal the credit.

Don’t get me wrong. I loathe the Clintons.

But, when I look at McCain I see someone who would rather forge one-sided compromises with liberal Democrats than stick up for the GOP agenda. Margaret Thatcher famously said that compromise is the absence of leadership. McCain is a compromiser, not a leader.

The GOP will benefit more from spending four years fighting Hillary rather than four years getting steam-rolled by McCain.

I don’t regret voting for Bush in 2004 – I’ll leave it at that.

I’m amazed at the quick amnesia the West developed about Islam in the last half of the 20th Century.

Any candidate that we nominate has to be better than Billary or Oprama.

But has anyone considered that it may be the party that has betrayed conservatism?

That is the core of the issue. We conservatives have been screaming loud and clear that the Republican party in Washington has left its conservative principles for piles of pork, going soft on illegal immigration, messing with political free speech, expanding entitlements, growing the government and much more.

McCain has some strong conservative tendencies. So does Bush. However, when McCain “reaches across the aisle” he grabs the most liberal hands in the lot: Kennedy, Feingold, Lieberman. When bush got to town, he grabbed Kennedy’s hand, too.

Will I vote for McCain if my party nominates him? Why not? If Hillary Clinton is elected, she promises to start screwing us “from day one.” If John McCain is elected, I know he will go McQeeg and start rolling his ball bearings and make all manner of maverick moves. But Leahy, Schumer, Clinton, Boxer, and the other junk yard Democrats will smell his weakness and force him to turn into the snarling, thin skinned adonis that he really is. It will be business as usual, but with a small, crotchety old man who never forgets a slight at the helm. It will be fun watching the MSM finally discover McCain just the way they have been surprised that Bill Clinton is a conniving liar.

Perhaps McCain will try to give the store away and force the Republicans in Congress to fight him the way the Democrats in Congress fought Carter.

Perhaps the Democrats will take McCain’s hand and then try to take his arm and make him turn on them. One thing is for sure, they won’t let McCain “go maverick” on them if it is not to their benefit.

Happy days are not here again in the halls of power.

How do we know if we never tried? I think the impracticality stems from the fact that nobody has the cajones to do it. We have tried amnesty before and look where that got us.

My point is that painting McCain as a victim AGAIN is just plain asinine and I doubt you’ll garner many pity votes that way.

The immigration bill contained a provision for securing the border, but in the wrong order — locking down the borders should be done before anything else to address the 12 million or so illegals in our country. Setting aside amnesty — TGC, what better options do you have to deal with the people already here? Forcibly deporting them all is impractical. I like the idea of making them “self-deporting” by removing economic incentives, through stricter sanctions against employers who hire illegals — but this was also in the bill. I’m afraid conservatives threw the baby out with the bath water on this one — the proposal did have other redeeming features, ones which could be passed as standalone measures.

As to how the candidates compare on illegal immigration — Huckabee wants taxpayers to fund the education of illegals. Romney’s record as governor doesn’t jibe with his current rhetoric (big surprise). From factcheck.org:

Mitt Romney casts himself as tough on illegal immigration in a new ad in which he says that, as Massachusetts governor, “I authorized the State Police to enforce immigration laws.” He doesn’t mention that his order never took effect. It came in the closing days of his administration and was rescinded by his successor, as we wrote back in August.

He also promises, “As president, I’ll . . . cut funding for sanctuary cities.” Maybe so, but as governor he took no action against several such towns in his state.

Every election I see this happening — conservatives need to look beyond what candidates say, and actually look at what they have done. Just because a candidate says he’s conservative doesn’t mean he is. (Bush is a good example — ran as a conservative, but the largest expansion of government since LBJ happened on his watch)

It’s a good thing that he did — otherwise the “Constitutional Option” would now be in the hands of the Senate Democrats. Besides, while the bipartisanship of the “Gang of 14″ might be anathema to hard-core partisans, for those of us more practical conservatives, what McCain did was basically trick Democrats into voting for Roberts and Alito.

When the Supreme Court later rules this year that the Second Amendment is a guarantee of individual right, not collective right, to bear arms, we will owe McCain some partial thanks.

Bullshit!
Who else in the party sidles up to the liberal media the way he has? Who else would take any amount of time to consider running with a liberal presidential candidate? Not only that, but he left the party on the “Constitutional Option”.

Not to mention he left all of us to push for amnesty for those who VIOLATED our immigration laws.

So he’s been a POW and served in the Senate forever. That’s nice. But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you damn well please. That’s what Kennedys do.

We *need* a leader and NOT a “maverick”, as branded by the liberal douchbag MSM. When you’re the darling of the liberal media, you’re not for us. People should be wary of Republicans they like.

BTW, the exploitation of his service is starting to become Kerry-esque, just like it did in 2000.

You nail it when you write, “He cared about the actual policies and guidance we were giving our troops.“

It’s so hard to reconcile that with a man who ties up committees with hearings on steroids in baseball, for god’s sake. I wonder which one we will see running. And which one will govern if he wins.

As right leaning gays, we should laud such a stance (not a reference to Larry Craig). Whether moderate, as I am, or extreme right wing (as my partner is), our individualism is what gives us the intestinal fortitude to be what we are. Proud, right wing and oh, yeah, the other thing.

While I believe Sir Rudy is more well-rounded in experience, I also believe that it is the role of the President to PRESIDE. What a concept! Romney would have to hire economists — he is not one. He made his money as a venture capitalist? Read “Gambler”. I doubt that he could jump into the position of Commander in Chief in wartime.

As the great-grandson of a Christian woman who was raped, killed and raped some more by Muslims because Christians were (and still are in certain parts of the Islamic world) open season, I have always known about the Muslim threat. Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it and unfortunately, our country is ignorant because in our pride we have made ourselves intellectually insular.

McCain knows what it is to be a prisoner. I don’t want to.