- He had a history of bipartisan cooperation in Texas
- He advocated a Compassionate Conservativism (which meant he advocated an oxymoronic big government limited government)
- He would restore honor to the White House
- The US Foreign Policy would be reexamined with emphasis on few international actions

Not only that, as everyone knows, national elections are won in the center.

Poppycock. Complete contemporary myth promulgated by Democrats who DO have to move hard to the right (ie lie their asses off) in order to win.

What was centrist about Bush’s campaigns? What was centrist about Reagan? Bill Clinton veered hard towards the center yet he never won with even a bare majority. Had it not been for Perot, he never would have even been president.

American elections are won on economic and other conditions, character, personality and conservative-leaning policy. All other things being equal, the conservative will always win.

He knows he’s going to be president of all Americans and doesn’t delight (as she seems to) in the increasing animosity of the opposition’s rank-and-file

That’s more accurate.

McCain knows that people are sick to death of the poisonous political atmosphere, and knows that its going to be the elephant-in-the-living-room issue this election. More so than in any other recent election because this time it’s not confined to DC, it has overflowed the capital and is seeping into people’s everyday lives.

It’s not “moving to the center” thats going to win it for him — indeed, moving left threatens to lose it for him — its the perception that he really has and will continue to work to “get along”. He just needs to figure out a way to get that across to voters without stabbing his base in the back — and quickly!

And unlike you, the more he talks about “greedy Wallstreet”, “manmade” global warming, the need to DO something about it, Bush’s “Katrina failure”, slamming Rumsfeld, temporary gas tax relief…. ugh! The more he talks the less enthusiastic I am about his candidacy.

I’ll tell you one thing, no matter who gets elected, President Bush is gonna look reaaaaal good in a couple of years.

I believe that McCain will play by those rules.

The role of the Gang of 14 is largely misunderstood by those who do not know the arcane rules of the Senate. When McCain and friends joined this mongrel group, they tacitly agreed that the nomination of judges has to pass the 60 vote threshold. Thank you, John McCain.

The Senate should have been forced to do the heavy lifting of filibuster and left Harry Reid with the job of fending off cloture. The Gang of 14 made all of that moot.

In the end, John McCain helped make the seating of judges more difficult and more political than ever before.

If he is elected and he fails in the appointment of judges, he will taste the full wrath of of voters who oppose setting national policy from the bench.

Perhaps McCain’s “quirky” nature is somewhat akin to that of Harry Truman and he will find a way to cut some Gordian knots. More power to him, if it is so.

I am amazed at his New Orleans performance. Fema is not set up to be the “first responder.” When sheer incompetence on the part of the New Orleans mayor and Louisiana governor became clear, perhaps Bush should have called Congress to authorize him to bypass the Constitution and do their business for them. But to infer that the C-111′s full of cash we dumped on Louisiana was a national response inadequacy is remarkable.

McCain has a few months to read his grassroots before it becomes critical. Maybe his New Orleans and North Carolina goofs will educate him a bit. He claims to have learned from amnesty idiocy.

I am a conservative and a lifelong Republican. I will vote for this guy, but he doesn’t impress me as a candidate who is working to earn my respect.

WTH are you talking about? This is the guy who cursed out a fellow Republican senator who disagreed with him on border enforcement, and who called social conservatives “agents of intolerance.”

The reason he doesn’t feel “threatened” by liberals is because he agrees with them. The reason he co-sponsored bills with Kennedy, Feingold, and Lieberman is because they agree with him. When he runs into actual ideological opposition … from conservatives … he is rude, arrogant, and insulting to them. John McCain has *never* heaped the abuse on Democrats he routinely heaps on members of his own party.