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“I’m not going to weigh in. I’m still a governor. I’m not running for national office at this stage. I’m not going to weigh in on specific tactics about whether we should go from 140,000 to 170,000. That’s something I expect the President to decide over t
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“John McCain has a record of courageous service and broad experience of years of involvement in every military and national security issue that has faced this nation. He is the only candidate prepared to be commander in chief from the first day in office.
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Rachel Lucas (and Bill Whittle) sound off about the MDS jihad on the blogosphere and among the conservative media elite. MUST READ.
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Iranian hardline press hearts Obama. LOL.
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“It is understandable to lament the absence of conservative purity, but ahistorical to suggest that any recent Republican president would have met any of the litmus tests now demanded, given the dependency of the middle class on entitlements and its touch
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New World Order conspiracy lunatic is the latest to get a podium at Townhall. Why? Because he thinks McCain is scary just like the rest of TH! (And they talk about the Paultards’ ugly associations?!) Hypocrites!
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Some “have elevated party purity above considerations of the good of the country. In the end, not only is this bad for the country, but I think it’s bad for the Republican Party.”
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“We are today, right now, even at this very moment, still paying for four years of Jimmy Carter - and we’re paying for those years with the lives of our young - and he left office in 1980, remember.”
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Pro-Romney moonbat compares McCain to Benedict Arnold? Niiiiice.
Terrye says:
Here is something else from Jeff Jacoby:
Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Now, I don’t believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.
Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real - as opposed to the mythic - Ronald Reagan.
The conservative case against McCain is clear enough; I made it myself in some of these columns when he first ran for president eight years ago. The issues that have earned McCain the label of “maverick” - campaign-finance restrictions, global warming, the Bush tax cuts, immigration, judicial filibusters - are precisely what stick in the craw of the GOP conservative base.
But this year, the conservative case for McCain is vastly more compelling.
On the surpassing national-security issues of the day - confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq - no one is more stalwart. Even McCain’s fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. “The world’s bad guys,” Hewitt writes, “would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror.”