Huckabubba Aside...

A well written article by Quinn Hillyer on why John "McAngryOldMan" McCain isn't going to be the savior of the GOP in this election.

THEN THERE ARE McCain's weaknesses (from a conservative standpoint) on government regulation and on judges. On the first topic, what it pretty much boils down to is that if something moves, McCain wants to regulate it. He wants to regulate campaign speech, anything having to do with the environment, smoking, the price of medicines (interfering with free-market savings), oil drilling in Alaska, securities trading, and other things.

On judges, McCain repeatedly boasts about being a main mover behind the "Gang of 14" that supposedly helped garner approval for President Bush's nominees. The numbers say otherwise.

With a tiny Republican Senate majority in 2003 and 2004, the Senate approved 19 of Bush's appeals court nominees while blocking 12. But with the Gang of 14 operating in 2005 and 2006, the Senate approved only 16 appeals court nominees (plus two Supreme Court nominees) while again blocking 12 -- even though the party's Senate majority was much bigger, with 55 seats versus just 51 seats in the previous Congress.

What's worse, other than the three nominees immediately approved through the Gang's deal, the few other post-Gang nominees who were approved tended to be less solidly conservative than the ones approved in the previous Congress.

The simple fact is that the Gang of 14 "saved" a "right" to filibuster judicial nominations to death that Republicans have never, ever used, while the alternative to the Gang would have been to deny the Democrats the unconstitutional filibuster option they had grievously abused.

Conservatives were not helped by the Gang. We were mugged.

If McCain wins the nomination, our only hope to hold the White House is for the Dems to nominate someone weak as they are normally wont to do.