When Battered Conservatives Snap

I don’t mean to beat a dead elephant, but John McCain’s speech before CPAC delegates on Wednesday represents a return to the honeymoon phase of Battered Conservatives Syndrome. In so wooing conservative activists in Washington today, we are supposed to forget that a year ago, when other lesser-known candidates were bending over backwards to address the annual conference, John McCain flat out refused their invitation. We are supposed to pretend that this colluding, Environmentology-preaching

, amnesty-granting, judicial confirmation-blocking, free speech-abridging, class warfare-spewing, Democrat-pandering, tantrum-throwing liberal geriatric will have a sudden change of heart and start becoming a Republican, for a change. And we are supposed to deny that Hillary and/or Obama will win a 35 to 40 state landslide over a Republican with whom there isn’t a great deal of disagreement or difference.

In the course of these recent partisan events and in light of this long train of abuse by the Republican Party of its conservative base, it seems that many within the party are ready to declare their independence and dissolve the ties that bind them to a party that no longer represents their views or interests. With many on the right vowing to do just about anything except vote for McCain (options currently include staying home, voting third party, voting for Hillary and/or Obama, and moving to Alberta), he seems well on course to do as poorly as the last Arizona Senator to win the Republican nomination. Of course, Barry Goldwater was a conservative. Indeed, in this particular time for choosing, McCain is the quintessential Me-too Republican, representing an echo, not a choice.

Whereas McCain’s speech today marks the honeymoon phase in the abuse of conservatives, McCain’s Senate career represents a decade or more of cyclical abuse of the Republican Party’s most loyal followers. Since being beaten by George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries, McCain has spent practically every waking moment punishing, subverting, tormenting, and destroying the party that rejected him. McCain-Feingold trampled on political speech and was quite simply the worst assault on the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts. McCain-Edwards gave Democrat trial lawyers a present wrapped in gold paper with the tort-happy “Patient’s Bill of Rights.” McCain-Lieberman (which is sounding more like a ticket every day) capitulated to the Environmentologist global warming hysterics and would have imposed a “cap-and-trade” indulgence system on the American economy. And of course, McCain-Kennedy would have opened the borders to criminals, drug dealers, gangsters, and terrorists as well as granted amnesty to twenty million illegal aliens in this country. The bruises and scars that John McCain has inflicted on conservatives just in the past eight years cannot be easily disguised and certainly cannot be ignored.

Likewise, this isn’t the first time the Republican National Committee has told its conservative base to shut up, to support the party with blind obedience, and to open their wallets. To date, conservatives have triumphed in conflicts with the RNC all of twice in the history of their movement. Barry Goldwater won a bitter battle with the beloved icon of the liberal northeastern establishment, Nelson Rockefeller, and Ronald Reagan was forced to put RNC man George Bush the First on the ticket in 1980 after losing out to an unelected RINO from Michigan four years before. Even Senator Robert Taft- “Mr. Republican” himself!- was repeatedly screwed over by the RNC and passed over by liberals Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Time and again the establishment triumphed and conservatives slavishly fell in line and took more abuse. They voted for Richard Nixon one or two or three times, they held their nose and voted for Gerald Ford and George Bush the First, they tried their best to overlook Bob Dole’s lack of charisma and increasing age, and they were fooled twice by George Bush II’s “compassionate” big government conservatism. Now may be the time for battered conservatives to finally snap out of their abusive relationship with the Republican Party. In that case, eight years (or more) of President Hillary may be the alimony the Grand Old Party pays for a messy divorce with its most loyal followers.