A Liberal Republican is far better than a Liberal Democrat.

It ain't the label, it's the testicular fortitude. John McCain has two more than Obama and at least one more than SWMNBN.

I can live with McCain.

The prospect is way more than a little distasteful. There are two points of view on this.

One is the point you make -- the Rep. candidate is better than any Dem. this time around.

But consider this. The Republican machine counts on that point of view. They think they can ignore conservatives completely and that we will knuckle under and accept their candidate.

Blanket amnesty a la Ted Kennedy, for goodness sake! No way. Maybe four years of Obama is just what the Rep. party needs to bring them to their senses. Maybe we can just count on Congress to block too much liberalism until 2012.

National Security, the Supreme Court. For those reasons I will vote for McCain.

That, and the little apples like supporting the surge when no other candidate had the stones....

Is McCain my perfect candidate? No (that would have been Phil Gramm, but I digress). But he sure as hell beats Obama & SWMNBN.

I have a lot of problems with McCain (BCRA, e.g.) but I want a guy in the White House who recognizes that we are in a war against a global enemy, not in a police action* against a few nuts in Afghanistan

We need to send in the Marines, et al., not a SWAT team.

*with apologies to all police officers who have a difficult job.

KMR,

I still have my bumper sticker from the Phil Gramm '96 campaign.

The Republican machine is right- of course we conservatives will rally to the polls for John McCain in November. What McCain has not realized is that it is the conservative base who does things like go door-to-door, man phone banks, and dispense campaign literature. People only volunteer to spend their time and energy on a campaign when they are passionate about a candidate. Bob Dole knows that anti-votes rarely inspire much passion and energy. John McCain needs to seriously develop conservative support or he will be in for a rude awakening in the general election.

I love it when conservatives complain that the Republicans ignore them. Fine, you aren't the only group ignored by the Repubs, and you at least aren't vilified by them most of the time.

Those of us who want smaller government, who want the government to stop interfering in our lives, usually vote Republican, even though the party hates us.

Texas Republicans state - in their party platform - that the US is a Christian country. Should the rest of us vote Democratic then? (Hint without some non-Christian, non-conservative votes, GW Bush would never have been elected.)

So vote for some 3rd party candidate, and enjoy the next 4 years living under the nanny state. And if you think the Congress will stop gun control or higher taxes or more nanny state laws or anything else that the Dems dream up, you're crazy.