Below The Beltway

Leslie Carbone makes it, quite persuasively:

John McCain is a disgrace to the party of Reagan. His namesake legislation tramples freedom of political speech, the cornerstone of republican government. Because he does not demonstrate a sliver of Constitutional fidelity, there is no reason to expect him to be able to recognize, much less appoint, judges who do. His amnesty legislation undermines the Rule of Law. His opposition to drilling in ANWR shows a resistance to commonsense policy that could reduce both energy prices and American dependence of foreign oil. His support for federal funding of stem-cell research belies his claim of a pro-life record (and expands big government). His understanding of economics is embarrassing; as he points fingers at the bogeymen du jour–Wall Street greed, the pharmaceutical industry, oil companies–he says nothing that reflects any textured understanding of the market economy, how it works, why it is the best means of creating prosperity. Instead, he backed Bush XLIII’s outrageous, unpopular bail-out–flakily suspending his campaign to rush to Washington to accomplish, well, nothing–and even wants to go further, asking the taxpayers to help keep irresponsible borrowers in homes they never should have bought.

(…)

If McCain is president, thanks to conservative votes, it will be McCain, and his fellow anti-conservatives–both those philosophically opposed to small government and those so philosophically unmoored that they have no convictions at all except power–who continue to shape the right-of-center side of America’s political conversation. And that will mean continuing to fight destructive Democrat policies with destructive Democrat-lite policies.

Rejecting McCain, on the other hand, gives us time and space and, most of all, integrity, to recover the principles that made Ronald Reagan the most successful president in modern times, and, in so doing, repair the conservative cause.

My fellow conservatives, please vote for America’s long-term prosperity. Please vote for the recovery of conservative principles. Please vote for hope. Please vote against John McCain.

There’s nothing radical or shocking about what Leslie is saying, it’s the same things that conservatives were saying about John McCain before he became the Republican nominee.

As I noted last Monday, there is an alternative and his name is Bob Barr.