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Political Hay

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More recently Governor Schwarzenegger has experienced the same Ledger-like political experience. Having convinced himself that he could safely ignore free-market principles in favor of mandating universal health care, he crafted a plan that ran head long into the hard fact that even left-wing liberals in the California legislature realized government mandated health care would quickly prove the ruin of California's working poor. The law of conservative political gravity, which in terms of economics revolves around the free market, is not government mandates and tax hikes.

For conservatives to work themselves into a tizzy over a McCain nomination and a McCain presidency is to ascribe a fragility to conservative principles that simply does not, in fact, exist. Conservative principles will not only survive McCain, they will survive Hillary or Obama or anyone else for precisely the same reason. They are real. They are grounded in reality. They are the natural law as common sense. No president can overrule them, no actor can confound them.

WHICH BRINGS US BACK to the idea of a Conservative Team of Rivals. If in fact John McCain makes it to the White House, and for that matter if he in fact emerges as the nominee, his campaign and his presidency -- not to mention the country -- will be better grounded when there is a physical manifestation of conservative ideas sitting around the Straight Talk Express or the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room with nominee McCain or President McCain.

Doris Kearns Goodwin tells us that Lincoln was asked by Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, why he had insisted on putting so many of his enemies and opponents in his Cabinet. Lincoln answered thusly: "We needed the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet. We needed to hold our own people together. I had looked the party over and concluded these were the very strongest men. Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services."

As John McCain prepares to speak to the foot soldiers of America's conservative movement this week, the example of Abraham Lincoln is surely one to consider. The challenge for McCain on a personal level is to demonstrate a Lincoln-like ability to be a "master among men." Can he be perfectly at ease not simply contesting others but being at the head of a conservative movement and a White House where others, in Lincoln's words "the very strongest men," are frequently contesting their chief on what they consider to be the vital issues of the day? It is no coincidence, either, that the revered Ronald Reagan is so well thought of as a president precisely because he exhibited a considerable ability along these lines.

As for conservatives, if in fact McCain emerges as the nominee -- or for that matter whether Romney or Huckabee manages to upset McCain and replace him as front-runner and putative next president -- holding steady to principle is surely the best course. Many battles lie ahead, beginning with the shaping of the 2008 Republican Platform. Will this be a conservative platform? Will it endorse McCain-Feingold, for example, or some form of amnesty on immigration? Will the McCain view on global warming prevail -- or the Bush view? And so on.

What some in the mainstream media seem not to understand is that conservatism is not about Rush Limbaugh's ego or ratings for Sean Hannity or appeasing conservative radio talkers Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham. Each of these people -- and the millions more who listen to them -- are seriously, passionately devoted to conservative principle. They react as they do to Senator McCain because they feel he has abandoned conservative principle -- or worse seems not to understand it.

John McCain will take the time this week to look thousands of conservative activists at CPAC in the eye and tell them he is a conservative. And why. He is being urged to "acknowledge tension" in their relationship. But whether McCain convinces his immediate conservative audience at CPAC or not, whether they or the millions of conservatives around the country vote for him or not is really not the point. Whether he has the Lincoln-like ability to put together a Conservative Team of Rivals is not the point either.

To be as up front with McCain as McCain will presumably be to his CPAC audience, the conservative point is that conservatism and conservatives will sail on with -- or without -- McCain in the White House. Conservatives can help him get there. They can help him once he's there. Or they could contribute to his defeat or simply make his stay in the White House as unhappy as they did for George H.W. Bush. But whether or not John McCain is about conservative principles, conservative principles are not about John McCain -- or anyone else.

They are about the most fundamental laws of life itself.

If you don't believe that, ask Heath Ledger.

topics:
Taxes, Health Care, John McCain, Barack Obama, Mainstream Media, Economics, Business, Global Warming, Books, Hollywood, Law, Supreme Court, Iraq, NATO, Conservatism, Immigration