The American Spectator

John McCain is best equipped — for obvious reasons — to steer the West in this foreign mess; not the Democrats.

We in Australia, have a new government. One, I might add that has no real appreciation of the crisis facing the West.

p>You have an opportunity not to muck it up like we have. Articles like Mr. Henry’s do not help at all. br> — Alexandra Taylor /p>

I share your dismay at the inexplicable rise of McCain the Insufferable.

p>”It is as if a starving man, set before a banquet prepared by the world’s master chefs and covering an acre in area should elect to turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies.” — H.L. Mencken, in response to the election of Calvin Coolidge. br> — Bob Cotton /p>

Senator McCain is merely the tactical winner of the 2008 Republican nomination campaign. The strategic winner is the ghost of Nelson Rockefeller.

Mr. Henry, along with many other observers, believes that McCain is an unfortunate nominee, the wrong man to lead the Republicans. Respectfully, I disagree. Forty so years ago, this would have been so. But now, he is just the man to complete the Rockefeller-ization of the party. The party has come so far leftward that McCain now feels confident in telling Goldwater conservatives to go take a hike. It’s not a matter of wooing conservatives poorly, or wooing well and betraying later. This time, Barry’s ghost is explicitly being handed his eviction notice.

And we — one last time, I’ll say “we” in referring to the Republican Party — have done this to ourselves. I still respect the concept of personal responsibility. As such, I do not believe the party was pulled leftward by Democratic saboteur-voters, or by people under the hypnotic suggestion of the New York Times. What happened is that many millions of Republican-registered voters went to the polls believing that a little bit of nanny-stating is all right, as long as they are the ones who benefit. Chapter Eight of “Conscience of a Conservative” has become a dead letter, killed by our own ballots. These days, quoting Goldwater to Republicans is like quoting the Bible to Episcopalians — it just embarrasses them. We get what we vote for, and his name is Nelson Aldrich McCain.

p>If the Republican Party — I can’t call it the Grand Old Party any longer - survives 2008, it’ll be because the Democrats need someone to beat, like the Harlem Globetrotters needed the Washington Generals.