I was wrr.. wrro.. wrooon..

Last week I cast our friend McCain as a RINO. That was not quite precise. A better description would be Progressive.

McCain was best described as a progressive - like Teddy Roosevelt, whom he cited constantly. McCain tended to see politics as a contest between the national interest and the selfishness of private agendas, and he favored a role for government in counterbalancing the excesses of organized wealth.

But that's not all. He's also a flip-flip-flopper.

This is the consensus: McCain's basically a right-winger, but at least you know where he stands.

Actually, this assessment gets McCain almost totally backward. He has diverged wildly and repeatedly from conservative orthodoxy, but he has also reinvented himself so completely that it has become nearly impossible to figure out what he really believes.

Political conversions are hardly new or scandalous. McCain's ideological transformation is unusual for two reasons: First, he has moved across the political spectrum not once - like Al Smith or Mitt Romney - but twice. And, second, he refuses to acknowledge his change.

I wasn't wrr..ong only about RINO vs. Progressive, but also when I parenthetically noted, "I'm even OK with it" [McCain winning re-election on Tea Party coattails.] While consciously aware of the fact that personality often distracts voters from a politician's policies, I was subconsciously taken in. Just as our government needs massive structural reform to rescue the nation economically, the GOP can no longer include Progressives in its Big Tent. They don't help us, you see, they neuter us. There's a place for those people and it's called the DNC, as lap dogs to The One.

And it's not just McCain, to whom I had ascribed Chait's "unwavering authenticity" whose personality clouded my judgement, but Palin as well. These people are right - "Time to pick a side, Sarah - Are you with the people, or against them?" I'll reiterate my willingness to kick her to the curb if she ever strays from the small-government playbook, and if she follows through on plans to campaign for McCain that's either a massive miscalculation or an admission of guilt. Either way, it'll be tough to recover.

2010 Posted by JohnGalt at January 27, 2010 3:33 PM