The Conservative Cat

I am instructing my pets to vote for John McCain in November, and I encourage all my readers to do the same; however, I think this story demonstrates why I opposed McCain to this point.

In addition to fending off a New York Times hit piece, Senator McCain now finds himself in a public-financing bind. The idea that we should support him because he can beat Hillary is proving to be smoke and mirrors.

We all knew that if McCain won the nomination, it would be the Republican nomination, and he would be running as a Republican. If you are going to get a pass from the New York Times, if you are going to look for wiggle room in the campaign financing laws, you have to be a Democrat. If you are running for President as a Republican, there is no way to avoid the fact that your opponent will be more of a Democrat than you are.

New campaign finance regulations make it progressively more difficult to understand what's legal and illegal. A large campaign organization has almost no hope of avoiding all the pit traps. In such a case, you have to rely on the favor of the press to keep your peccadilloes under the radar. McCain now finds himself in a straitjacket of his own making, and he's going to bring the whole party down with him.

I think all Republicans should take a lesson from this experience: compromising conservative principles in order to get approval from the press is not going to help you in the long term. Betraying your allies is a purely short-term strategy.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat