McCain Closes The Deal

With Romney out of the running, John McCain is now a done deal. Today he spoke at CPAC in an attempt to mend fences with conservatives. Good luck, but it doesn't matter. He is now the king of the GOP. I expect Huckabee will fall in line shortly.

I would like to get behind McCain. I really would. He's a genuine war hero and isn't afraid to take unpopular stands. My problem with him is that I cannot figure out where those stands come from. He has no identifiable principles other than a vague, semi-religious "greatness of America." No one can predict what he will do in any given situation. He floats around like a jellyfish, randomly stinging anyone who gets in his way.

At least he is pro-life, some argue. Well, no, he's not. McCain wants the federal government to pay for embryonic stem-cell research, which results in the death of very young humans. He also supports the abortion of babies that have the misfortune to be conceived as a result of rape or incest. Now to some people this is "pro-life." Yet it ignores the fundamental question: as soon as you start to say that some innocent lives must be protected while others can be destroyed, somebody has to decide which lives fall into which group. Next thing you know whole categories of people are being defined out of existence.

Unless the right to life applies to everyone, it is not really a "right." McCain, then, is not really pro-life. He is pro-some lives. In a way, this is worse than being pro-abortion. McCain apparently believes unborn children are fully human and still thinks it is perfectly fine to kill some of them. How callous is that?

As noted above, it doesn't really matter. I am convinced that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will handily beat McCain in November. One of those two will be our next president. It didn't have to be this way, but those are the cards we've been dealt. Now we have to make the best of it.

More interesting McCain thoughts here and here.