Ssssssssh! Not so loud!

Now that McCain is the GOP frontrunner, the "We Heart Romney" crowd is despondent. They're searching for any glimmer of hope they can find in the possibility that perhaps an ill-tempered liberal RINO McCain will reassure them of his conservatism. (Like he hasn't tried to do so since 2004?)

To quote, Sadly, No!

You guys don’t seem to get it.

The way things work in American politics is that you appeal to your base during the primaries and then tack toward the center once you’ve secured the nomination. McCain is mostly winning the primaries because a lot of people buy into the media-fueled notion that he’s a “maverick” conservative who’s fundamentally different from the Bushies. Now while in reality this isn’t true — McCain has the same disastrous foreign policy ideas as Bush does and he’s just as liable to appoint wingnutty judges to the Supreme Court, for instance — he and his pals in the press have done a damn good job of selling it to independents and Republicans who want to pretend the Bush years never happened, but simply can’t stomach the thought of voting for a Democrat.

In other words, he’s succeeded largely because he’s convinced a sizable number of people in this country that he has nothing to do with all-out lunatics like you guys. If he’s come this far without your help, then there is no upside to him coming out and giving the finger to subprime borrowers who have just lost their homes, as you’d prefer him to do. Sorry, guys, but your ideology has become political poison in this country, even in the damn Republican primaries. If you want people to vote for you in the future, maybe you should stop wearing your sociopathy so overtly on your sleeves.

Really, I hope nobody from Team McCain reads this. It would be preferable to see McCain cozy up to the Santorum/Limbaugh/Dobson/Coulter crowd, making jokes about "B. Hussein Obama" and "Hilldebeast" at the GOP convention. As a matter of fact, I do hope McCain's idea of "GOP unity" includes making nice with all those wingnuts on talk radio who hate his guts. The better to disprove his "maverick" reputation once and for all.