Actions Have ConsequencesI don't know what else to say in response to this
post from John Hawkins of Right Wing News, on his not being accepted as a blogger at the RNC this week. John knows why it happened:
My best guess as to why I'm not being allowed to go to the RNC is a post I wrote back in March called, "Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President." The piece savagely denounced McCain for his breathtakingly dishonest flip-flop over illegal immigration, was widely linked, and a source of mine inside the campaign told me they were very aware of it.
Yeah, I'd guess that's the reason. John often notes that he's a conservative first and a Republican second; well, this is not a conservative convention it's a Republican convention.
Complicating matters is the undeniable fact that Right Wing News is one of the most important blogs around. Some liberal blogs have apparently been allowed to attend; what's the difference?
The difference is that what Hawkins says matters to conservatives. He can and probably has influenced a lot of people with his "Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain for President" post. That's why he wrote it, no?
I like Hawkins' blog a lot (although for some unknown reason I didn't enjoy it as much in the primary season). John has been very supportive of Brainster, Kerry Haters and Screw Loose Change over the years, and I would be a back-stabber indeed if I did not note that he has given his support freely to my efforts and those of many other smaller blogs.
But at some point you have to accept the fact that your favored candidate didn't win in the primaries. I know that's easy for me to say, since mine did. If you say that nothing McCain can do will change your mind, then why in the world should they reward you for that opinion with coveted access to the convention? What's Ann Coulter doing these days?
People who make these "I can never support that man" pledges seem to feel that there is some viable third option on the ballot other than Democrat or Republican. I remember those folks in 1992, assuring us that if we just sat on our hands and let Clinton win in 1992, he'd be so awful for the economy that everybody'd be happy to elect a real conservative in 1996. And then of course Clinton did not flop as predicted and we came a couple hundred votes in Florida from losing four straight elections and any shot at control of the Supreme Court.
There is no "lose today, so we can win tomorrow". If Obama is elected, he will almost certainly serve eight years as president of the United States. He'll do the brilliant triangulation that Clinton pioneered and the media will swoon over his every move. With a compliant congress there is literally almost no limit to what he can accomplish in the next two years.
