It’s been over three months since Senator John McCain has had the Republican Presidential nomination wrapped up and he’s done very little to reach out to the base of the Republican Party – the conservatives.
 
Conservatives’ worst fears about John McCain are being reconfirmed daily.  He is a moderate Republican with no conservative philosophy to guide him.
 
It’s clear that McCain and his top advisors (none of whom are active “movement conservatives”) have made a concerted decision to take conservative support for granted and reach out to so-called moderates.
 
McCain is campaigning as an Establishment Republican.
 
He did make an attempt to appeal to conservatives by restating his position that he will appoint judges who follow the law – the kind of judges that conservatives want.  But he does not explain how he would get such judges approved by a heavily Democratic Senate.  Or where he will find conservative judges who won’t overturn his legacy legislation, McCain-Feingold. 
 
McCain’s one speech on judges was a calculated effort to appeal to conservatives.  But for an indication of what McCain really thinks of conservatives, consider his hair-trigger attack on North Carolina Republicans for their ad critical of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
 
Or consider this: In an attempt to appeal to the Al Gore-type fringe, the McCain campaign has made this week “global warming week” to celebrate the Senator’s position on the issue.  The leftwing magazine The Nation reported this week: “Yikes, it's really true.  John McCain is running for president as a tree-hugging liberal.”
 
And he has named to key campaign and party positions people like Bobbie Kilberg, an arch-nemesis of GOP conservatives.  (She was reported as his choice to run the Republican convention, until a firestorm of protest forced the McCain campaign to back down.) 
 
Today, when conservatives look at the McCain campaign, they see mostly liberal, Big Government, Establishment Republicans – the very people conservatives have spent their political lives fighting.
 
Conservatives need to face reality.  If John McCain ever was a conservative, he has not been one for many years.  It’s been at least a decade and a half ago since he veered off the conservative path.  In 2000, he blamed us for his defeat and for the unfair treatment he received in that campaign, and it appears that he decided to teach us a lesson.
 
Based on reality – not false hopes – each of you needs to make a decision, as a conservative, on whether and how much to support Senator John McCain.  You have to decide whether to contribute to his campaign and whether to work your heart out to elect him.  You have to decide whether you will work for him wholeheartedly, or just vote for him grudgingly because, although he’s bad, he’s not as bad as the Democratic candidate
 
Wake up conservatives!  Wake up from the dream that McCain will campaign and govern as President as a conservative.