Last night, after watching John McCain take Florida I sat down and reevaluated whether I could remain in the GOP and support McCain.  Until the SC vote I hadn't really taken him seriously as a candidate.  There were others in the race that I could be excited about supporting and I felt sure that true conservatives would rally around one of them.  I love the pure conservatism of Fred Thompson.  I appreciate the fiscal and national defense conservatism of Giuliani.  His tough stance on crime was a position that I could really get behind.  I greatly respect the intelligence and acumen of Mitt Romney.  After some study I have come to trust his conversion to social conservatism and believe that along with Gingrich, he can become one of our most trusted and eloquent defenders of conservatism.  Alas, Romney is the last full spectrum conservative in the race and it looks more and more like his demise is imminent.  I believe the our conservative cause will go down with him.

There are things about both Huckabee and McCain that I admire.  Huckabee is a true social conservative.  He is a champion of the pro-life cause and he clearly loves the Lord.  I don't like the idea of him enforcing his social policy through fiscal policy.  I am not comfortable with fiscal liberalism and Huckabee is a fiscal liberal.  Who knows where he stands on foreign policy issues.  He appears to be too ignorant of what is going on in the world to form a coherent policy.  Wise cracks about sleeping at a Holiday Inn Express aren't funny and actually frighten me beyond my capacity to explain.  Also, he seems to be very intolerant of those who believe differently than he does.  I don't believe that 1) the Lord would approve of his attitude toward Mormons specifically or 2) that attitude towards a sizable segment of the population is worthy of an American President.  It is possible to respect someone who has different beliefs and ally oneself with those people on issues where goals are common. 

I admire McCain's love of country.  I admire his service to our country.  I admire his unrelenting defense of our men and women in uniform and his support of their mission.  But as I sit back and think about the last eight years, the war is literally the only thing he has gotten right.  Some examples of the things that he has supported:

• McCain - Kennedy -- Amnesty, pure and simple
• McCain - Feingold -- A frontal assault on the First Amendment
• McCain - Lieberman -- Shows a hostility to American Industry, a complete lack of understanding of economics and incredible gullibility in the face of trumped up pseudo-science

McCain is also in favor of granting due process rights to enemy combatants, closing Guantanamo Bay and introducing those prisoners into our general prison population.  This would create an incredibly dangerous situation where criminals, already angry at "the system" that is our government would be exposed to the most virulent and extreme faction of Islam.  It would also have the effect of bogging down the justice system which is already overburdened with a shortage of judges due in large part to McCain's Gang of Fourteen.  He claims that he is the only candidate that can keep America safe yet he fails to realize that an enormous part of homeland security is a closed and secured northern and southern border.  Americans cannot take seriously, anyone who talks about security and leaves out the border situation. 

On a personal note, I must admit that I don't like that man.  I don't think that he is a special intellect.  I think that he is abusive, angry, volatile, petty and small-minded.  He is a man who reserves his attacks for fellow Republicans and calls any attack on Democrats unfortunate or misguided.  He clearly relishes poking his fingers in the eyes of conservatives. 

After  a largely sleepless night of thinking and playing Call of Duty 4 on XBOX Live (under the tag burleydude if you would like to join me), I realized that my principles are more important to me than having a Republican in the White House.  I came to the conclusion that I may not leave the GOP but I definitely will not vote for McCain.  My fear is that when McCain tries to power through his liberal agenda, House and Senate Republicans will feel obligated to support him where if it were Hillary Clinton trying to push the same agenda, they would would fight it to the last man.  We have a better chance of escaping the next four years unscathed with Clinton as President than with McCain as President. 

The good news is that there is still hope.  Conservatives still have the power to stop him if they quit splitting their vote.  It is imperative that we do so.  Mike Huckabee is not going to be President.  His role now is to get McCain in the White House and ruin Mitt Romney.  As conservatives we have to take this week before Super Tuesday and rally around the last full spectrum conservative in the race.  That man is Mitt Romney.