Mark Levin, writing today in the National Review Online, says Now is the time to sort things out:
As I understand Victor Davis Hanson’s position, those of us who believe John McCain will cause severe damage to the conservative movement and the Republican party should hush up, or at least calm down, for this electoral juggernaut, who has managed to get 33 percent of the vote in South Carolina (despite backing by most of the establishment there) and is strong on the war in Iraq. And if we continue to bring attention to those issues that concern us  which are not insignificant to anyone who has worked in conservative circles for nearly 40 years  then we will destroy the party and Hillary Clinton will win, thereby losing the war on terror. VDH is neither the first nor will he be the last to make this case.
With all due respect, this is absurd on many levels. If John McCain is nominated and loses, it is because he doesn’t appeal to enough Americans, including the base that he has repeatedly betrayed (as Thomas Sowell puts it) over a long period of time. The suggestion that McCain and McCain alone is capable of fighting this war, given his experience, seems to be the core of the concern. Let me suggest that VDH and others who make this claim are wrong.
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You ask, in essence, that we ignore McCain’s leadership in the amnesty debate and his course reversal of recent months as he seeks votes. What does this tell us about the man? The bill he co-authored with Ted Kennedy (and which was foolishly supported by the current president) would have caused enormous economic and cultural dislocations. (VDH doesn’t need lectures from me on the subject, since he’s written eloquently on it.) As the Heritage Foundation and many others pointed out at the time, the McCain-led effort would have resulted in tens of millions of new illegal aliens coming to the country with the likelihood of eventually receiving citizenship; the expedited bankruptcy of major entitlement programs, including Social Security; and the imposition of massive new costs on state and private enterprises, from schools and hospitals to law enforcement. McCain’s bill would have made it impossible for the already hapless federal government to properly conduct criminal background checks before issuing “probationary†Z-visas to 12-20 million illegal aliens already in the country. And every effort to amend his bill to prevent gang members, terrorists, and others from receiving these visas was opposed by McCain. He also voted for the Specter amendment, which provided that the government of Mexico, among others, would have to be consulted before building physical barriers along the southern border. Six months later, McCain says he was wrong. He gets it now. Secure the border first. I don’t believe him. And as others have pointed out here and elsewhere, he still supports amnesty despite claiming otherwise. The American people said “hell no!†It wasn’t that long ago that he suggested they were motivated by racial animus rather than good thinking. No, VDH, if McCain loses it’s because of his own failings… READ THE REST
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We face the problem of Republicans propelled by an MSM into thinking that McCain is an inevitability so much so that at a Convention I’m currently attending I have spent considerable time telling, whom you would think would be knowledgeable Republicans, that this is the last guy you want facing the Stalanista Hillary. Just as important, he may be just as bad, if not worse. He is a Trojan horse and will delivery more government programs, bureaucracy, laws and statutes that would take inordinate effort for even a Democrat to accomplish. As an insider he has made all the backroom political deals with Feingold, Kennedy, Lieberman, the gang of 14 and others that spells how easy it will be for him to continue what he has done for his past 3 terms. Even Hillary could not proceed in the direction that he will travel with the same easy facility. If I were a Democrat I would be jubilant over a McCain nomination; that means they won the election. They don’t even have to show up and vote. In fact he may be better for them than any Democratic candidate because he can, and will, accomplish what even their candidate could not do.
I read that article by VDH as I read all of his articles and I immediately took two aspirins. In this interpretation he is way off the mark. Time and this media prevents me from saying the rest of what I would like to and the way I would like t say it.