redblueamerica.com

Amidst the hullabaloo surrounding Barack Obama, don't forget John McCain continues to run for president. Or so I've heard. Apparently, he still hasn't sealed the deal with social conservatives. Guess what? He probably never will.

Rick Santorum laments in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I attended the Council for National Policy meeting last week in New Orleans and listened to John McCain address the who's who of Hillary Rodham Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. It was another chance for McCain to, in his words, "not just unite, but reignite the base."

How did the crowd think he did? Let's just say it's hard to ignite anything with cold water and no fire.

He talked about two legs of the Republican stool -- spending/taxes and national security. But the third leg -- social issues -- went unmentioned. When questioned, he failed to connect with the people who care as much about why you vote the way you do as about how you vote.

The vast majority of the people at the meeting and in the conservative movement will vote for McCain. I will. But will the people who make up the backbone of the get-out-the vote effort go to work for him?

No, they won't. But they should. In doing so, they should make a deal with McCain. It should be something like this: We don't like you and you don't like us. Fine. But we need to work together. So here's our offer: Give us our judges and we'll give you immigration reform. Not amnesty. We'll agree to bought amnesty -- don't insult our intelligence and tell us it's something else. We'll agree to back taxes and whatever other penalties you want to impose to make it palatable. But there need to be very clear rules. Citizenship shouldn't come easily.

Hey, it's just a thought. What would be the advantage of such a deal? Obviously, judges serve life tenures. Congressmen don't. Neither do presidents. Immigration laws come and go. Plus, the politics of immigration has changed. McCain is wrong in all kinds of ways, but it might be worthwhile for conservatives to consider realistically what they can live with. Maintaining pure principle is easy with a veto-proof majority and a lock on executive power, but totally useless in the minority. And, truth is, a Clinton or Obama alternative won't be so amenable to such a compromise.

Oh, by the way, I see that McCain himself might have a Jeremiah Wright problem. The difference? Nobody thinks for a moment that McCain believes so much nonsense. McCain is too old and too experienced to play charades. Let it go. Straight talk, senator. Straight talk.