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(Denver, Colorado) In his keynote speech on May 23 to the Libertarian Party National Convention, Richard A. Viguerie, one of the founders of the modern conservative movement, declared today that John McCain is “trying to get conservative support on the cheap.” 
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Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.

Terrorism is a means, not an end . . .  If [President Bush and John McCain] can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.

If there's any "evidence of profound confusion," it's on Biden's part.  One preliminary question for Biden (and Obama, for that matter): Is the prospect of Al Qaeda obtaining a nuclear weapon not an existential threat?

More broadly, it seems that the president (and by extension, McCain and the GOP) are paying the price for having gone PC, labeling the struggle we're in as a "war on terror," rather than being upfront and calling it the "war on Islamofascism" or the "war on Islamonazism" or the like (yes, Senator Biden, it is an all-encompassing ideology like Communism or fascism).   Does Biden not understand who and what we're fighting, or is he being deliberately disingenuous?

Reading the entire  piece, one almost hopes that Biden is just disingenuous -- the only other possibility is that this Democratic "leading light" on foreign policy is frighteningly ignorant.  Take this passage, dealing with the Iran problem:

Instead of regime change, we should focus on conduct change. We should make it very clear to Iran what it risks in terms of isolation if it continues to pursue a dangerous nuclear program but also what it stands to gain if it does the right thing. That will require keeping our allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, on the same page as we ratchet up pressure.

What does he think we have been doing!?  To come full circle, let's go back to Krauthammer:

Iran, for example, has engaged in five years of talks with our closest European allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to say nothing of the hundreds of official U.S. statements outlining exactly what we would give them in return for suspending uranium enrichment.

Appeasement by any other name is still appeasement -- and ignoring or dismissing the Islamofascist threat, and seeking to placate or enemies seems to be the nub of a Democrat approach to national "defense."

The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn't take into account the toll on children. That's all part of the unfinished business of feminism.

Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: 'I'd like a child. If it happens, it happens.' I tell them: 'Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.' As I know only too well.

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They've missed the opportunity and they're bereft.

Based on what I've seen, it's all too true.

"But McCain wasn’t finished rejecting endorsements from ministers. He also repudiated Rev. Rod Parsley, and Ohio preacher who had made derogatory comments about Muslims, calling Islam “an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world.”

“I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he endorsed me, and I didn’t endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk,” McCain said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I reject his endorsement.”

  A small story from Britain carries a big message for the United States.

  On Tuesday, members of Parliament voted against an attempt to ban all abortions in the last six months of pregnancy. The surprising note in the AP account reported that “legislators voted in favor of keeping the current law, which allows abortions during the first 24 weeks of a woman’s pregnancy.”

   In other words, Britain decided to keep its present policy of not permitting last trimester abortions – maintaining a more restrictive standard than the United States.

   Considering the general assumption that American society embraces more conservative and more religious attitudes than the UK, why would our cousins across the pond follow a less strident pro-abortion approach than the government of this Republic?

   The answer, of course, is that the Brits decided the issue through Parliament, inevitably reaching a moderate, compromise policy. No one could describe a nation as “pro-life” that allows abortions for the first six months of pregnancy, but the recent parliamentary debate showed a more flexible, nuanced approach than the U.S.  The legislators debated a change in abortion policy, with no question as to whether they had the right to do so.

   In the United States, however, the courts have usurped all decision-making on this issue, and judicial activism makes compromise or moderation impossible. The Supreme Court invented (they say “discovered”) a Constitutional “right” to abortion that applies in most cases even during the last three months of pregnancy. With the courts in control, the people and their elected representatives remain powerless to alter the rules.

    When judges make law, the law takes shape in extreme and absolutist terms.

    That’s part of the problem with the California Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. If left to legislatures, there’s a natural  tendency to seek middle ground on this issue – enacting civil unions, but not gay marriage, in California, New Jersey, Vermont, Hawaii and other states.  When courts call the shots, this natural split-the-difference approach – with privileges similar to marriage, but without changing the institution of marriage itself –becomes impossible. In court decisions, one side generally wins while the other side loses, with little chance for taking the middle ground.  For judicial tyrants, every issue becomes a question of defining ultimate right or wrong, rather than a matter of finding the wisest policy.

    That’s why the United States ended up with the most radical abortion-on-demand rules in the western world – while our “enlightened” allies in Western Europe do more to restrict and discourage the termination of pregnancies.

   Judicial tyranny on abortion, marriage or any other crucial issue is profoundly dangerous not just because it’s undemocratic and unresponsive, but because it pushes policy toward absolute and polarizing extremes.

   In contrast to the sweeping pronouncements of judges, the half-way measures and concessions in legislative decisions may look inelegant, but they prove more workable and flexible in the long run.

"... In one interesting possible future, McCain reaches the conclusion that he's got the GOP nomination and conservatives have nowhere to go so he brings back the "agents of intolerance" talk, maybe picks a pro-choice running mate, and makes a serious high-risk high-reward effort to definitively separate himself from the mire into which the rest of the party is sinking."

... By the way, let me state once again for the record that I never "endorsed" or "supported" John McCain in the primary.  What I did do was (1.) Refuse to be a Romney sycophant, and (2.) CORRECTLY predict that John McCain would win New Hampshire -- and that he had a good shot at the nomination (even when others were predicting he would drop out of the race by Labor Day).  Accurate campaign analysis should not be confused with support.

I also tried to be fair to him, just as I am doing now.  Even in 2007, when McCain did things like skip CPAC, for example, I criticized him for it.  I also gave him credit when he did things I thought were smart or good.