The Mind of McCain

Robert Kaiser has a rather smart profile of McCain in the WaPo, which mostly re-confirms my thoughts concerning his candidacy:

Philosophically, McCain has never been easily pigeonholed, perhaps because philosophy doesn't interest him. But in Republican Party politics, philosophy is an important identifier. This year McCain has courted the conservative Republican base, casting himself as a "small-government, low-tax" Reagan Republican. But he acknowledges, when asked, he is really a Theodore Roosevelt Republican, and TR was hardly a conservative. He favored aggressive government regulation of the economy and a stiff inheritance tax -- both part of the Square Deal he pushed as his domestic agenda. TR also radically expanded the national park system and brought hundreds of millions of acres under federal protection or ownership. He was the country's first progressive president.

Uh huh. For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand how self-professed freedom-loving, limited-government types continue to support McCain. He is not one of you; but, rather, far from it. For the good of philosophical dichotomy between the major parties, he really must lose. The only thing that a McCain victory guarantees is the burial of Goldwater-Republicanism. Mark it down.