John McCain was one of the few Republicans I admired. For my entire adult life I have felt that "patriotic Republican" was an oxymoron and watched in despair as I was proven right over, and over, and over, and over, until I have become really tired of being right about that. I hope the rest of the country has too. McCain's real problem is how he is changing his stance so fundamentally on issues he had right. His support of Bush's torture policy is baffling to me. After what he is supposed to have gone through, how can he look at himself in a mirror or on TV? The way he has reviled, embraced, then pushed to arm's length the disgraceful hate mongers of our national religion is just embarrassing. And for someone who makes such a show of hating lobbyists, he is lousy with them. If he keep making course corrections he's gong to run over himself again. Changing your mind because you discover new facts, or come to some new understanding of a complex situation is a rare and admirable quality. Changing your mind to appeal to people you don't agree with to win public office is commonplace and has too much in common with the world's oldest profession. The only way Senator McCain can go farther in this direction is to start cross-dressing to appeal to Hillary's amazons.

You speak for many.

If only there were a way to harness the McCain flip-flops, we could solve our energy problem...

Why did John McCain reverse himself on torturing prisoners?

The answer is obvious: The White House, the Religious Right and the NeoConservatives demanded it. It is one of the conditions for getting the Republican nomination for President.

As one of Hillary's amazons, I can tell ya, we aren't into cross-dressers.

What are you wearing right now, sweetheart?

It all kind of makes me feel sorry for the old John McCain.

He's become the dying old man from the Dying Old Party and its a sad ending to what was a mostly OK career.

I suppose that at least the can take solice in the fact that everyone else won't have them to kick around any more after the general election.

They think-tanked themselves right into a corner, where they could no longer make any decisions but could only stick to their own marketing dogma.

I love all the hubbub about defining exactly what preconditions must be met before starting any unilateral MidEast talks....

But there are a whole slew of preconditions that the GOP has created for a once proud and anti-partisan senator for his presidential bid. McCain might get votes from his past history of bucking as the GOP rides him, but only a fool doesn't see who truly holds the reins.