McCain was a little too smug for my tastes during his CPAC speech. He had a borderline Bush smirk at some points.

The one thing I would like to point out is that I am glad people ON BOTH SIDES are totally disregarding endorsements and attacks by what used to be political powerhouses. The Kennedy's got the big raspberry from the good citizens of MA and Repubs gave conservative talk radio the big Team One Salute.

I think this is a good trend. I credit the Internet for a lot of this as people aren't chained to the TV/radio spigot for their sole source of information.

Of course he was smug, he knows that for all their bullshit the "conservative wing" is going to vote for him. The truth is the alternatives are just too far to the left and people that vote don't just stay home. Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line.

The only problem he'll encounter is if he believes the fallacy that he has to shore up republican support. McCain is the nominee now (no way for Huck to win) and needs to start playing the game for the general election. They Repubs can easily take advantage of this lead time to tear up either candidate on the left. Tally targets, in hot!

SOME conservatives will vote for him. Movement conservatives won't. He's just too much of an apostate on too many of the big issues that they really care about, and a lot of them believe that he came down too hard on Abramoff and his cronies. McCain, like any ambitious politician, will say what he has to say in order to advance himself. Look at how he sucked up to Bush, Falwell and Robertson, for example.

A lot of the hard core righties are going to sit this out in the hope of finding another willing tool like Bush to ride back into power in '08. The real question is whether McCain can make up for this by picking up moderates and moderate conservatives.