There is lots of talk about how Hillary unites the Republican base like no other name. I think that's only because they haven't have had much reason so far to think about a "President Obama."

I suspect that there will be plenty for the Republican base to be fired up about in any event.

There are many reasons for the Republican insiders to mistrust McCain and remember him with anger. But as Mr. Nitzel notes, this is phenomenon that is largely limited to the demographic that gets home delivery of the National Review. (Sadly, a tiny cohort.) Hardly the kind of group to swing a national election.

And it may just be that McCain is a more palatable candidate to the widest segment of the American middle if he did not enjoy the support of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

Anyway, I have resigned myself to thinking that McCain is the lesser of evils. I think lots of other Republicans will eventually agree by Novemeber.

McCain and Obama have been on opposite sides in what I am guessing are about 80% of all important Senate votes. Which candidate's voting record do you prefer?

What kinds of federal judicial appointments do you want to see? Do you think that McCain, and Obama, can be expected to make very different kinds of judicial appointments? If not, whom do you prefer?

You say you are a Republican who is supporting Obama. Hmmm. Who, may I ask, are the Republicans who enjoy, or have enjoyed, your active support?

What sorts of policy issues are there, that have you narrowed down to Obama and McCain? It seems like such an odd pairing. I expect that the policy differences between Obama and the Clintons aren't much. And that the closest policy comparison to McCain is Gov. Romney.

A big part of why you don't hear much about "the Keating Five" is because it was mostly a Democratic scandal. Charles Keating went straight to the top of the Senate heierarchy. Sneate Banking Committee Chairman Don Riegle (D-MI) and Senate Majority Leader Alan Cranston (D-CA). Of the "Five", Democrat John Glenn (D-OH) and Democrat Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) were also prominently included.

John McCain fought the charges against him most vigorously of all. The eveidence showed him to be pretty clearly the least involved and least culpable Senators. What Keating tried to do with McCain was sadly typical of what passed for acceptable behavior in the Senates. McCain thereafter made campaign finance reform his signature issue. McCain was involved simply becuase Keating himself was an Arizonan, and DeConcini and McCain were "his" Senators. McCain was the only one of the five who was reelected.

If some of the same banter, word-for-word, had been uttered on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, it wouldn't have been a blip on the Salon radar.

We conservatives happen to like strong women. The strongest? Margaret Thatcher. It's just that with conservative women, they don't go around trying to make statements about how they are the first this-or-that, or how they are making strides for womanhood. They just do their jobs.

Sorry to disappoint all of you identity-politics feminists.

You know what we need? An black female Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. I've got a strong-woman nominee. U.S. Circuit Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Okay with all of you?

...until I realized the real source of the irritation. It is that he has been hired by the New York Times.

The left's sense of discomfort with the Kristol appointment just makes me all the more determined that NPR be forced into more balance with its news division and with its program hosts.

Anything that gets the left this angry must be good.

If she wanted a ten-percent boost, she'd be diagnosed with a serious illness.

If she wanted a twenty-percent jump, it would be for the death of her husband, in the style of Mel and Jean Carnahan.

And Bill Kristol actually got criticized for saying the white-woman voting cohort was a problem?

My thoughts aren't caught up in psychosexual trauma as yours apparently are!

I just thought Mrs. Thatcher was a remarkable and history-making conservative, and all she did was to work on making Britain stronger economically, more free and more modern. With scarcely a speech or even a comment about making her mark for all of womanhood.

Utterly refreshing, in comparison to Democrat politics in the U.S.

George Stephanopoulos on ABC? Or Joe Klein on ABC? Or David Gergen at CNN? Or Lanny Davis or Leon Panetta on any one of a handful of networks?

Panetta has been on Fox more than Rove has, by the way. Maybe that will now change. But Rove will need a lot of air-time to catch up.

Oh My!

It's so fun to see the Republicans wrestling with the "John Kerry" problem.... It's the least bad candidate who's in the lead. Which means when it comes to race time, people with passion -- passion for Ron Paul, passion for Mike Huckabee, passion for Rudy Guiliani -- won't be inclined to re-engage. If he wins, he'll be my president and I'll hope he does a good job. But it's nice to have the shoe on the other foot for a change.

-- amspeck

Interesting, and perhaps true. Unlike the hatred that the Democrats have for the Bush-Cheney White House (and have been simmering to perfection for seven years), the Republicans don't yet have a figurehead to oppose. Most Republicans, unlike most Democrats, regard America's real enemies as residing in places like the Hindu Kush, Pyongyang and Damascus.

But the notion of a "President Obama" or another term of Bill Clinton rambling around in the White House, is guranteed to stir the base. Give it a little time.

It is already beginning:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120209536777639949.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries