Black Box Report

"Look, I don't like you, and you don't like me, but we're all we have together in this crazy world..."

John McCain walked into enemy territory, took some incoming fire, and walked out in one piece. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, McCain did get some boos - no amount of padding the room was going to dilute the crowd's contempt for "shamnesty" - but for many attendees initially hostile to him, self-preservation was a stronger motivator:

If conservatives hear that carefully, that is an invitation to the table. They should accept that invitation and start seeking to fill the seats...
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As I believe Georges Clemenceau once said, in order to get a seat at the feast, one has to help set the table. This is the choice facing conservatives. Either we help set the table and join in public policy and use our influence to help shape a Republican administration, or we abandon McCain and get four or eight years of statist policy that could take a generation to undo. Even worse, the conservatives might watch McCain get elected without their assistance -- and watch themselves get marginalized as a movement for a very, very long time.

And so many conservatives will hold their nose and cast their lots with the only guy left with a reasonable shot at the White House. Which is exactly what they were going to do eventually anyway:

I am sure you are all shocked to know that the wingnuts whinged and moaned and wailed, and in the end sucked it up and embraced their irrelevance. Months of calling him Juan McCain and worse were swept aside, “shamnesty” is but a memory, and all it took was one chorus of the “democrats are worse” and our brave patriots came to their senses. And now, magically, the right-wing blabosphere and John McCain are united and go together like Cheetos and Mountain Dew. Before long, our independent bloggers and right-wing bloviators will be back to doing what they do best- regurgitating the party line.

And to practice that, McCain's former critics have already started to redefine "losing" to mean "winning" (it worked in Iraq, after all):

This McCain speech would not have been given today, if it weren't for folks like Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Andy McCarthy, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Can I thank them on behalf of America?

No. You all pitched a fit and said McCain could not possibly be the Republican nominee. Now that he is, you want to take credit for McCain having to do the obvious and attempting to unite his party? No. No, you can't.

But yet, not all is quiet on the rightwing front. While many conservatives are willing to bite the bullet, others, like Michelle Malkin, will be holding their breath and stamping their feet a little longer:

I respect his decision to stand in the lion’s den, and I agreed with much of the speech. I found myself nodding as he touted his opposition to ethanol subsidies, national catastrophic insurance, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. But I don’t for a minute buy his claim that he “respects the opposition” of his staunchest opponents, especially the anti-amnesty crowd. These are folks he has cursed and likened to Bull Connor-style bigots. He has done nothing to rid his campaign staff and finance board of the most extreme open-borders zealots.

I said he needed to do more than mouth the Right platitudes.

Still waiting.

In other words, the beatings will continue until morale imoroves.