The time to be counted approaches

From Newsweek:

"We need to listen," John McCain was saying, "to the views … of our democratic allies." Then, though the words weren't in the script, the Arizona senator repeated himself, as if in self-admonishment: "We need to listen." A lot of meaning was packed into that twice-said line, which was a key theme of McCain's first major foreign-policy speech since becoming the GOP's nominee-apparent. McCain was telling America, and the whole world: if I'm elected there will be, at long last, a return to what Jefferson called "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." There will be no more ill-justified lurches into war, no more unilateralism, no more George W. Bush.

Of course there will be no more George W. Bush. Bush, for all his faults, is a Republican and McCain, despite his registration, is not.

As McCain looks at the continued internecine fighting in the Democrat party and sees that around 20% of Democrat voters claim that they will jump ship and vote for him if their chosen Democrat does not get the nomination McCain will feel less and less need to even pretend to be a conservative in the Reagan mold.

The question I have is how much more the conservative Republicans who are currently willing to hold their noses and vote for McCain will take. What kind of pretzel shapes will they contort themselves into in order to accommodate someone who has more in common with the enemy than he ever will with them?

This election is dividing the conservatives who regard the Republican party as being useful only as long as it advances the conservative cause from the Republicans who are fine with conservatism - as long as it can win.

This is a choice every Republican is going to have to make because the human soul is not a divisible commodity. You cannot sell just a piece of it. It must be either retained or disposed of in whole. On election day this November we will find out how many who will not "bow the knee to Baal" (to take a page from the Old Testament).