While I strongly believe that Republicans failed to realize that actually GOVERNING was less pure than being the opposition, and thus assisted in the MSM / Democrat dismantling of the Bush administration post Katrina, I'm starting to think the the logic Mr Beck comes close to here is actually right.
I think the odds of McCain being elected are slim in the extreme in any case, but if he WERE elected, wouldn't that really just give the forces of the left a scapegoat to point to while they did most of what they wanted anyway with both houses of congress strongly in their corner? Billy C fought a lot of the policies of the Republican congress when they were elected, but after those policies started to work, he took the "high road" and claimed credit for every success that he could. Triangulation from the left worked great for Billy and the Dems, not so good for Republicans. The Republican congress took all the heat for the controls on spending and Slick took all the credit for the balanced budget that resulted -- really good if you are a Democrat.
McCain is sort of a much less conservative Bush, and Bush was a more moderate conservative than Slick Willie was a moderate liberal. The last "conservative" we had was Reagan, and he was pretty darned moderate on everything but the USSR as well. So, we STILL haven't even REALLY tried conservative policies, even given all the howling of the media and the Democrats. Right now it is obvious that there isn't ANY potential for us to try conservative policies, SO, do we want to have the band-aid peeled fast or slow?
I remain worried that the big issue here is that BO may not be recoverable at all--we may slip into a fascist "nanny police state" where you MUST do what the state says is good for you, which includes no freedom of conservative media, no armed populace, no real individual control of finance, loss of more at least Christian religious freedom, etc. ... essentially, we all become "wards of the state" -- or incarcerated/dead. BUT, even if McCain somehow miraculously got elected, that would likely mean that the fascist risk just got held off another 4 years and got worse while being held off.
Being conservative means being reality based. It strongly appears that the best we can do given the current mood of the country is to give the left their heads, suffer the likely economic disaster, and hope and pray that the backbone of the American people still has enough mettle left so we will be able to ward off a descent into fascism.
While the Carter years were a nasty time that took until '83 to recover from, we DID recover! Without Carter, we would likely never have had Reagan and the world could be a lot sadder. Conservatism means optimism, BO may be bad enough to usher in a whole new golden age in as little as 4 years, but more likely, more like a decade.