Ground Game

As John McCain inches closer to the Republican nomination, a growing number of conservative bloggers are making measured defenses of the candidate almost none of them have previously supported. The overwhelming blog response to McCain is still negative, but a few, influential voices are rising to the surface.

NRO's Jonah Goldberg:

McCain wouldn't be my first pick. Then again, none of the candidates were really my first pick. But I think the notion that, variously, conservatism, the country or the party are doomed if he's the nominee or the president is pretty absurd. And I find such claims odd coming from some people who've insisted for a couple years now that the war on terror is the #1 overriding issue of this campaign."

And Right Wing News' John Hawkins:

For all of his flaws, and there are many of them, John McCain is far to the right of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Those of us on the Right tend to downplay that, because a betrayal by someone on our own side stings much more sharply than one from a Democrat, but it is something conservatives should be willing to admit. It's also worth noting that these claims that McCain will destroy the conservative movement are unlikely to be true or alternately, if they are, then the conservative movement is probably too fragile to last any way.

Perhaps most significantly, Hugh Hewitt, a vocal Romney supporter, announced he will support McCain if the Arizona senator wins the nomination:

If Ann Coulter declares again that she'd campaign for Hillary at CPAC, she will be booed and rightly so. Not only did her grandstanding on Hannity & Colmes divert attention from the real issue before conservatives -- the need to abandon the idea of voting for Huckabee or Paul and rally to Romney -- she further fractures an already deeply divided GOP. I have no doubt that most of the anti-McCain voices and voters will throw in with him if he is the nominee, but he doesn't have to be the nominee...I'll sign up for McCain if he is the nominee, but it will be with the same sort of sense of gloom that pervaded the Dole campaign in 1996."