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McCain is going to get the nomination, like it or not and I don't. So voting for someone other than McCain in the Texas primary doesn't hurt us in November. I don't want Huckabee to drop out, because every vote he gets sends a message, great or small, to McCain that conservatives are not happy with him leading the ticket. Yes, it diverts attention from attacking the Democrats, but not by much at this point. The Democratic primary is so close, that it may be a while yet before there is a defined enemy for McCain. There is no point taking a shotgun approach against both Clinton and Obama; it's very ineffective.

Ron Paul appeals primarily to Libertarians and the most conservative of Republicans. I like his voice in the mix as well for the same reason I want to see Huckabee stay in for a while. Paul has said he will not run as an independent and I take him at his word. We don't need another Ross Perot putting Obama or Clinton in the White House.

If McCain wins the Presidency, I suspect it will be yet another close race, unless something changes dramatically between now and November, and that's certainly possible. Every President is running for re-election during their first term, so a narrow victory in which conservatives put him in the White House could have an impact on what he does on our issue(s). The most dangerous time is during a President's first two years of his second term, when they are no longer running for re-election and they are not yet a lame duck President.

As for the U.S. Constitution, it isn't a hard document to read or understand and I am in the strict constructionist camp. It means precisely what the words say. So the real question isn't want does the Constitution mean; the question is whether it will be perverted yet again. The greatest example of perverting the Constitution is the absurd extreme to which the Commerce Clause has been used to justify federal action that is not sanctioned by the Constitution. A close second is the federal government doing by coercion that which it does not have the authority to do, such as withholding federal highway funds to states that don't set 21 as the minimum drinking age.

All this said about the Constitution, the reality is that 5 of 9 Supreme Court Justices can do whatever they want to do, so who is President and which party holds a majority in the Senate are critical. Presidents last for only 4 or 8 years; any given Supreme Court Justice can impact our lives for decades! Please consider this and recent history when deciding whether or not to sit this one out. Protest votes for Perot gave us 8 years of Clinton, the assault weapons ban, the early Brady Law with waiting periods, numerous federal judges including the federal district judge that ruled in favor of the petrochemical industry in the Oklahoma employer parking lot lawsuit, just to name a few "side effects." To be fair, this in turn led to the Republican majority in the U.S. House and Senate, but those majorities are now history and we have to rebuild the party. We did it before and we can do it again, but we can't do it sitting at home, regardless how understandable our inaction may be.

Chas.