A year ago I might have agreed with you, McCain's record of willingness to stand up to his own party when he felt they were wrong, without sacrificing the more noble traditional conservative principles, always appealed to me, even more so than his military record which I am in awe of. He was a Republican I could have lived with.

But this election campaign has seen him building bridges to the Neocons, getting in bed with the religious right, and otherwise disgracing himself by trying to appeal to the "base" he once had the courage to stare down. The "base "represents to me everything that is reprehensible and foul in the American character, and as long as he courts them, he has lost my respect.