Nazzo fast, Guido

John McCain and Mike Huckabee are the two main Republicans left in the race for their party’s White House nomination. And either of them appears to be conservative enough for President Bush.

That doesn’t do it for you, huh? How about…

Although he did not explicitly mention Senator John McCain, President Bush on Friday sought to unify the Republican Party behind its eventual nominee, describing the election of his successor as president as a stark ideological choice.

That’s not it either, you say? OK, let’s try…

President Bush, in a rousing speech to fellow conservatives, exhorted his ideological cohorts to “fight for victory and keep the White House in 2008.”

The two-term U.S. leader, who addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, leaves office next year and said it is important that the next president continues to reflect the conservative political principles he represents.

Still not quite there, is it? Our “compassionate conservative” president, who on the whole has turned out to be nearly as bad as the Democrats he ran against (A+ in killing terrorists, D in everything else), is trying to rally the troops to keep the White House in Republican control, and it’s going to fall flat. Conservatives know that neither McCain nor Huckabee truly share their beliefs, no matter how good a speech they give. (I really love the part about how McCain’s speech was “surprisingly well-received” and how it got “polite applause”. You know, where I come from, polite applause usually means we’re just minding our manners, rather than issuing forth with a rousing chorus of “Bullshit!”)

For years, I’ve held my nose and voted for Republicans, even when I knew that they were really RINOs, and I did it because voting for Democrats was unthinkable, and I just couldn’t bring myself to stay home. This time, I just don’t know if I can whore myself out like that again. I sincerely thought Fred Thompson had the conservative chops, but his campaign, for whatever reasons, fell flat. Ron Paul would make a decent second choice, but his campaign, while really pretty impressive when you consider it, isn’t getting any real traction.

Maybe there will be a good movie showing on November 2.