+1.

I’m glad you brought this up. I think this started when “flip-flopping” became a mortal political sin.

It’s part of a larger trend: it’s no longer appropriate to take stock of one’s situation and change direction, because it throws any decision you have or ever will make into question. You show yourself as fallible, and are shortly made mincemeat of by absolutists.

It’s also what’s gotten a lot of corporations–GM comes to mind, but there are many others–into trouble. They cannot, ever, admit that they might be wrong because of the liability issues that might arise, so instead they pile on the excuses, lies and harebrained strategies ever higher to stave off the eventual failure because the feel they have no choice. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to fixing it, but the current political/legal climate almost totally prevents a leader from making that kind of admission, thus forever chaining them to their current state, lest they be seen as weak, liable or a “flip-flopper”.

Meanwhile, you have people like Kat Watanabe admitting that, yes, Toyota has screwed up with regards to growth-versus-quality, and that they have plans in place to address it.

However, while I agree that many fiscal conservatives have left the Republican Party, the most on the list of people you mentioned are not endorsing Obama based on any specific policy position.

Most of them have cited issues such as McCain choice of Palin, the campaign’s focus on Ayers, what they regard as Obama’s first class intelligence and temperment, etc etc; essentially what are character traits.

I think if you had a different (better) candidate but with the exact same policy stances as McCain, nearly all of the people you mentioned would be voting Republican come November.

I think that nowadays to most Republicans, “conservative” means Pro-Iraq war, pro-life, and that’s about it. They have no problem with expanding government programs, increasing welfare, nationalizing banks, bailing out corporations, increasing citizen surveillance, and so on.

Fiscal conservatives (who are frequently socially libertarian) are leaving the Republican party in significant numbers. Where they will go is hard to say, because the tax-and-spend Democrats are not much different than borrow-and-spend Republicans.

Think about how many prominent conservatives and Republicans have either slammed McCain, said they were leaving the party, and in a few cases even endorsed Obama:
-Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley
-George Will
-Ken Adelman (he worked on Project for a New American Century with Paul Wolfowitz, considered the defining modern Republican ideology)
-Colin Powell, Former Secretary of Defense and State
-Kathleen Parker of the National Review
-Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, sort of
-Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s National Security Adviser
-Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense
-Larry Hunter, a former Jack Kemp writer
-A ton of conservative academics, like Daniel Drezner (who was an adviser to Bush in the 2000 election).

Where’s Perot when you need him?

Straight talk, eh? “I don’t say things just to get votes”, eh?

Are “principles” simply following your own ideology blindly without any regard to new evidence or circumstance?

This is a website that once praised John McCain for telling Michigan voters that he “doesn’t believe government should bailout any industries. Period.” Why do we admire the quality of thinking in absolutist terms? Is that the elusive idea of having “principles?”