Sen. Coburn endorses McCain

In what has to be a big coup for the McCain campaign, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has endorsed John McCain, and is in South Carolina to announce this and to campaign for McCain. Since Sen. Coburn is one of MH's favorite sitting U.S. Senators, this couldn't be ignored around here.

Coburn is a hero to those who are sick of pork-barrel spending in Washington. He is famous for single-handedly holding up stupid spending by using the arcane procedural rules of the U.S. Senate -- and thank goodness someone is doing it.

He is a very strong social conservative. Coburn was also one of the strongest Senators holding the line on illegal immigration during the past fiasco that did John McCain so much damage. In fact, once one starts thinking about it, one wonders why Coburn isn't out there running for President himself. Maybe next time.

It is true that governors tend to endorse governors and Senators tend to endorse Senators, but even so, Coburn's reputation for not being able to be bought off by promises of reciprocal spending in Oklahoma and his impeccable social conservative track record has got to be a boon for McCain, bringing some much needed conservative credibility to his campaign.

Now that the conservative establishment's gang-tackle has successfully and seemingly permanently defanged Huckabee, they are on to their next target and are out in force after McCain. It isn't that they don't have a point -- McCain has had a knack for sticking his finger in the collective eye of the conservative establishment.

The question is whether this indicates that McCain is not a "true conservative" in spite of his quite conservative voting record, or whether it just makes conservative pundits and think-tankers so apoplectic that they aren't willing to overlook the specks in McCain's eye -- even while they complacently ignore the beams in Mitt Romney's eye (or Rudy's eye, for that matter.) There is nothing rational about rallying around Mitt while demonizing McCain -- but then, who says that politics is rational?

In one of the best lines in the press release, Coburn has this to say:

I trust that as president, John McCain will veto any pork-barrel bill that crosses his desk, and will make the authors famous.

Heaven only knows that if we had had a President over the last 7 years who wielded the veto pen with that kind of attitude, the GOP might be sitting in a very different political position nationally right now.