My first choice for president was Rudy Giuliani. I know, I know, he’s a liberal on social issues. But because my first priority was – and is – national security, I was confident that no one was better equipped to do to our terrorist enemies what Giuliani did to the mob in New York City, i.e., annihilate them!

Besides, living only 18 minutes from the Big Apple when "America’s Mayor" was in charge, I knew Rudy to be a man who keeps his word, and so believed him when he said he would close our borders, appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, send Roe v Wade back to the states where it has always belonged, and make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

It was not Rudy’s national campaign strategy that failed, as so many mindless pundits and talking heads have speculated. Rather, it was the liberal media’s purposeful and relentless marginalizing of this genuine leader because it was Rudy they feared most and considered the one Republican who could wipe out either Hillary or Obama next November.

That is why the same media have been so benevolent to – indeed, celebratory of – the putative Republican frontrunner, Sen. John McCain. It’s because they know a liberal when they see one! Notice they never describe McCain as a Republican. They call him a "maverick" – nonconformist, rebel – precisely because he doesn’t conform to and routinely rebels against conservative principles!

McCain has always been a darling of the liberals, having for decades both embraced and cosponsored – with the farthest-left members of Congress – a frightening number of leftist policies. To name but a few:

FOREIGN POLICY

On foreign-policy matters, McCain seems better, having backed President Bush’s successful surge policy in Iraq. But as David Limbaugh points out, "even that is not entirely true on closer inspection." After all, this is the same guy who wants to close Guantanamo and insists that waterboarding is "torture," in spite of the fact that it doesn’t kill, injure, or scar, it’s over in a minute, and it has proven invaluable in exacting crucial information from our sworn enemies.

As writer Deroy Murdock has noted, McCain is "dangerously soft on captured terrorists."

And "what about his national security record?" asks syndicated radio host Mark Levin. "He does not have a record of being a vocal advocate for defense spending when Bill Clinton was slashing it. And he has been on the wrong side of the debate on homeland security. I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s positions are more in line with the ACLU than most conservatives."

In the last debate, McCain accused Governor Romney of endorsing "timetables" to withdraw our troops from Iraq. He compared Romney to Hillary in wanting to "wave the white flag."

But according to columnist Mona Charen, McCain’s nasty comment was "a willful misreading of Romney's timetable comment," and untrue to boot! She cites Ed Morrissey of The Captain's Quarters blog, who said that McCain himself "spoke of benchmarks in a newspaper interview" in which he said: "They'd have to be specific, and they (Iraqi government officials) would have to meet them." Asked what penalty would be imposed if Iraq failed to meet his benchmarks, McCain said, proving his high-standing in the flip-flopper school: "I think everybody knows the consequences. Haven't met the benchmarks? Obviously, then, we're not able to complete the mission. Then you have to examine your options.'"

Legal scholar Henry Mark Holzer calls the Arizona senator "a man of integrity without integrity." He cites a Newsweek article in which the failed presidential candidate Ross Perot, "a major voice on behalf of POWs and MIAs," says that McCain "is the classic opportunist – he’s always reaching for attention and glory. Other POWs won’t even sit at the same table with him."

"Perot" says Holzer, "was referring principally to McCain’s tag-team performance with [liberal] John Kerry on a Senate committee charged with getting to the bottom of the MIA question. (See the article "Archangel 1918 to Hanoi 1972").

Holzer goes on:

The man of integrity, during his two-plus decades in Congress, and his political heft there, did little or nothing on behalf of veterans, despite the fact that few in that body knew better than he the personal costs of their service and their needs.

The man of integrity…whitewashed antiwar poster-girl Hanoi Jane Fonda…thereby insulting many of his POW brothers and others who suffered from her conduct, further legitimizing her traitorous behavior on behalf of the Communists.

The man of integrity, with a reputation for being strong on national security, engineered a near-unanimous Senate vote to give "enemy combatants" (i.e., Islamic terrorists) all the protections the Geneva Convention reserves for prisoners of war, and to prohibit the obtaining of crucially important intelligence…."

The man of integrity, claiming concern with America’s dependency on foreign oil and the wealth transfer that it causes, joined the left no fewer than four times in defeating our ability to drill in Alaska.

Holzer is not the only one to question John McCain’s character and dubious claim to conservatism.

Columnist David Limbaugh says: "He is the anti-conservative. He instinctively sides against conservatives and relishes poking them in the eye. He enjoys cavorting and colluding with our political enemies and basks in the fawning attention they give him. Adding insult to injury, he now pretends to be the very thing he is not: an across-the-board Reagan conservative."

Other critics of McCain – like Charen, Levin, Ingraham, and some of the senator’s own colleagues – describe McCain as sneering, snarky, obnoxious, intemperate, stubborn, rigid, vindictive, and given to obscenity-laced outbursts at anyone who disagrees with him.

ROMNEY CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE OF CHOICE

Don’t tell me Romney flip-flopped on abortion – so did Ronald Reagan! Romney says that he believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, that "abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother."

To this date, Mitt has the most experience in dealing with American economic policy, vis-à-vis his track record in:

· Running a multibillion-dollar business and managing the Massachusetts government – as a Republican amongst liberals – with huge success. John McCain has done neither.

· Promising to bring about the same success with closing our borders that he brought to making the failing Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 a thundering success. McCain has no coherent or experiential economic policy, and even admits as much.

The former Massachusetts governor has financed a large part of his presidential campaign from his personal wealth, which McCain never fails to make snide comments about, all the while studiously failing to mention that his own immense wealth is largely a function of his wife’s multimillion-dollar inheritance.

As for the urgent issue of international terrorism, Mitt is as hard-nosed as McCain, but with more savvy – and conservatism – than his rival. He has proven, for decades, that he has the ability to attract "the best and brightest" advisors, and that is what he will do in dealing with the drastic threats that face our nation.

In addition, Mitt has not been contaminated by the cesspool of Washington politics! He owes nobody nothing – which cannot be said of McCain, who has schmoozed and finagled and cut deals in D.C. for the past 25 years.

To this date, Romney has gained both endorsements and recognition by such conservative luminaries as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rick Santorum, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and The National Review, in addition to garnering support from former Rudy and Thompson backers, nearly two-dozen Georgia legislators; Congressman Bilbray (R-CA), Chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus; U.S. Congressmen Howard "Buck" McKeon, John Campbell, Wally Herger, Dana Rohrabacher, the list goes on.

VOTE on February 5^th! Rasmussen’s national tracking poll has McCain at 30 and Romney at 28 – this is within the margin of error and takes into account Rudy’s endorsement of McCain…yet is still dead even.

According to broadcast journalist Hugh Hewitt, the McCain brand was damaged after the Florida primary.

"He traded `straight talk’ for ambition and lying about Gov. Romney, as well as sending out 10-million dishonest robo-calls attacking Romney. This has irreparably damaged McCain’s reputation with his base [and] the media… as much as the press love him as the `liberal’s favorite Republican’ because of his votes with leftists Kennedy and Feingold and Lieberman, there is no doubt that if McCain is our nominee up against a real Democrat, the press will abandon him."

Right now, the job of conservatives is to stop what appears to be the McCain juggernaut in the same way we stopped his misguided Immigration so-called Reform bill.

In that case, we e-mailed, faxed, and phoned our elected representatives. In this case, we must drive, walk, fly, slosh, trudge, crawl, and everything else to vote for Mitt Romney.