THERE IS A LEFT-WING conspiracy at loose in the world, dedicated to undoing conservative governance, only the people who see it aren’t sure what it is. John McCain is in it, of course, in fact he is the cause of it, as making him president is the ultimate goal. He is blamed for running, (and perhaps, for breathing), but beyond him the face of the threat is less clear. In fact, the faces are those of other conservative stalwarts, who were their heroes and brethren until–until, say, just after the Florida primary, when McCain emerged as a serious threat. These include Mike Huckabee, the once well-thought of former Arkansas governor (and hero of the social conservative part of the movement), who unaccountably refuses to withdraw from the race on their orders; Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, perhaps the most conservative members of the United States Senate; Jack Kemp, the supply-side Reagan enthusiast; Phil Gramm, the most conservative Republican to run in the 1996 contest; and Ted Olson, the hero of the Federalist Society, who argued and won the case of Bush vs. Gore. (They may also include the late President Reagan’s widow, who, according to the Drudge Report, hearts John McCain.)

Mysteriously, these past heroes of the Heritage Foundation, CPAC gatherings, movement conservatives, and, of course, talk radio, have become the prime targets of–movement conservatives and talk radio, who in their boundless and unbridled fury seem now to have sensed in them aspects of deception and wussiness they never detected before. They are discovered in retrospect to have committed grave sins of co-and-omission that were not before evident. They are on the payroll of Moveon.org, if not of George Soros. They will never be trusted again.