The presidential hopes of John McCain died in 2000. The intervening years, and the latest troubles in his campaign, have simply been a vigil to wait for the breathing to slow and the heart to stop.

I wrote at the time:

McCain has also gone further in attacking Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and in doing so may have cost himself any chance at the Republican nomination. Enemies of the religious right continue to make the mistake that the religious right is a homogeneous group, and that Robertson and Falwell speak for them all. The truth is there are a great many people in this country who consider themselves conservative and Christian, and who have no connections whatsoever to Robertson and Falwell. These people, though, hear such attacks as aimed at them personally. McCain’s strategy of angering a significant portion of the Republican base is a misguided way to pursue the Republican nomination, and indeed, he has now dropped out of the race.

The national media and the secular world tend to view the religious right as something resembling a grape, a squishy body centered around a nut in the middle, and the only good that comes from it is when it dies and rots. The religious right knows Al Gore will continue these attacks in the general election. Gore is shameless when it comes to demagoguery, and conservative Christians expect such behavior from Democrats. It is doubly distressing then when it comes from Republican quarters.

Fred Thompson’s poll numbers are so good, even though he’s hardly done any campaigning, because the base is eager to support someone who will champion conservative principles.

McCain ran as if his base were the media. The Nazarene said:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

McCain allowed conservatives to develop firm opinions on which camp McCain despised, and yesterday’s wreckage was the inevitable result.