I’m not so sure it was a huge risk, Hemingway. I listen to talk radio pretty regularly. It wasn’t just Rush and Mark and Sean and Laura criticizing him — for months, over a year in fact, I’ve rarely heard callers for McCain. (When they started, in the last month, it’s been more in reaction to arguments that he is/was/had become the most electable.) He needed to get himself in front of some conservative audience, so CPAC was a natural. (A FedSoc convention or something similar would have been another opportunity.) Senator McCain needed to get some credit from the conservative base for trying to win their favor. I’ve told this story before, but the morning after his Florida win, John McCain called conservative criticisms of him on immigration “nonsense.” He changed his tune by CPAC and he did that because he needed to — he can’t win by Independents alone.

I think he had to speak to CPAC and he did. He began a conversation he has to have. Are conservatives ever going to be excited about McCain? I think they could be excited about beating Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.