Darth Chaltab said:
The sad thing is, I can't see John McCain doing much to reverse Bush's trend of heavy spending. That's the price of giving a party that once stood for fiscal conservativism over to the 'moderates' in the name of electability.

Good job, Republican electorate. You make me proud.

To be fair, one of McCain's strongest points (in recent years anyways) is the way he was apposed to wasteful spending. I am actually glad to vote for him because of that. (At the same time he was against tax cuts of course, but at least he now claims to believe he was wrong in doing that.)

To address your earlier point, I don't want that to be a reason to vote for a guy either, but nonetheless it is a reason of a sort (for me anyways). Plus, at least we can say we're voting for someone who we actually know this time. Bush claimed to be against wasteful spending, as did Republican legislators, and yet they both turned out to be nothing of the sort when they actually got in power. Perhaps McCain will surprise us and be more conservative than we know him (and if not, at least we know where to fight him from the start and won't get back stabbed like with Bush and other Republican leaders).