This is the John McCain conservatives need to remember

Amidst the cap-and-trade frustrations and the campaign-finance fury, we cannot forget that the Senator from Arizona and would-be president is also the same man who can write this (St. Petersburg Times):

Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington. Congress will put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s a tribute to what these two institutions — which most Americans have never heard of — have bought with more than $170-million worth of lobbyists in the past decade.

. . .

Fannie and Freddie buy home loans from lending institutions and reissue them as marketable securities — creating a liquid market for mortgage debt that lowers borrowing costs for prospective homeowners. The two institutions have easy access to borrow at low interest rates because they were originally government agencies and continue to be viewed as being backed by the government. The irony is that by bailing them out, Congress is about to make that perception a reality, even though government backing is no longer needed for their original mission. There are lots of banks, savings and loans, and other financial institutions that can do this job.

Fannie and Freddie are the poster children for a lack of transparency and accountability. Fannie Mae employees deliberately manipulated financial reports to trigger bonuses for senior executives. Freddie Mac manipulated its earnings by $5-billion. They’ve misled us about their accounting, and now they are endangering financial markets. More than two years ago, I said: “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose.” Fannie and Freddie’s lobbyists succeeded; Congress failed to act. They’ve stayed in business, grown, and profited mightily by showering money on lobbyists and favors on the Washington establishment. Now the bill has come due.

While even I must admit McCain won’t go as far as I would, he does come pretty close (same link, emphasis added):

We are stuck with the reality that they have grown so large that we must support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the current rough spell. But if a dime of taxpayer money ends up being directly invested, the management and the board should immediately be replaced, multimillion dollar salaries should be cut, and bonuses and other compensation should be eliminated. They should cease all lobbying activities and drop all payments to outside lobbyists. And taxpayers should be first in line for any repayments.

Even with those terms, sticking Main Street Americans with Wall Street’s bill is a shame on Washington. If elected, I’ll continue my crusade for the right reform of the institutions: making them go away.  I will get real regulation that limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy, and privatizes and eliminates their links to the government.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the archetypes of “crony capitalism” (McCain’s words, and appropot) - the merger of big government and big business to fleece the taxpayer.  The only way to fix them is, as McCain himself put it, ”making them go away.”

I understand, and have always stated, that voters need a reason to vote for a candidate.  McCain just presented a very good one.