What makes McCain’s conversion all the more tragic is that it’s plainly not working. He has spent the last three years plotting to make himself the candidate of the GOP establishment that he once attacked. But, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “2008 is shaping up as the worst presidential year in three decades to be the candidate of the Republican establishment.”

His career since then has indeed resembled a certain famous Jedi. He began as a crusader for justice. Soon he realized that he needed to acquire more power in order to accomplish his noble goals. But over time, his pursuit of power became the goal itself, and by the end he lost his capacity to differentiate between right and wrong.

This is not Luke Skywalker here. This is Luke Skywalker’s father. But at least Darth Vader attained his position before the Death Star exploded. ~Jonathan Chait

By the strange logic of Rick Perlstein, this Chait denunciation of McCain should prove that McCain is now a “real” conservative because his former admirers on the left have now savagely turned on him.  Romney and Romneyites seem convinced that there is a media conspiracy to get Romney and that this conspiracy is proof of Romney’s conservative bona fides.  However, as is the case with McCain, this is simply a case of political observers seeing through transparent (or, as Yglesias put it, “freakishly transprent”) lies and pandering.  Unless Republican voters wish to claim that the two most obviously two-faced candidates in the race are the “real” conservatives (which seems unwise), they would do well to let McCain and Romney implode and find someone else who is not Giuliani.