THERE IS A LEFT-WING conspiracy at loose in the world, dedicated to undoing conservative governance, only the people who see it aren't sure what it is. John McCain is in it, of course, in fact he is the cause of it, as making him president is the ultimate goal. He is blamed for running, (and perhaps, for breathing), but beyond him the face of the threat is less clear. In fact, the faces are those of other conservative stalwarts, who were their heroes and brethren until--until, say, just after the Florida primary, when McCain emerged as a serious threat. These include Mike Huckabee, the once well-thought of former Arkansas governor (and hero of the social conservative part of the movement), who unaccountably refuses to withdraw from the race on their orders; Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, perhaps the most conservative members of the United States Senate; Jack Kemp, the supply-side Reagan enthusiast; Phil Gramm, the most conservative Republican to run in the 1996 contest; and Ted Olson, the hero of the Federalist Society, who argued and won the case of Bush vs. Gore. (They may also include the late President Reagan's widow, who, according to the Drudge Report, hearts John McCain.)

Mysteriously, these past heroes of the Heritage Foundation, CPAC gatherings, movement conservatives, and, of course, talk radio, have become the prime targets of--movement conservatives and talk radio, who in their boundless and unbridled fury seem now to have sensed in them aspects of deception and wussiness they

Actually, they have not done a thing beyond endorsing a four-term Republican senator with a lifetime 82 percent ACU rating, but this isn't the point. The point is that the ideological right is filled with a vast, free-floating fury that can't find a target upon which to dump all this ire. At least, not one that either makes logical sense, or provides a psychologically satisfying object on which to unload all this feeling. Is it McCain himself, who refused to stay dead when they thought he was done with? Is it Mike Huckabee, who stopped Romney in Iowa, and so, as they think, drains votes from their hero? Is it Rudy Giuliani, who refused to stay in and drain votes from McCain, but had the bad taste to drop out after Florida? Is it Mitt himself, who is a bit of stiff, and whose frontrunner strategy bombed early on in the contest? Is it Fred!, who refused to catch fire? Is it George Allen, who had the bad sense in 2006 to utter the damned word 'macaca,' and thus lose his once safe seat in the Senate, with which he would have been the front-runner? Is it Jeb Bush, who didn't a) endorse Mitt, or b) change his name to Jeb Jones, in which case HE would have been the front runner and stopped John McCain?