THE CONSERVATIVE INQUISITION

John McCain is now plummeting in the polls and struggling to raise funds; his campaign staff is leaving him. For the most part, this is because purists in the Republican Party have made him unwelcome -- they despise his views on immigration, they don't like his support for campaign finance reform, and they don't trust his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts and the religious right. Nor are they pleased with the fact that he's admired by mainstream journalists.

So why aren't hand-wringing opinion pieces like this being written?

...What's happening to McCain can only be described as a conservative inquisition.

... In a dark parody of the old struggle between Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Republican Party has turned conservatism from a philosophy into a secular religion, and then sought to purge a battle-scarred warhorse on the grounds of insufficient moral purity....

Or this?

The right wing of the Republican Party ... with cheerleading by the Internet-based hard right groups, apparently is determined to eliminate any diversity of opinion in the party. All across the nation, Republicans who do not share certain views about immigration and campaign finance are to be given the boot....

The passages above are very slightly rewritten versions of what David Brooks in The New York Times and Barry Casselman at Real Clear Politics wrote about Lieberman. Why nothing similar about McCain?

Obviously there are differences -- McCain hasn't actually lost an election (though Lieberman didn't lose a general election). More important, the conventional wisdom is that McCain is struggling largely because he's too loyal to Bush on Iraq (never mind the fact that all his principal opponents in the '08 race are highly supportive of Bush's policies as well, though none have actually hugged the man). And, of course, Bush fought for the immigration bill right-wingers despise (though he's lost support from members of his party as well).

But McCain's big plummet happened just as the immigration bill moved to America's front pages. This led demonstrators to wave "McCain -- Traitor" signs at him. Others call him a "treasonous bastard" for his stance on campaign finance.

So why isn't this being called a "purge"? Why haven't I seen the word "Stalinist" in any article about the demise of McCain?