It’s Sunday, so that means it’s time to highlight one of topics of the week. Whether it’s a bombshell in the world of politics, a barn burner in the realm of news or a shocker in mass media, I profile it here with the added gusto that only plate of french toast and a frothy glass of milk can provide. Check back next week to see what’s on the skillet.

For my Sunday post this week, I want to talk about John McCain. I believe the great casualty of this election will the potential of a McCain presidency and the promise of a centrist president. As the campaigns race toward the finish, a mere nine days away, it’s easy to forget that McCain was never what you’d expect from today’s “conservative” Republican. McCain dared to be a moderate in a party where moderates aren’t welcome:

He’s not a conservative if he sides with the left. See, conservatism is what it is. It doesn’t need to be moderated. It doesn’t need to be redefined. It doesn’t need to be upgraded. It’s based on personal liberty: individual freedom, a small state that functions for the express purpose of defending and protecting the population. The minute you say that conservatism includes people who are pro-choice, you’ve destroyed conservatism because conservatism stands for “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.”

Far be it from me to dispute the inclusiveness of conservatism with Rush Limbaugh, but John McCain was the conservative moderate. He was an experienced statesman who practiced bipartisanship and was never one to take the credit.

One of the actions John McCain has taken as senator that I most admire is his inclusion among the gang of 14 in the spring of 2005, which averted the elimination of the Senate filibuster and allowed Bush’s conservative jurists to be confirmed by the Senate. Many people are ignorant of this, it’s quite boring to think about really, but McCain bravely faced the ire of his party to defend the minority and their right to have a voice in the Senate, despite their status and agenda.

Think about it: The Republicans have just triumphed in a heated campaign against Democrats, earning Bush’s precious political capital and cementing their majorities in Congress. Eager to deliver their conservative agenda, Republicans had only to reach 60 votes to mold the federal government however they wish. But Democrats, with only 45 senators, could still gum up the works by use of the filibuster. Senate leader Bill Frist had to power to end this ritual, restoring the Senate to ending debate on a simple majority, a number they could easily muster.

Facing this, John McCain, along with six other Republicans and seven Democrats, made a pact. If these 14 senators felt the filibuster was warranted and the jurist at hand truly was too radical for the bench, these senators would vote to prevent Frist’s nuclear option for the filibuster. On the other side, if the senators felt a filibuster would be disruptive to the Senate’s business and unwarranted, they would vote to close debate, thus ending any filibuster.

Republicans don’t want you to know about this, or at least they don’t want you to remember. McCain was the co-chair of a group of senators that derailed conservative hopes of influencing government in ways they could only dream. And these Republicans also fail to see the great irony of their skewering of McCain on his actions: It was just two years after this that Republicans lost control of the Senate and suddenly found great use for the filibuster. Had they succeeded in eliminating it, many laws they fought to squash would have easily passed (the immigration compromise, for example).

There are many other instances where McCain has reached across the aisle to pass important legislation, often times breaking with the brass of his own party. McCain lobbied to ban torture in U.S. interrogation techniques at a time where the administration wanted nothing in law on the subject. McCain embraced on of the most liberal senators, Russ Feingold, in crafting legislation that could close holes on soft money contributions in political campaigns. This point has put him directly against Republicans, who hoped the law would be stuck by the Supreme Court (which it wasn’t). They says it curtails free speech, but what it really does is bundles up Republican donors and deters quid-pro-quo governance (well, it at least closes one oft-used avenue for that).

I could go on and on, but the point I am trying to make is that there’s a reason conservatives like Hannity, Limbaugh and Coulter all screamed bloody murder when McCain clinched the Republican nomination: He’s a moderate, and Republicans have no room for moderates. So why is the McCain that is 9 days from losing this election not the moderate we have seen through 26 years in the Senate?

Here’s something the New York Times mentioned in their endorsement of Barack Obama:

Mr. McCain, whom we chose as the best Republican nominee in the primaries, has spent the last coins of his reputation for principle and sound judgment to placate the limitless demands and narrow vision of the far-right wing. His righteous fury at being driven out of the 2000 primaries on a racist tide aimed at his adopted daughter has been replaced by a zealous embrace of those same win-at-all-costs tactics and tacticians.

And in the Washington Post just today:

A year ago, the Arizona senator’s team made a crucial strategic decision. McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography. On policy, he’d hew mostly to conservative orthodoxy, with a few deviations — most notably, his support for legalization for illegal immigrants. But this strategy wasn’t yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice.

That didn’t work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain campaign has Palinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.

Sure enough, the base has responded. After months and months of wan enthusiasm among Republicans, these last weeks have at last energized the core of the party. But there’s a downside: The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.

McCain’s campaign has become more like the Republican Party we love to loathe and McCain himself has been seemingly relegated to the master suite of the Straight Talk Express. By playing on the delusion that conservative governance, which got us into this financial meltdown, is what this nation thirsts for, McCain has thrown his most formidable card out of the deck: his true maverick credibility. This was not McCain’s idea, I’m sure.

The Republican Party, with victories in 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2004 still fresh in their minds, could not initiate in this election cycle the kind of transformation that will eventually return them to the White House. They chose to hold onto their failed politics and duck the accountability they should own for Bush’s failed leadership. The cost for them will be losing this election, but our collective cost will be losing the opportunity to deliver a principled, deserving leader to the White House: John McCain.

It is my view that the Republican Party would have been better served by a McCain victory in 2000 than it has been by a two-term Bush presidency. I probably wouldn’t have voted for McCain in 2000 and I certainly won’t vote for him in 2008, but as an American who has lived with leaders he did not vote for, I believe McCain would have been a better choice. And I promise you, the true strength of John McCain will be apparent to everyone on Nov. 5 when the pundits and Republicans finally acknowledge the weight of the John McCain defeat.

Next Sunday: Election predictions.