No one can accuse Charles Krauthammer of not calling it the way he sees it. Today he refused to join fellow conservative and/or Republican opinionators in abandoning the McCain candidacy. His column, McCain for President starts this way:

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

This brought to mind Krauthammer's 2005 column, Withdraw This Nominee, which appeared in the Washington Post on Friday, October 7th, following the announcement on Monday, October 3, of Harriet Miers ill-fated Supreme Court nomination. Krauthammer's column along with George Will's Washington Post column on Wednesday Can This Nomination be Justified? did a lot to preempt any rush of Republicans to lock themselves in by publicly backing the nomination.