(UPDATE: Apologies for the double posting. And no, it’s not because of the “new RedState”–it’s due to my own limited competence.)

Am I the only conservative who felt a sickening feeling when McCain proposed socializing America’s “troubled mortgages”?

Here’s McCain’s actual language:

Allen, I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home-loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished value of those homes, and let people make those — be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

I was driving and listening to the debate in my car, so I wondered for a second if maybe this was Obama putting on a McCain accent. Then the candidate asked–and answered–the question that was exploding in my head:

Is it expensive? Yes.

Ya think? Three hundred billion here, three hundred billion there; sooner or later you’re talking about real money.

But the expense is the least of the danger of this proposal. Look at this situation clearly, folks–the Republican in the race is advocating a shift to socialism.

I don’t underestimate the depth of the economic crisis. But it’s precisely in a time of crisis that the Constitution, not to mention the entire capitalist system, is in danger–not from falling markets, but from avaricious politicians who want to aggrandize national power. We’ve seen it throughout history, and it’s happening again.

I was resigned to a McCain nomination as the best chance the GOP had to retain the White House, because I feared the damage a Democrat would do to the Constitution–and in particular, the abuses of power we could be assured of in a Hillary administration. I liked McCain’s position on earmarks. I really liked his vote against Medicare Part D–the low point, in my view, of the entire Bush administration. But now I think we can see how right the conservatives on this site were who refused to trust McCain’s “conservative” credentials.

Bob Barr just started looking a whole lot better to me.