In which the boss spots a sinister trend: McCain Regression Syndrome.

It’d be just my luck that Meggie Mac is reading the site tonight.

Savor the irony: After a career spent bashing the right flank of the party, Sen. McCain is now clinging to its coattails to save his incumbent hide.

And pay attention to the hidden, more troubling irony: While he runs to the right to protect his seat, McCain’s political machine is working across the country to install liberal and establishment Republicans to secure his legacy…

With all due respect to McCain’s past noble war service, it’s time to head to the pasture. As the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, he was wrong on the constitutionality of the free-speech-stifling McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations. He was wrong to side with the junk-science global warming activists in pushing onerous carbon caps on America. He was on the wrong side of every Chicken Little-driven bailout. He was wrong in opposing enhanced CIA interrogation methods that have saved countless American lives and averted jihadi plots. And he was spectacularly wrong in teaming with the open-borders lobby to push a dangerous illegal alien amnesty.

Tea Party activists are rightly outraged by Sarah Palin’s decision to campaign for McCain, whose entrenched incumbency and progressive views are anathema to the movement. At least she has an excuse: She’s caught between a loyalty rock and a partisan hard place. The conservative base has no such obligations – and it is imperative that they get in the game (as they did in Massachusetts) before it’s too late. The movement to restore limited government in Washington has come too far, against all odds, to succumb to McCain Regression Syndrome now.

It might be too late already. According to Rasmussen, Maverick’s up 53/31 on J.D. Hayworth and is already running attack ads against him — before he’s even gotten into the race. Proof positive that he’s worried, which only makes Sarahcuda’s “true conservative” stamp of approval that much more important in possibly warning Hayworth away.

The weirdest part of this? I don’t think anyone will be swayed by Palin’s endorsement. No one seriously believes she’d be backing him if not for her personal loyalty to him, and McCain’s sufficiently infamous for his centrism that even her support won’t scrub him clean in the eyes of tea partiers. Which means this is actually a pretty shrewd move on her part: She gets credit for being a good soldier, especially in light of the sniping at her from his former campaign aides, whereas he gets maybe a few extra votes from conservatives. In fact, someone should make a video at her rally for McCain in the same mold as that now-famous video outside Obama’s rally for Coakley, where college kids babbled about getting to see The One in person while showing no enthusiasm whatsoever for the candidate. That’s what we’re going to end up with here, I think.

We have to poll it. Do your worst.

Update: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

JD Hayworth quits radio show. To McCain: “It’s time for you to come home.”