I was genuinely surprised to learn that John McCain had declined to attend CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). His rivals had no such compunctions (Romney addresses the conference this afternoon...)

John Podhoretz provides a possible explanation:

If I were a McCain adviser, there's no way I would recommend he attend CPAC. The stakes are simply too high. It's a total sandbagging opportunity for people who want to derail him. The last thing he needs is a headline like "Conservatives boo McCain," and you know people attending CPAC know it and would love nothing more than to provide that headline. Anything less than a performance that wowed his enemies on the Right would only do him injury.

I guess this evokes the obvious question--why the hell is McCain running for the Republican nomination if he fears conservatives?

My guess is that McCain would be happier in a third party, one that didn't include social conservatives, but the reality of third parties is that they don't elect presidents, so he'll try to finesse the nomination and create a private constituency as president.

This is a massive miscalculation.

Consider the Harriet Meirs debacle. Back in the day, the President's men would have made a few discrete phonecalls to line up support and the real obstacle would have been the Senate Judicial Committee. Now there is simply too much autonomy, too many voices. Nobody is going to finesse anything.

A successful candidate cannot steer around various hostile, or perceived hostile constituencies. Instead he will have to find the true heart of the country as Ronald Reagan did. Reagan didn't exclude, he encompassed, and he did it by embodying and thereby reminding people of the characteristics and attitude of of our best selves.

McCain's campaign is already in trouble for reasons I've already discussed elsewhere. Skipping CPAC may one day be viewed as the final nail in the coffin of his presidential ambitions.