Jon noted that John McCain’s new “life begins at conception” stance is a move all the way to the extreme right of his previously maverick-esque position. This puts McCain squarely among the wingnuts who declare contraception to be abortion, because many types of birth control keep a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall. No doubt his Supreme Court picks will uphold the right of pharmacists to overrule a woman’s doctor and refuse to dispense the pill.

McCain is pandering (quite successfully, according to polls) to this one-issue crowd, and he’s doing it with zeal. Now he’s flip-flopped to the side of those who say the fertilized egg has more right to life than the living, breathing woman in which it is carried.

Despite his eight-year support for adding exceptions to the official Republican party platform that would allow for abortion in cases of rape, incest, and risk to the life of the mother, now that McCain is the party’s standard bearer, the brave iconoclast says he will not rock the boat.

Back in 2000, McCain clashed with then-Gov. George W. Bush over his unwillingness to change platform language that called for a human life amendment [to the United States Constitution] banning all abortions.

McCain implored Bush to join him in wanting to add exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother.

As recently as April, 2007, McCain stuck by that proclaimed belief, embracing the reputation it gave him as a new kind of Republican: a moderate. No more.

McCain’s decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.

“If he were to change the party platform,” to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother’s life, “I think that would be political suicide,” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. “I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble.”

At the Saddleback Forum, McCain said exactly what the born-again wanted to hear about the unborn. McCain has shown quite a penchant for saying what others want him to, whether he believes it or not.

With all his references to being a POW in Vietnam and seeing how easily he abandons his principles, it’s hard not to conjure an image of McCain saying whatever the Vietcong wanted to hear, singing like a bird for his captors, just as the rumors claim.