Goober Graham, Bob Barr, and Chris Cannon had a chance with their service on the House Impeachment Committee to win national favor with conservatives. But as we now know these three were not all that conservative when and where it counts.
But while Cannon's role in the impeachment trial undeniably gave him a place in the history books, he sadly committed political suicide by continuing to push for amnesty and deride the GOP base. This election really took me by surprise though. Cannon had a much higher profile primary race in 2006, and he won that one -- yet lost this one to a little known opponent.
One of the reasons why Graham and McCain might have stayed in office while Cannon got the boot is that Graham was smart enough to say he 'got the message" and would now sponsor legislation to "secure the border" the first. He then avoided any more talk about amnesty during the election season (McCain has too, though freeper Chicagolady discovered he has held "closed door" meeting with "hispanic groups" that he doesn't want us to know about) Cannon, on the other hand, remained unrepentant and defiant in pushing for "normalization" of the "undocumented" crowd, which had the same effect of Lieberman standing with Bush on Iraq during the Dem primary.
Also, Graham's primary challenger sought to "prove" Graham was too liberal by tieing him to McCain, nevermind the fact that McCain WON the South Carolina primary. I don't like that McCain carried S.C. either, but election results don't lie. It's pretty stupid to say someone is "out of touch" with his state by supporting the candidate that their state ended up selecting. The only thing it shows is that the challenger is the one in denial about how his state votes. You didn't see Cannon's primary opponent claim Cannon was "out of touch with Utah" because he backed Mitt Romney, did you?
As for Bob Barr, I think he did continue to prove he was a staunch conservative for the rest of his congressional career, but ever since he got defeated in 2002, he drank the libertarian party kool-aid and has since disavowed all the legislation he supported that conflicts the LP agenda. You have to remember the LP actually ran attack ads against Barr calling him "the worst drug warrior in Congress", and Barr has changed his positions so radically that he now wants to be THE president who will "end the war on drugs". And although he was the no. #1 Clinton critic in the House, he now actually says Clinton was a better President than Bush! Scary. Barr pimping for the party that worked to defeat him is like something out of the twilight zone.
That being said, I do think a lot of the House impeachment managers who risked their political careers to do what was right deserve more support than they get from freepers. Many of those freepers who promised to "never forget" the impeachment seem to have forgotten by the next election cycle and were bashing Henry Hyde for being wrong on one gun bill but supporting Clintonite scum like Peter King. And many of these freepers who whine about amnesty have only themselves to blame because they backed pro-amnesty politicians in the primary.
Bill McCollum had across the board A+ ratings from anti-illegal immigration groups, and many here derided him as an "unelectable loser" and a "RINO", and tossed him overboard in favor of "true conservative" Mel Martinez. Martinez CLAIMED he opposed amnesty, but many of us rightly pointed out DURING the primary election that his ACTIONS from the last 10 years showed this wasn't the case and that he was a Bush sock puppet and liberal trial lawyer who "used to" regularly donate to socialist Dems. Of course we were ignored and the "true conservative" Mel Martinez won the primary. Two years later, "unelectable" Bill McCollum won a statewide office during a big Dem year, and won by a far higher margin than Martinez had. Ironic, eh?