McCain appeals to conservatives, seeks to unify the GOP

I'm at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) here in Washington, D.C. I met Sen. McCain but I only had a chance to ask him one question (I literally had about 15 seconds). I asked him about taxes. McCain said he would fight to ensure that Bush's tax cuts remained permanent. He said he wanted spending cuts to go along with the tax cuts originally which is why he voted against them, but he recognizes and had recognized for the past 7 years that any attempt to repeal the tax cuts would amount to a tax increase now and he would fight and veto any attempt by the Democratic congress to repeal the cuts.

I didn't get to ask about guns and immigration, but he addressed those in his speech. He says that know understands the will of the American people--he was asked flat out whether he would still supports amnesty and he said "absolutely not" because the American people have spoken and they want us to secure the border first. He promised to secure the border and said no discussion of amnesty or a proposed guest worker program would take place until the border is secured andthe homeland is protected (he neglected to say what would happen with the millions of illegals still here). McCain also pledged to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and fight the Dems attempts to stop terrorist surveillance. Also, the rumors flying around here at CPAC are that McCain might pick Romney now to be VP--esp. since Romney put the interests of the party ahead of his ambition and is trying to unify before the election. That would be a much stronger ticket in my opinion.