Remember when he was touted - and touted himself - as a maverick?

Well, those days are long gone for Sen. John McCain, a.k.a. Bush 2.0, who moved to shore up his support among conservatives by pledging Tuesday to nominate strict-constructionist judges to the federal bench.

“It will fall to the next president to nominate hundreds of qualified men and women to the federal courts, and the choices we make will reach far into the future,” the will-be Republican presidential nominee said.

“My two prospective opponents and I have different ideas about the nature and proper exercise of judicial power,” added McCain, speaking at Wake Forest, in reference to Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

“We would nominate judges of a different kind, a different caliber, a different understanding of judicial authority and its limits.”

McCain directly criticized Barack Obama for not voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, saying the Illinois senator’s justification of that decision sounded like it was written by an “activist judge.”

“Apparently, nobody quite fits the bill except an elite group of activist judges, lawyers, and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it - and they see it only in each other,” McCain said of Obama.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said in response:

“It’s clear he’s the wrong choice to safeguard that future. No matter how far they have gone to restrict our fundamental rights or their clear records of gutting the reforms John McCain claims to care about, he has put loyalty to his party and a radical agenda ahead of the American people.”