From a McCain supporter:

John Fund comes out with a story claiming two people told him that at a private event, McCain made a statement saying that he wouldn’t nominate judges who wear their conservatism “on their sleeve.” McCain has responded by pretty flatly denying making the statement…The thing that is so insidious about this statement is that is incredibly damaging, and totally unimpeachable because it’s so vague.

I was on McCain’s 5 p.m. blogger conference call (along with, apparently, half the NRO staff) and again, he denied it and said he has always strongly supported Alito, and would support judges like Roberts and Alito even if it bodes ill for his own vision of campaign finance reform.

Fund is a friend, a fellow Novak disciple, and a good reporter. His column today is full of other good information about McCain’s foibles at CPAC last year — some of which I’d never even heard about. (I do remember McCain being booed in absentia.) The item about McCain and Alito is buried near the end and barely attributed, and it has blown up into something Fund never expected. Fund agreed with me that – in form, anyway — it isn’t unlike the infamous Valerie Plame item that was buried in Robert Novak’s column a few years back. Here are Fund’s exact words from the column:

More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because “he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.”

Fund doesn’t claim to have heard the quote himself, but he told me he has three sources, the date and the place. He doesn’t make things up. He also says the quote is not as damaging to McCain as some here are suggesting. Everyone is losing the distinction betwen “might not” and “would not.” McCain, he says, used the former construction when it came to Alito, not the latter. It is an important distinction.

But the thing is, we still really don’t know exactly what the quote was, and the column doesn’t give us a clue about where or when. Given that it is so controversial, some attribution — some names in print, I mean – would make me feel a lot better about it. McCain isn’t being given the chance to confront his accusers, so his people have a right to be upset.