CNN was playing up the John McCain John Hagee embrace last night (John Hagee is the anti-Catholic pastor whose church Mike Huckabee spoke to back in December, to some protest here and elsewhere.) Suffice it to say, the Brent Bozell in me assumes the mainstream media loves, loves, loves a story like this because it portrays religious conservatives in a bad light. On the Right, meanwhile, it’s not much of an issue, though I do think it should be a moment for reflection. I understand the politics, of course, of John McCain embracing a well-known evangelical pastor. But at what cost? Especially in a year where the conservative coalition has been strained, where the pastor in the race has done his share of dividing (think Lucifer and the Mormons as an example), John McCain could have done without courting this pastor with his anti-Catholic baggage. You know he only did it to help himself with evangelicals, and to any Catholic conservatives paying attention, it only antagonizes. I don’t think it does him any real longterm damage, but I’d respect him more if he hadn’t. I can’t be alone — and I bet that’s a view I share with more than R.C. right-wingers.