Mickey Kaus highlights a passage from “The Note” earlier this week: “Asked if his critics [on immigration] were racist, McCain said he doesn’t like to make those kinds of accusations, before adding, ‘We’ll let other people draw those conclusions.’” Kaus asks, “What’s wrong with just answering, ‘No’?”

It reminds me of Laura Bush’s answer to the question about whether Miers’s critics are sexist. (It’s “possible,” she said.) In this case, the claim has a bit more truth to it: Some of the people who want tighter immigration restrictions are racist. But to make the generalization that critics of McCain’s plan are racist is just a smear. To make the smear with (barely) plausible deniability isn’t any better.

McCain has a nasty tendency to treat disagreement with him, at least from the right, as per se dishonorable. It’s not a trait that will stand him in good stead in the Republican primaries.