From a reader, speaking for many:

“I think the implied formulation that all real conservatives don’t like McCain is becoming increasingly unsustainable (which may be why some folks are yelling this claim louder and louder). There are plenty of real conservatives who like the guy just fine. “
Can you name some? The bulk of McCains GOP support comes from the RINO wing of the GOP – Crist, Arnie, Matinez, Bush(W and Jeb), Kemp, Armitage, Powell, etc etc.
And I’m looking askew at those few “real conservatives” who are backing him. Perhaps some discussion of what “real conservatism” actually is might be in order. I’m quite sure that McCain fails every possible description. He has nothing in common with either Burk or the early Goldwater. The reason the NYT and LAT endorsed him is because he borrows heavily from the thinking of the left. He’s a neo-liberal.

Me: I dunno, Ted Olson, Phil Gramm, Senators Coburn, Kyl and Brownback and Steve Forbes all seem like real conservatives to me. For the record, I’m not the one using “real conservative” narrowly. I think the folks who claim or suggest that anyone who is for McCain can’t be a real conservative are the ones who want to reduce conservatism to an attitude toward McCain.

As for McCain failing “every possible description” of a conservative. Come on. Again, I agree with many of the anti-McCain criticisms. But this sort of rhetorical excess only undermines the anti-McCain case. Is his record on abortion liberal? On guns? Defense? Judges? The question isn’t whether McCain’s positions are perfectly conservative — they aren’t. This reader, and others, instead make the threshold question: Are his positions sufficiently — or remotely — conservative? And on these and other issues, of course they’re conservative.