zomg (as you young people and Mitt Romney always say)

Civil Discussion and You: the case against McCain, from a Reasonable Conservative

Re: The Die Has Been Cast [Andy McCarthy]

Remember the Clinton years? We should — we may be on the verge of reliving them. But I recall being most frustrated when some anti-Clinton zealot would claim the president had ordered an assassination or run cocaine through Mena Airport. Naturally, the Clinton people would very effectively conflate those inane accusations with the highly colorable allegations that the president had obstructed justice and committed perjury. Commentators would duly brand all the president’s critics as deranged Clinton haters.

It really bothers me, then, to find Victor Davis Hanson summing up the opposition to Senator McCain as that he "was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks)." All reasonable criticism of McCain should apparently cease since McCain’s opposition includes an idiot fringe.

Are you kidding? Like Dr. Hanson, I've been subjected to what I'd consider a "level of vituperation" that I thought was "astounding and completely unforeseen." Unlike Dr. Hanson though, I was not being subjected to vituperation about Sen. McCain; I, among others, was being subjected to vituperation from Sen. McCain.

Moreover, the vituperation was directed at us; we were not, like Dr. Hanson, observing as a stunned third party. We had dared suggest that our law's categorical ban on torture ought to be rethought.

Of course, in the end McCain caved on torture, but he didn't have to be so damn bitchy about it.