Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

re "McCain and the Talk-Show Hosts"
By Mark Helprin, Wall Street Journal, 2/12/08
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120277844588960675.html?

To the editor:

Mark Helprin’s beautifully written criticism of conservative talk-show hosts reminds us of why he is one of the world’s great authors. But even the brilliant can miss an important point, and Mr. Helprin has. The opposition to John McCain does not revolve around his being unorthodox, but rather that so much of his unorthodoxy is distinctly against the vast majority of conservative voters’, politicians’, and, yes, talk-show hosts’ views. Indeed, although McCain trumpets his “82% positive” conservative rating, that makes him the lowest of all the Republican candidates who were rated by the ACU.

Mr. Helprin correctly offers some of the same criticisms of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee that we have heard from all corners this election season but implies that similar criticism of John McCain is simply demonization. Why does Mr. Helprin inconsistently suggest that it is permissible to note Mike Huckabee’s frequently populist positions but wrong to disapprove of John McCain’s tentative support of conservative economic policy, his distinctly Democratic immigration and energy plans, and especially his responsibility for McCain-Feingold, the most serious attack on the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts?

Mark Helprin’s critique of talk-show hosts' motives may have substance, but that does not mean criticism of John McCain’s record is any less valid.