John McCainI’ve been pretty surprised by the amount of vehement nastiness in regards to McCain’s campaign for the Presidency and towards anyone who supports him. It really does take me aback a bit. Obviously, most conservatives support McCain even if they don’t say so publicly, because he’s winning.

There is a lot of false information out there that is being perpetrated by media personalities who have a vested interest in other candidates. That’s politics. I have been watching Fox News this afternoon and have seen several very positive news items on Romney and several very negative ones on McCain. The negative news items have focused on his most controversial votes in his 20 years as a Senator.

One of his disadvantages is that he has so long in the Senate, so he has a long history of thousands of votes that can be taken apart and analyzed in every way imaginable - unlike either of his potential rivals on the democratic side who have not had to cast votes on difficult and complicated issues as yet. I’m not saying I agree with everything McCain has voted for or against. I’m just saying that some of his stances have been trotted out for the benefit of some of his opponents.

People keep praising Ronald Reagan and demeaning McCain, yet McCain has a more consistently conservative record than Reagan. I remember when Reagan was running for office - people made fun of him because he was an actor running for President. I remember that while Reagan was President, people were highly critical of him and angry at many of the stances he took. Now people want to believe that he was a saint and the standard bearer of all things conservative. The Ronald Reagan that people hole up as an example is a cherished fantasy. The lies being carelessly slung around about McCain are damaging.

If you are going to spread rumors about John McCain, then at least know what you are saying is true rather than repeating the rumors passed on by a group of pundits who decided they wanted to try to get another candidate elected.

Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Now, I don’t believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.

Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real - as opposed to the mythic - Ronald Reagan.

One of my strongest reasons for liking McCain so much is that regardless of what other labels you might want to put on him, he is first and foremost an American. He has proved that repeatedly throughout his life and has never wavered in any way on his patriotism and loyalty to our country. He is a man of honor, integrity and a great deal of courage.

On the surpassing national-security issues of the day - confronting the threat from radical Islam and winning the war in Iraq - no one is more stalwart. Even McCain’s fiercest critics, such as conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, will say so. “The world’s bad guys,” Hewitt writes, “would never for a moment think he would blink in any showdown, or hesitate to strike back at any enemy with the audacity to try again to cripple the US through terror.”

McCain was never an agenda-driven movement conservative, but he “entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” as he puts it, and on the whole his record has been that of a robust and committed conservative. He is a spending hawk and an enemy of pork and earmarks. He has never voted to increase taxes, and wants the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the best of reasons: “They worked.” He is a staunch free-trader and a champion of school choice. He is unabashedly prolife and pro-Second Amendment. He opposes same-sex marriage. He wants entitlements reined in and personal retirement accounts expanded.

McCain’s conservatism has usually been more a matter of gut instinct than of a rigorous intellectual worldview, and he has certainly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on some serious issues. For all that, his ratings from conservative watchdog groups have always been high. “Even with all the blemishes,” notes National Review, a leading journal on the right (and a backer of Romney), “McCain has a more consistent conservative record than Giuliani or Romney. . . . This is an abiding strength of his candidacy.”

As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.

A perfect conservative he isn’t. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If “the House that Reagan Built” is to be true to its best and highest ideals, it will unite behind John McCain.

I think what bothers the pundits who launched such a vigorous attack against McCain is the fact that they have no power over him. He is beholden to no one. That leaves the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world with a smaller sphere of influence. If Rush and his fellow pundits can not get ‘their man’ elected, in spite of their most vicious efforts to discredit McCain, that means they are not as powerful as they have liked to think they are.

As a Southerner, I can tell you that Southerners don’t like to be told who to vote for or what to do. Last night’s primary results are more evidence of that - as if anyone needed that to be proved. Apparently, Southerners aren’t the only people in this country who want to think for themselves as opposed to having the pundits tell us what is best for us.