West Palm Beach
John McCain spoke through gritted teeth. "I respect Rush Limbaugh," he said, days after America's most influential talk radio host proclaimed that his nomination would ruin the Republican party.

Straight talk?

For two weeks, as the Republican presidential race moved south and he notched important victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, John McCain has been subject to a series of withering attacks from the stars of talk radio and other prominent conservatives. Some of the criticism is warranted. McCain seems to delight in taking positions that upset conservatives, as he did at virtually every campaign stop in New Hampshire by going out of his way to talk about global warming. The argument, which he repeated in the debate here last Thursday, goes something like this:

My friends, I believe global climate change is real, and I think it's a major issue worldwide and in this country. I have been at odds with the Bush administration on this issue for a long time. Suppose that there's no such thing as climate change and we adopt clean technologies. We go to nuclear power. We develop automobiles that go 200 miles before you have to plug them in. We go to hybrids. We use ethanol. There's a broad array of steps we can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Suppose we do these things and we're wrong about global warming. Then all we've done is given our children a cleaner world. But suppose we are right--that climate change is an urgent issue--and we do nothing. I think the consequences are obvious and would be devastating.

To a conservative, the consequences of the government mandates required to accomplish these things should be equally obvious and only slightly less devastating. Think of the vast tangle of new regulations that will cost American companies and consumers untold billions, potentially crippling the economy. It is not difficult to understand why this galls McCain's critics.

There are other concerns, many of them well known. McCain did not support George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and often used left-wing class warfare arguments to voice his opposition. Rather than simply fight for conservative jurists, McCain joined the so-called Gang of 14 that sought to find compromise on judicial appointments. He led Senate opposition to Bush administration policies on detainee interrogation, practices that even administration critics acknowledge have prevented potentially catastrophic attacks. Then there was illegal immigration. And campaign finance reform.

Add them up, the critics argue, and you have John McCain, the Anti-Conservative.

"McCain is not only not conservative enough," writes David Limbaugh, Rush's brother, "he has also built a reputation as a maverick by stabbing his party in the back--not in furtherance of conservative principles but by betraying them."

Like so many McCain critics, Limbaugh turned to former Senator Rick Santorum--"whose conservative credentials are beyond question"--as an expert witness. "I don't hardly agree with him on hardly any issues," Santorum said.

Really? Santorum's lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is 88. John McCain's is 82.3. One would suppose there might be some overlap. The difference between a real conservative and a phony one apparently lies in those six points.