In which conservatives are condescended to exquisitely for caring about immigration (and campaign finance reform and waterboarding and pandering gestures towards lowest-common-denominator economic populism and, and, and) even though the Reagan coalition didn’t. Note to Medved: Being a tinge upset at Captain Amnesty for employing cringing bottom-feeders like Juan Hernandez isn’t a hallmark of liberalish irrationality. One can grit one’s teeth and support McCain over a Democrat to win the war, as I do, while also recognizing that he’s not only terrible on various issues important to the right but a royal jackass to boot, a fact proved repeatedly tonight by his knocking Romney unfairly first during the exchange over timetables and then again and again with little digs denigrating his distinguished private-sector career. Watch this clip and tell me, how is this guy any more or less than the Hugh Hewitt to McCain’s Romney?

Update: “Unlike Romney, McCain has built his political fortune on kicking people right of center in the teeth. Neither he nor Simon should be surprised when conservatives, libertarians and classic liberals fail to swoon at McCain’s success to date. Indeed, someone who thinks that is going to happen quickly is probably more deserving of being diagnosed with a ‘derangement syndrome.'”