A friendly reminder from the Enlightened of how much more profound their respect for the rule of law is than yours, to be filed away for the next time one of them deigns to lecture you about Bush’s constitutional apostasy.

During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. The number who agree with McCain is up from 55% in August.

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Better yet, file this away for the next time some conservative asks you why he should turn out to vote for a guy who supports amnesty. So alarming is it that even TNR’s wringing its hands: “Now, since it seems unlikely that many Americans spend much time weighing the relative merits of different methods of judicial decisionmaking, it’s a fairly safe bet that voters are largely reflecting the rhetoric they hear from political elites…” Exit question: What rhetoric from The One could his disciples possibly be “reflecting” here?

Update: Headlines comments imported.