Apologies Now Being Accepted

John McCain took a lot of criticism last year from conservatives who thought he wasn’t sufficiently conservative on questions of the judiciary and the Constitution – this despite a great speech on judges and the rule of law (which annoyed a lot of the right people to annoy) and one on property rights and his repeated commitment to appoint “clones” of Justices Roberts and Alito.

Granted, he may not have been the most “conservative” candidate in the race, whatever that means, despite his consistent quarter-century pro-life voting record, his strong belief in federalism, and his obsession with controlling Federal spending, to say nothing of his standing virtually alone in calling for the surge and victory in Iraq. But today, John McCain is due more than a few apologies from conservatives who didn’t think he met their litmus tests.

Yesterday, when the Senate was discussing the bill that would give voting rights in the House to the District of Columbia (and add an additional seat for Utah), Senator McCain tried to stop debate by calling for a constitutional point of order to consider the profound constitutional issues at stake in the bill. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that only States may have representatives in Congress. For the record, he was debating in strong yet respectful terms his close friend and supporter, Senator Joe Lieberman – exactly the kind of interaction the Framers intended when they established the Senate. (McCain’s motion unfortunately lost, 62-36.)

If one favors voting rights for the District, the proper recourse is a Constitutional amendment, such as Congress itself proposed in 1978. But only 16 of the 38 States necessary chose to ratify it. So now Congress is trying a different way, albeit one that would only affect the House and not the Senate.

And what do you know, John McCain has read his Constitution.

Yes, John McCain is a conservative and a constitutionalist. He meant what he said in the campaign last year.

Apologies now being accepted.