The false piety of the media on great display tonight on CNN and elsewhere. The theme of tonight’s convention is “Who is John McCain,” and the pundits who desperately want him to lose — Carville, Gergen, Toobin, et. al — are falling over themselves to talk about what an honorable man he is.  I call this “the Bob Dole treatment.”  Just as in 1996, these Democratic partisans love to praise the Republican nominee for his “service,”  his “love of country,” his “personal honor.”  They used to talk this way about Republican Minority Leader Bob Michel, especially after the still-not housebroken Newt Gingrich arrived on the scene.  For these commentators, McCain ought to represent the kind of Republican they love most:  the gracious loser.

That is what really infuriates them about the Sarah Palin selection.  Instead of choosing a plain-vanilla governor such as Tim Pawlenty, McCain’s pick of Palin shows he is in this to win.  He wants to stir up the evangelicals, the white working class women who don’t like Obama, and the ornery, independent voters in the southwest where the election is now being fought.  From the media’s point of view, it was a very ungracious selection.  It has muddied
the waters.  They want the McCain of 2000 back.  The one who went down to defeat smiling at them.