[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, dean of the neocons and now a weekly columnist for the New York Times, says the big difference between John McCain and the rest of the Republican field is that McCain seems refreshingly old-fashioned.

Read between the lines, it implies that McCain has a certain integrity that the others, being thoroughly modern men, are bereft of. McCain, he suggested, was a neo-Victorian – rigid, self-righteous and moralizing, but (or rather and) manly, courageous and principled. Maybe a dose of this type of neo-Victorianism is what the 21st century needs. But can it work Tuesday in California?

Someone less committed to the cause might put the comparison in less flattering terms. McCain's sense of principle shines in comparison to the flippers and flakes he's running against.

Mike Huckabee – who began as a straight shooter, defending his record as governor of Arkansas to provide in-state college tuition to illegal aliens, OK'ing a tax increase and sounding like an economic populist – has now joined the immigration exclusionists and touts a regressive flat tax that makes President Bush look like a Marxist.