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I'm actually closer to Quin than to Phil on the subject of John McCain. But I'll play devil's advocate a little bit here. Quin says it is inconsistent for McCain to tout an endorsement by Sam Brownback, who opposed the surge, while criticizing Mitt Romney's tepid support for the surge. But when a candidate accepts an endorsement, they are not accepting all of the views of the person doing the endorsing. McCain is touting the Brownback endorsement as evidence of his pro-life position and acceptability to social conservatives, not his national-security credentials.

And while it's true that Huckabee is still in the race, I'm not sure it is inconsistent for McCain to focus his attacks on the candidate who is actually directly competing with him in the most states. By that logic, it is inconsistent for McCain not to also be attacking Ron Paul. McCain is attacking the candidate he sees as the biggest threat to his nomination, for the same reason Romney spent time on today's blogger conference call criticizing McCain but not the other candidates.