Beck vs. McCain

John McCain, never one to avoid a compromise of his own principles in order to curry favor among voters skeptical of where he stands, has been very quick to condemn President Obama for reading the suspected Times Square bomber his Miranda rights under the Constitution. Sullivan writes, "When you're as cynical and as power-hungry as McCain, what else matters but whatever works for now?"

And in Sullivan's corner, none other than Glenn Beck, who stunned his colleagues at Fox News with the following:

He is a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens. If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution. [Shahzad] has all the rights under the Constitution. We don't shred the Constitution when it is popular. We do the right thing.

Beck has a point. Huffpost blogger Sam Stein writes:

On Tuesday, the firm Resurgent Republic released polling data showing that: "Voters agree that civilian trials are a bad idea by a 56 to 36 percent margin overall, including a 61 to 32 percent margin among Independents and a 76 to 20 percent margin among Republicans (Democrats say civilian trials are a good idea by a 55 to 36 percent margin)."

Stein also points out that Beck's opposition to McCain shows just how far the Republican Party has strayed from any moral, political, or principled center. As a party, they have absolutely no standards, no positions on anything except to condemn automatically anything President Obama or his administration does in governing this country. Of course, McCain is fighting for his political life right now in Arizona, having just sold out his earlier stance on immigration (which matched George W. Bush on providing a clear path to legal status) in order to show conservative voters in AZ that he's just as hardcore on illegals as his primary opponent.