Over at Tacitus, contributor Von rightly pours scorn upon Denny Hastert's criticism of John McCain.

I also remember a time when conservatives sought to portray themselves the steely-eyed realists, the pragmatists, and the ones who did not flinch from reality. They were the ones who would say, "you cannot have it all; you must choose -- and pay for your choice." And I always thought that people of good character -- whatever their political stripe -- would not go to war unless they were willing to, yes, undertake the sacrifices necessary to win.

It ain't that tough to understand, folks: Hastert (and what he represents) is wrong, and his values are neither "conservative" nor "Republican" values.

(The Hastert/McCain story can be found here. If you haven't heard and are link-phobic, basically, Hastert criticized McCain, a former POW in Vietnam, for saying that it's time for Americans to step up and make sacrifices regarding the war, as a part of solving the current budget stalemate in Congress. In doing so, Hastert jokingly questioned McCain's Republican credentials, which is an interesting thing to do because McCain was arguing in favor of fiscal sanity.)

Frankly, I'm confused as to what the political utility of Republicans trashing McCain is. Do they really want to Jeffords this guy? If I were Hastert, or Bush for that matter, I'd definitely prefer having McCain be nominally for a 2nd Bush term than actively against it. I still put the odds of Kerry-McCain at around 5% though.