The conservative blogosphere has been on Senator John McCain’s butt all week because he declined an invitation to CPAC, a conservative conference where Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback & Mitt Romney all took time to flash their conservative credentials. It was also a nice opportunity for Ann Coulter to say something vile again this time putting aside grieving widows of 9/11 in favor of calling John Edwards a “faggot”.

As Andrew Sullivan points out Coulter is the rights answer to Michael Moore (perhaps with a little more casual use of slander). So the calls by Democrats for Republican candidates to denounce Coulter will undoubtedly be met the same way calls for Democrats to denounce Moore have been met.

With that said I go back to John McCain who has been running very far to the right in this campaign but has been getting little enthusiasm for it. I have repeatedly read quotes from people on the far right, especially in the far religious right, who say they don’t “trust him” which was the buzz about why he did not come to CPAC in the first place.

McCain comes from a different time and a different blend of conservatism it seems and I cannot imagine him sitting through a speech like Coulter’s let alone defending it. By not going to this event he is now not as marred by this incident as the other candidates. When all is said and done Coulter got her name in the papers and on talk tv and in the blogosphere. She also ensured that whatever good was done at CPAC will now be diminished by her outrageous comments. Something that wouldn’t have helped McCain who has been increasingly seen as moving away from moderates.

Conservatives may have found a message in the conference but the media will undoubtedly focus on one thing alone. A slanderous and potentially libelous statement made about someone in the hopes of, I don’t know, selling books?

This is an even more interesting incident for McCain overall. In 2000 similarly vile statements were made about him and thanks to push polling voters were treated with libelous misinformation about the Senator but presented in such a way that it technically wasn’t asserted. “Would John McCain fathering an illigitamate black child make you less likely or more likely to vote for him?” It was a suggestion, left for the voter to make the ultimate assertion, but those conducting the polling knew what they were doing.

I am not going to lecture on right or wrong, tasteful and not. It is just interesting to see the choice John McCain made and the echos of a past campaign.