New York Times: McCain Is Our Man

A New York newspaper and an Arizona senator would normally not be newsworthy for an Indiana blog, but it turns out that said senator is running for president and said newspaper has endorsed aforementioned candidate.  The presidential campaign directly impacts Indiana and I know that at least one blogger who reads this blog is a big McCain supporter so just to fire him up I’m doing this post (okay, he hyperlinked to a news item I ran yesterday so maybe this isn’t the best way to thank him). 

Anyway, the New York Times, the ultra-liberal paper of record, has announced that John McCain wins their endorsement for the Republican Party’s nomination.  The endorsement came in an editorial that appeared in Friday’s edition of the paper and the McCain team lost little time in republishing the article on their own website.

In the editorial the paper lays out its reasons for choosing John McCain.  Interestingly, the reasons they have for supporting McCain are the exact same reasons that conservatives and Republicans who don’t like McCain base their opposition to him on.

Here is an excerpt:

In 2006, however, Mr. McCain stood up for the humane treatment of prisoners and for a ban on torture. We said then that he was being conned by Mr. Bush, who had no intention of following the rules. But Mr. McCain took a stand, just as he did in recognizing the threat of global warming early. He has been a staunch advocate of campaign finance reform, working with Senator Russ Feingold, among the most liberal of Democrats, on groundbreaking legislation, just as he worked with Senator Edward Kennedy on immigration reform.