For a window onto the debate playing out among evangelicals over whether or not to support John McCain, check out the back-and-forth over at Evangelicals for Mitt, including this post in his defense, excerpted here:

[I]f your “troika” of the three most important issues is immigration, global warming, and campaign-finance reform, then you shouldn’t vote for Senator McCain. He’s terrible on all three, and not recognizably better than any other candidate.

However… that’s not my troika. Mine is killing terrorists, protecting unborn babies, and small government/free markets. Frankly, while the three you mention are disturbing, my immediate thought is that amnesty and restrictions on political speech simply don’t matter if you’re dead — and that is precisely the threat we the living face from jihadists and that millions of unborn babies face from abortion. And I think the political granddaddy of the surge and a man who fought for the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, and even Judge Bork would do something about that. Given the global threat we face, and the chance we will have in the next four to eight years to create an anti-Roe majority on the Supreme Court, I’m willing to look past the other issues on which a President McCain would surely disappoint me.
And then there is your comment that Senator McCain has “given social conservatives the middle finger his whole career.” Look, I don’t disagree — “agents of intolerance” was strong stuff. But I would challenge you to look past this, and not to allow it to be determinative in your decision-making. Why? Well, first of all, we as Christians are commanded to turn the other cheek — and I don’t think it’s right for us to have continual resentment even when we are mistreated. But of course, that doesn’t mean we turn around and vote for someone who disdains our agenda — it just means we get over the mistreatment.

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