John McCain’s surprising come-from-behind victories in the early primary states of New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida have established the senator from Arizona as the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination going into today’s Super Tuesday primaries. This has elicited a visceral reaction from many prominent conservatives in the media, especially Rush Limbaugh, who contends that McCain is nothing more than a RINO (Republican in Name Only). In fact, many conservative media personalities have urged Republicans to become supporters of Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, to deny McCain the nomination and hand it to a “real” conservative. The belief that Sen. McCain is not a true conservative is an extremely difficult position to hold. It requires advocates of this belief to take extreme or dishonest views on some of Sen. McCain’s positions. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform was an abridgement of free-speech rights, and his immigration bill did not adequately address border security while providing a fairly easy path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. However, it is necessary to look at McCain’s broader governing philosophy and record rather than cherry-pick certain votes from his long and illustrious career in the Senate. It should be clear to all Republicans that he has demonstrated a vigorous commitment to conservative values and the well-being of our country. cCain irritates many partisans because of his willingness to cross the aisle and work with Democrats. For example, he sponsored an immigration bill with Ted Kennedy over the summer that many on the right decried as amnesty. This proposed legislation nearly derailed his presidential campaign. The “Z-Visa” section of the bill, which would grant any illegal alien eligibility to attain a green card, while certainly not amnesty, was seen by the Limbaugh crowd as way to accommodating to illegal aliens and liberals. However, I believe that McCain deserves praise for his refusal to remain tethered to the party line and his desire to find practical solutions to difficult issues. Let’s face it: The United States cannot deport 12 million illegal immigrants, no matter what outlandish promises Mitt Romney makes to the contrary. Some conservatives criticize McCain for brokering a deal with Democrats as part of the “Gang of 14.” This killed Senate Republican leaders’ plan to eliminate the filibuster as a tactic against judicial nominees. Conservatives were initially outraged because it put their short-term goals in jeopardy. We now see the wisdom of McCain’s actions. Republicans were still able to get their judges confirmed while preserving the filibuster for their time in the minority. Hopefully it will prove useful when a future Democratic president inevitably appoints left-wing judges to the courts. Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan has been invoked many times during this presidential race, and Republicans seem eager for a messianic intervention by the next Reagan. What many Republicans forget is that Reagan often deviated from conservative doctrine, and some of his decisions can be characterized as positively liberal. Reagan supported – and pushed through Congress – actual amnesty for illegal immigrants, which would not be tolerated in today’s Republican Party. While he reformed the tax code and grew our economy, Reagan also oversaw an expansion of the federal government and a huge spending surge. Reagan was a great president and proponent of conservatism, but the problems this country faces now are very different from those it did 28 years ago. Republicans need to prioritize what issues are important and choose a leader who would best be able to address them. Sen. McCain’s opponents for the Republican nomination cannot be characterized as pure conservatives. Mike Huckabee is a real, genuine guy, but his populist message alienates too many economic conservatives within the Republican Party. Mitt Romney has changed positions so many times based on which direction the wind was blowing that I can’t be convinced he will still be a conservative on Inauguration Day. He pandered his way to victory in Michigan and is responsible for the negative tone of the campaign through the millions of dollars in advertising he spent tarnishing the reputation of his opponents. If he cannot be trusted to run an honest campaign, how can we expect him to be an honest president? The only reason he is still in the race is because talk radio and other conservative media outlets have made him the de facto anti-McCain candidate. cCain is the strongest candidate on national security and supported the troop surge before it was popular. He is vocally opposed to pork-barrel spending and major federal entitlement programs. He wants to privatize Social Security. He is pro-life. He wants to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court. One cannot rationally argue from the conservative perspective, as Ann Coulter recently tried to do, that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) being in the Oval Office is preferable to John McCain being there. He sports a lifetime rating of 82 percent from the American Conservative Union. McCain has deviated from the party line on many occasions, but one can see that his broader views are reliably conservative. Conservatives need to get behind McCain if they are going to have any chance to forward their agenda. 2008 does not have a promising outlook for Republicans, and McCain seems to be the only person who can beat Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Americans like McCain because he is the best example of a bipartisan politician who can unite the country. Obama talks a big game, but his hyper-partisan voting record leads me to believe the only people he can unite are mainstream Democrats and DailyKos loonies. Americans are ready for the kind of conservatism that John McCain embodies and the change he promises, and conservative media elites should climb aboard the Straight-Talk Express before it leaves without them. Stephen Kenny is a senior in the College. He can be reached at kennythehoya.com. AGAINST THE WIND appears every other Tuesday.