LITMUS TESTS.

I sort of feel like this got lost amidst last night's debate blogging, but during the Supreme Court section of the exchange, McCain said:

I would never and have never in all the years I've been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court. That's not appropriate to do.

But Gary bauer, in this 2005 New Yorker profile of John McCain, remembers things differently:

McCain beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire, in a nineteen-point upset, but the storybook campaign ended when the Bush machine retaliated, in the infamous South Carolina primary. McCain had hoped that South Carolina’s large veteran population would help him win there; but the Christian Coalition, deeply entrenched in the state, became the decisive constituency. Somewhat surprisingly, McCain had the support of Gary Bauer, the social conservative, who had dropped out of the race by that time. “I wanted a commitment from either George Bush or John McCain that if elected he would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court,” Bauer told me. “Bush said he had no litmus test, and his judges would be strict constructionists. But McCain, in private, assured me he would appoint pro-life judges.”

I guess the next step is to contact the New Yorker and ask if the McCain campaign ever disputed the accuracy of that paragraph. But if not, it seems to me like a fairly big deal that McCain is publicly forswearing litmus tests but privately assuring leaders of the Christian Right that he'll have them.