I have nothing personal against Chicago Tribune national correspondent Mark Silva—I don’t know him. Yet his name keeps appearing on obviously biased or off-base articles.

Today, his “analysis” of why John McCain’s candidacy for president is sinking is nearly 100 percent wrong. In short, Silva said McCain’s support for the Iraq War is killing his candidacy.

Today, McCain’s establishment-oriented campaign for president is imploding under the weight of the candidate’s own attachment to a political black hole, the war in Iraq. With the newest resignations of his campaign’s media experts, following the earlier departure of his managers, McCain approaches a critical fall primary campaign in debt and in lack of much hope for reviving the sputtering star of his candidacy.

That may be the narrative that Silva wants to believe, but it is dead wrong. McCain’s support of the war is one of the positions that conservatives and most mainline Republicans admire. I saw that myself in a roundtable meeting of conservative leaders in Illinois a few months ago. Instead, Republicans’ problems with McCain largely center on his support of McCain-Feingold, the perception that he panders to the MSM, and, now, his soft immigration stance.

Anyone tracking the polling would notice that the immigration debate caused the bottom to fall out of McCain’s already sagging numbers. If Silva had visited any of the big GOP political blogs or listened to any commentators other than liberal ones, he could have figured out McCain’s problem with GOP voters quite easily.

Or, he could have used an ounce of logic. ALL major Republican presidential candidates strongly support President’s Bush’s position in Iraq and believe we must achieve victory there rather than scamper for the borders like the Democrats advocate. If all the GOP candidates have the same position on Iraq and only one has dropping poll numbers, it would be elementary to assume Iraq wasn’t the reason for the decline.

Republicans like me admire McCain for his unwavering support for victory in Iraq. We all know that is a plus for McCain, not a minus. The only people who seem incapable of comprehending this are MSM reporters, who can’t wait to forward another anti-war narrative, regardless of the truth.

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