John McCain blew that up. He stood with all the Democrats and six of his GOP pals for the self-declared powers of the Senate, against his caucus, his president, his party, and the millions of voters who had worked for control of the Senate so that the courts could be protected.

At the time as the instant outrage shook D.C. and ever since Senator McCain and his allies have argued that the GOP will someday praise his preservation of the judicial filibuster, though the GOP had only resorted to it once, and then only briefly and in a bipartisan fashion to stop a corrupt Abe Fortas from being elevated to the position of Chief Justice in the last weeks of the LBJ Administration. No Republican filibuster of a judicial nominee to a circuit court has ever occurred on the floor of the Senate, and it is extremely doubtful it ever will, because most Republicans are originalists and they understand that this is not what the Framers intended and further understand that the continued hyper-politicization of the confirmation process is an ongoing victory for the most radical elements in the battle over the courts. You cannot be against the Constitution while trying to save it, and you cannot defend the perks of the Senate's out-of-touch elites at the expense of the Third Branch and call yourself a friend of the Constitution.

What else do we know about Senator McCain's attitudes about the courts and the Constitution?

We know as well that Senator McCain's regard for the First Amendment is contingent. Thus McCain-Feingold, and of course Senator McCain's doubling down with his brief against Wisconsin Right To Life's right to speak its mind about judicial nominees. How can the Senator claim to be pro-life when on the two greatest issues the Senate has dealt with on the subject --judges and the right of pro-life groups to persuade the public-- John McCain has been against the interests of the pro-life community?

And the rule of law generally? The path to citizenship via the Z Visa was not a modest attempt to regularize a population in the country illegally. It was a wholesale abandonment of the idea that law breaking had serious consequences.

All of this and more is backdrop to the key question: What kind of Supreme Court justices would John McCain appoint if he was elected president?

They would certainly be better than those Hillary would appoint, which is why I will support Senator McCain should he manage to use the MSM to get the GOP nomination.

But there is no reason to believe that McCain nominees would be originalists. John McCain's heart isn't with the originalist movement. It cannot be. The Gang of 14, McCain-Feingold, and McCain-Kennedy can be read no other way.

Rudy would have Ted Olson at his side as SCOTUS candidates were evaluated. Mitt Romney would turn to Harvard's Mary Anne Glendon, his General Counsel as governor, the ardent pro-lifer Peter Flaherty and of course Wisconsin Right to Life's counsel James Bopp --a trio of pro-life superstar lawyers with a passion for the Court's future. Mike Huckabee's pro-life credentials are also gold plated. Each of them would approach the appointment of justices with an understanding of the enormous significance of those choices.

We have to assume that John McCain would view such appointments as he did the First Amendment when McCain-Feingold was being debates or the Constitution's advise and consent provisions at the time of the Gang --mere suggestions to be pushed aside if his own judgment inclined in an opposite way.

John McCain is a great American, but he is not an originalist when it comes to the Constitution. As the GOP moves toward the final decisions in its nomination process, it must remember that an attachment to the Constitution, once abandoned, is hard to reclaim. If it nominates John McCain, it sends into the fall a very weak candidate trying to rally a sullen base. If on the chance he wins --an unlikely event as he is increasingly understood to be another Bob Dole when it comes to campaigning-- no one should be heard to complain if his SCOTUS nominees come from the "center" as he seeks consensus and a second term.