So says the Boston Globe:

As Senator John McCain travels the nation on behalf of Republican candidates, his proposal to send tens of thousands of additional US troops to Iraq is making things awkward for some of the congressional candidates he’s campaigning for. His stance is also shaping the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign.

As public support for the war dwindles, it is hard to find any Republican candidates who publicly agree with McCain, an Arizona Republican who is among the party’s brightest hopes for the presidency in 2008. While staunch military supporters such as Virginia’s Republican senators, John W. Warner and George Allen, have begun to suggest a change of course in Iraq with fewer US troops, McCain’s proposal to add troops has distanced him from the mainstream of his party.

McCain aides say the senator, a Vietnam veteran and former POW who remembers serving in an unpopular war, is acting on the courage of his convictions without regard to the political ramifications. Since the war began, he has repeatedly urged the Bush administration to send more troops to Iraq, and he says he still believes that is the best way to secure the country.

“My view — which is clearly a minority view — has been, for a long period of time, that we need more troops on the ground,” McCain said last week while campaigning for a GOP House candidate in Iowa. “We need to put down what is now a classic insurgency.”

But establishing himself as perhaps his party’s biggest Iraq hawk has increasingly isolated McCain within the GOP ranks, and could harm his 2008 presidential prospects if the war remains as unpopular as it is now, political analysts say.

“What McCain is doing now is suicidal,” said Alan Wolfe, a political science professor at Boston College. “There’s just no chance that in 2008 we’re going to have a democratic, peaceful Iraq that’s saying, ‘Thank you so much for sending those extra 100,000 troops.’ He wants to be admired as Mr. Integrity, but he’s hurting himself with many independent voters, and many Republicans.”

Well, leave it to the left-of-Pravda Boston Globe to publically call out Sen. McCain on one of the issues in which he agrees with the Conservative wing of his party.??

If the Dem nominee is Hillary Clinton, which candidate do you think Americans will trust the most on issues of National Defense? The choice will be clear after a thorough examination of the 8 years of utter and complete failure which is?the Clinton record in this area.

-Thanks to R4’08 reader LJ for the tip!?