In 2000 he felt he could take on Christian conservative leaders in the South. Bad timing. In 2000 they were at the peak of their 20 years of power. Now their followers are tired and questioning after a generation of political activism. And many leaders seem compromised–dinged after all that time in the air. Mr. McCain could rebuke them now and thrive. Instead he decided to attempt to embrace them. ~Peggy Noonan

This is an interesting column on McCain, and most of it makes a lot of sense.  What I think Ms. Noonan underestimates here is just how much McCain’s shots at religious conservative leaders angered religious conservatives around the country, and not because of any particular fondness of or loyalty to Falwell and Robertson, the main targets of his derision.  This would have been true whether or not those leaders were very influential or not.  What mattered was the language McCain chose to use and the targets he chose to direct that language against. 

In hitting Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” he actually came off sounding like someone who believed that religious conservatives in the party as a whole were also “agents of intolerance,” which reinforced the image and confirmed the reality that McCain was not only not “one of us” religious conservatives (which everyone already knew) but that he would be only too glad to skewer Christian conservatives if he thought it would make for good press.  It was part of his, “I’m an independent, moderate guy” shtick and he said it to curry favour with the press and convince independent voters that he was their kind of guy.  It was the signal of contempt for Christian conservatives as a whole that really sank his chances in 2000 in South Carolina in particular (not helped by his flip-flopping on the battle flag and the brass-knuckles tactics of the Bush team) even more than his tangling with somewhat influential pastors.  That is why he crawls back to seek the support of the people he mocked last time, yet ironically the leaders he now flatters have less influence than before while the religious conservative voters themselves are not impressed by McCain’s sudden re-discovery of their importance in the nominating process.  If Romney has flip-flopped, McCain has simply flopped as far as these voters are concerned, and they have no interest in letting him get back up.