NEO-CON BIAS

As Atrios pointed out, McCain was the neo-cons' favorite in 2000 and his love for war makes him thier favorite this time around. Stephen Hayes of the neo-con organ The Weekly Standard does his best to minimize the bad reception McCain got at CPAC:

JOHN MCCAIN'S SPEECH at CPAC was surprisingly well-received. Aside from a couple small pockets of boos,...

Stanley Kurtz at the National Review Online is a lot closer to the truth:

I also recall that when McCain first mentioned immigration, there were skeptical calls and booing from what seemed like all over the room. The immigration howling seemed a lot more broadly based than the boos when McCain began his speech (those seemed to come only from the rear corner of the room).