“I feel sorry for Meghan McCain,” said Judith Warner in The New York Times. The daughter of Sen. John McCain should be allowed to quietly grow up as other “smart, ambitious, and untested young people” do—by going to grad school or getting a job. Instead, she’s got a Daily Beast column, a book contract, and TV appearances, all of which help her to “embarrass herself on the national stage.” (watch Meghan McCain on The Colbert Report)

You know something is wrong when even a liberal like Judith Warner feels bad that a conservative like Meghan McCain is “making a fool of herself,” said Rod Dreher in BeliefNet. What the young McCain doesn’t grasp is that “she's not getting on TV because people think she's genuinely got anything interesting or important to say.” She’s just “a useful idiot for the media left.”

Meghan McCain’s “brash” blog posts and tweets calling herself “pro-sex” make her an easy target, said Carla Marinucci in the San Francisco Chronicle, but Republicans should listen to what she has to say. She “may be at the forefront of a new GOP breed”—young conservatives who are “interested in fiscal responsibility and less government involvement in people's lives, while supporting environmentalism and civic engagement.”