Taking Away Mortgage Interest Deductions

Seems to be a lot of articles advocating the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction. Here are a couple:
Businessweek
Real Clear Markets
The arguments in these articles seem to center around three points; rationalizing tax policy, the subprime crisis, and the homeowners being subsidized by the non homeowners. I support rationalization and simplifying of the tax code. But blaming the subprime crisis on mortgage interest deduction is absurd. The deduction has been in place for years, way before the subprime problem or the previous boom or the one before that or the one before that. The subprime crisis is the result of a collapse in lending standards propelled by Wall Street's mad chase for fees from securitization of loans. As for the homeowners being subsidized by the non homeowners there is an element of truth to this argument but I believe it is way too narrow. I do not have the statistics but I suspect homeowners as a group pay far more taxes of all kinds than do non home owners. Furthermore, we have long considered homeownership by as many of our citizens as possible to be beneficial to the country.
Eliminating the mortgage interest deduction as part of a total simplification of tax policy makes sense but otherwise it amounts to nothing more than a backdoor subsidy to the landlord class.