The situation in this campaign is absolutely surreal. Republicans have always had that Dr. Stranglove bizarro feel to them, but there is no doubt that they are excruciatingly effective when it comes to campaigns and fooling people to vote for them. What McCain is doing now is just rudderless, he is merely a leaf held hostage to the mercy and whim of the winds.
I just for the life of me cannot figure out what the Hell he is trying to accomplish, other than look plain ol' silly.
First, he suspends his campaign to go to Washington to work on the crisis. At that point, I and I'm sure a lot of you went "uh oh." Was this going to be another Obama is unAmerican, put himself before country bashfest in the making, abetted by the lemming media? It really could of been, and kudos to Obama for taking a stand and making an effective case against going, but I have to say, it's McCain's senility that has really let him off the hook.
This is what I expected from the McCain campaign, bringing out Spaulding (Tucker Bounds) from a day at the country club to make ridiculous statements like this to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC:
"Before John McCain suspended his campaign yesterday, the situation that we’re looking at today looked very different then. After he showed leadership and called for bipartisanship, and called for us to put partisanship aside and tackle this solution, here we are."
Certainly what it should look like the McCain campaign was going for - country before politics, leadership, and maverick. It doesn't really matter that the leading story across the nation is that the deal is unraveling, b/c McCain's lie merchants can build the story he is leading.
But wait, there's more. When a media meme started to develop that McCain was scuttling the process, McCain's campaign immediately went into motion, and started sending reporters a Marc Ambinder report that he was doing......nothing. Sam Stein at Huffington Post covers it:
"McCain himself did not bring up those [alternative] proposals" or attack the compromise, Ambinder reported, citing multiple sources. The McCain campaign called this an "accurate" reporting of what had happened, seemingly pressing the point that McCain had not tried to derail the compromise.
As Ambinder (who is an asshat) puts out, and the McCain campaign apparently didn't get, is that if McCain isn't submitting new proposals, nor is he rallying Republicans to support the bill - what the Hell is he doing there? You suspend a campaign to go sit quietly in a corner?
I have a feeling that this is going to blow up in McCain's face even more than it already has. There will be no winners in this decision, b/c each side is very unpopular. Do you become the side which just gave Wall Street $700 billion (regardless of safeguards) or are you the side that just sat by while the market crashed? McCain will be right in the middle of that, as he has now attached his name to it and the focus is on him being there. Either way, he is going to catch some heat.
As a side note to all Obama surrogates, pay attention to Barney Frank. He has been dropping a piano on McCain every day since the suspension. This, is how it is freakin' done.
"All of a sudden, now that we’re on the verge of making a deal, John McCain drops himself in to make a deal," Frank said. "I really worry about this politicization of it....We’re trying to rescue the economy, not the McCain campaign.
"It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys."
Senator McCain has said he had to interrupt his campaign and couldn’t do a debate because he had to come here to help us. God save us from such help. But in any case, there is no sign whatsoever that Senator McCain’s got any real role here, so he certainly ought to feel free to go back and debate.
I'm almost starting to feel sorry for the guy...you know, if he wasn't a complete scumbag.