The Agony Of Victory

The rude awakenings keep piling on for Republican presidential nominee John McCain.  His attempts to swindle conservatives into supporting him took a hit this morning with the announcement that he will attempt to use Governor Girlyman as his general campaign template - in California, anyway.  Though if memory serves, Ah-nuld wasn't in Starship Troopers, and I have a bit 'o difficulty seeing an old man standing for the notion that you have to have served in the military before you can be a full-fledged "citizen" getting over in a state as hard-left as Gollyfornia.  Particularly when pitted against La Clinton Nostra or the Obama Ascendancy.

Meanwhile, another of his self-inflicted wounds flared hotter, as his "good, close, personal friends" on the other side of the aisle followed the lead of the New York Times from last week:

The national Democratic party wants campaign finance regulators to investigate whether Senator John McCain would violate money-in-politics laws by withdrawing from the primary election's public finance system.

McCain, who had been entitled to $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary, has decided to bypass the system so he can avoid spending limits between now and the GOP's national convention in September.

Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason notified McCain last week that he can only withdraw from public financing if he answers questions about a campaign loan and obtains approval from four members of the six-member commission. Such approval is doubtful in the short term because the commission has four vacancies and cannot convene a quorum.

"John McCain poses as a reformer but seems to think reforms apply to everyone but him," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday.

Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is the betrayal of a brother!  How could Dr. Demented DO this to Darth Queeg, after all the Sith master has done for the Democrat Party?  It's almost as if the Donks never considered John McCain to be one of them after all.  How's that for loyalty?

If you think I'm not enjoying these comeuppances immensely, my sacrcastic irony must be even better than I think it is.  Especially the fact that it is McCain himself who had a large hand in depopulating the FEC to such an extent that it cannot even cobble together a quorum to pull his fundraising bacon out of the fire now - even if it had been inclined to do so.  Which would also be per his design.  The adage, "Do as I say, not as I do" comes whimsically to mind.

Just wait until the phalanx of left-wing 527 organizations gets through with him.  That will NOT be pretty.

And yet there are, and evidently will continue to be, Republicans and even conservatives who insist that we have to close ranks behind this man.  Even if I was inclined to forgive, forget, and drink the McCainiac Kool-Aid, why would I want to take on the thankless task of spending the next eight months trying to defend him from an endless fusillade of Donk attacks the grist for which "Sailor" himself gleefully stockpiled on their behalf?  At least when we tried to smear campaign lipstick on the Bob Dole pig back in 1996, the only insuperable obstacle was his ideological and political erectile dysfunction; we didn't have to wade through a PR minefield to do it.

And still the effort failed miserably, as it was doomed to from the start.  How much more the Benedict Arnold of the GOP?

Sorry, that's a "mission impossible" even Tom Cruise wouldn't touch.

UPDATE: Here's a (possible) general election sneak preview:

Senator Barack Obama said Saturday that the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, Senator John McCain, has lobbyists as top aides and "many of them have been running their business on the campaign bus while they've been helping him."

The Democratic presidential hopeful also said McCain's health care plans reflect "the agenda of the drug and insurance lobbyists, who back his campaign and use money and influence to block real health care reform."

This would be standard, unremarkable, dismissible left-wing campaign boilerplate but for the fact that Sailor has spent the past decade building his national political persona as The Ultimate Reformer.  Now with his plummet from his campaign finance reform moral hobby horse, and his long-term lobbyist hypocrisy coming into Donk crosshairs, and with the McCain campaign stubbornly insisting that it will highlight his "record of change" in the fall campaign, well....

You know what they say: "reform" politicians are oftentimes the biggest crooks of all.  Compared to that, a Marxian True Believer like Our Mr. Hussein will appear a breath of fresh, Camelotian air.

UPDATE II: Gotta like the take of Brad Smith (the former FEC commissioner and free speech advocate with whom Senator McCain long feuded and who was treated like a criminal by the "Arizona maverick") on this (via CS):

Regardless of all the legal maneuvering, the bottom line is that Senator McCain is going to blow through the spending limits and take his chances with the FEC down the road.  To do otherwise would be to limit himself to less than $5 million in spending between now and September, which would be electoral suicide.  The spending caps killed Bob Dole in 1996, and Dole at least was able to have his campaign supported by the Republican Party in the interim.  However, because of the McCain-Feingold (oh what wonderful twists there are to this plot) the Republican Party cannot do for McCain what it did for Dole – support his campaign with soft-money funded issue ads.  No, the only option for McCain is to spend, and let the legal chips fall where they may. 

The major penalty for violating the spending cap after agreeing to take the public subsidy is that you have to repay the government money.  This is a big deal if you've already spent it, but in McCain's case, he hasn't spent any government money.  Beyond that, the penalties include up to a $25,000 fine and five years in jail for a knowing and willful violation.  No one thinks for a moment that John McCain will or should go to jail for this.  Even the signers of the loan – McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and fundraiser Carla Eudy – aren’t really in danger of seeing a prison cell.  And a $25,000 fine?  Chicken feed. 

But McCain cannot just blow off the FEC.  While the FEC may lack a quorum now, some day, presumably, it may again have one.  At that point, it will be able to vote to issue subpoenas to obtain copies of McCain’s loan documents, internal bank memoranda, McCain campaign memoranda and more.  It may take the depositions of the Eudy, Davis, ubiquitous McCain aide Mark Salter, and anyone else who might have evidence – even Senator McCain.  It won’t be pretty.  So this may be much more a PR problem than anything else for the McCain campaign.  That McCain has made his reputation as a “reformer” makes it all the more a PR problem.  But it’s a risk that simply has to be run.  There is no other choice. [emphases added]

Translation: Lord Queeg is going to be derided by his erstwhile media buddies and "good, close, personal friends" on the other side of the aisle as a corrupt phony each and every day for the next eight months.  And if by some miracle Senator McCain were to make it to the White House, he would start under a cloud of scandal and Donk congressional investigations before he was even inaugurated.

And to think all this unpleasantness could have been avoided by nominating Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani instead.  Who then would have been torpedoed by a Hillary-electing McCain "independent" third (or, with Michael Bloomberg and Ralph Nader running, fifth) candidacy in the fall, of course.  But that at least would have been a clarifying, RINO-discrediting event, instead of the "We're screwed no matter how it turns out" plight that actually does face us.

Here's another question for the "drafted McCainiacs" like Hugh Hewitt: Is a pol whose credibility and reputation is already going up in smoke really the guy you want out there pretending to talk up the need to win the war?