The Fun Begins, If Only We'll Let It

The lingering question ever since Arizona RINO Senator John McCain effectively clinched the 2008 Republican presidential nomination has been how his long-time admirers in the Enemy Media would cover his candidacy going forward.  Would they continue to promote him, futher estranging him from the majority of the GOP base that didn't vote to nominate him but perhaps enabling him to pull the ultimate end-around and eke his way to the White House on the strength of the mythical "middle" - thus laying the foundation for the permanent disintegration of the GOP itself - or would the press, having finally succeeded in hanging the Republican base's arch enemy around the party's neck as its nominee, immediately turn on "Sailor" and begin the campaign for his personal and political eradication?

I guess we have our answer:

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

This piece is being generally described as a "smear".  That may well be, but to me it comes across as a really, really, really old smear that would have been a lot more relevant for the Times to publicize eight years ago if they truly wanted to take McCain out.  But then, eight years ago the Dark Lord of the Sith was locked in a doomed struggle for the 2000 GOP nomination against the feared, hated, and loathed George W. Bush, and there was no chance that one of the flagships of the American Left was going to do anything to impede the only man that had a prayer of stopping Dubya.  And besides, this avenue of attack was discredited even then.  Now, of course, they've successfully inflicted McCain on the Republican Party, so that veneer of obsequiously obtained "journalistic" protection is null & void.

The next question, at least to my mind, is whether this is all the "dirt" the Times could dig up, or if this is just the first salvo.  After all, this is only late February; eight and a half long months remain between now and Election Day.  Not that Senators Clinton and/or Obama need the help - even pushing McCain over the top on the GOP side could be described not unfairly as running up the score - but even if he were a threat to Donk hegemony in November, it seems awfully early for his erstwhile fawning admirers to be opening fire in earnest.  And if this is all they've got, why run with it now?  Why not let McCain stew in Bob Dole-like obscurity, trying futiley to bilk the Right into backing him, while the real 2008 presidential election is played out on the Democratic side, and then present his/her inevitability as a fait accompli?

Given the vehemence and uncategorical nature of "Sailor"'s denial, he'd better be certain there aren't any genuine skeletons rattling around in his closet, or that denial will be ironically trumpeted for the rest of the year.

On the other hand, it could always be that the Times is working a reverse-psychology angle with this hit piece on their favorite RINO.  Look at the reaction it's prompting in the starboard media:

Conservative commentators, including some who previously chastised McCain for not hewing closely to their principles, leaped to the candidate's defense.

Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the story for several months and accused the Times of delaying publication to do maximum damage.

"You wait until it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee," Ingraham said on her morning radio program, "and then you let it drop -- drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That's what the New York Times thinks."

The most popular host in talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, described the story as standard fare for the paper he accuses of coddling the left.

"You're surprised that Page Six-type gossip is on the front page of the New York Times?" said Limbaugh in reference to the gossip column of the tabloid New York Post. Limbaugh, who previously has ripped McCain as a fake conservative, said: "Where have you been? How in the world can anybody be surprised?"

Again, I don't think the Times waited to run this weak-assed lunge; I think it's just their opening salvo.  But neither do I consider Laura Ingraham's or Rush Limbaugh's responses to be defenses of McCain, but rather the withering denunciations of the NYT that their listeners would have expected.

For my disinterested take, I think the whole thing is funny as hell from pretty much every conceivable angle.  The "paper of record" has plumbed the depths of incompetent tabloidism (right below "Boy trapped in refridgerator eats own foot") and Senator McCain is not just surprised by it, but so outraged that he contemplated suing the Times for libel before cooler McCainiacal heads prevailed.  Indeed, I look forward to sitting back with a frosty beverage and throughly enjoying this lovers' quarrel that, in form and substance, could just as easily take place on one of those daytime trash talk shows, where security and the bleep button have to be kept on hot standby.

What conservatives should NOT do is succumb to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" instinct and think that because Darth Queeg is now under assault by his Enemy Media buddies, that obligates us to make common cause with the betraying SOB.  That, in fact, was the context of Limbaugh's aforequoted comments.  We let the press choose our nominee, now we're stuck with him, and his daintily coifed, carefully cultivated "good, close, personal friends" have officially inaugurated "maverick season".  What else, indeed, should anybody have expected?

As far as I'm concerned, and as far as the Right ought to be concerned, John McCain should be abandoned to toss and turn in the bed he himself short-sheeted.  A case of justice most poetic, even if its source isn't worth a journalistic damn.

UPDATE: Might this be "fire two"?:

The government's top campaign finance regulator says John McCain can't drop out of the primary election's public financing system until he answers questions about a loan he obtained to kickstart his once faltering presidential campaign.

Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason, in a letter to McCain this week, said the all-but-certain Republican nominee needs to assure the commission that he did not use the promise of public money to help secure a $4 million line of credit he obtained in November.

Ooh.  OOOOH.  Can you say, "CORRUPTION!!!!!"?  Can you say "HYPOCRISY!!!!!"?  Can you resist the orgasmic satisfaction of seeing Darth Queeg hoisted on his two favorite petards at the same time?

And the denials!:

McCain's lawyer, Trevor Potter, said Wednesday evening that McCain has withdrawn from the system and that the FEC can't stop him. Potter said the campaign did not encumber the public funds in any way.

"Well, it was done before in another campaign. ... We think it's perfectly legal. One of our advisers is a former chairman of the FEC, and we are confident that it was an appropriate thing to do," McCain told a news conference Thursday.

Again with the name-dropping.  Doesn't this man know ANYTHING himself?  And actually saying, in so many words, "Well, it's okay, because everybody does it"?  My, but the fall is a long one from a moral high horse that high.

It's not difficult to see why "Sailor" wants to duck out of the public finance system now that it's expedient to do so:

By accepting the public money, McCain would be limited to spending about $54 million for the primaries, a ceiling his campaign is near. That would significantly hinder his ability to finance his campaign between now and the Republican National Convention in September.

Complicating the dispute is the FEC's current lack of a quorum. The six-member commission has four vacancies and Senate Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over how to fill them.

In his letter, Mason told McCain he would need the votes of four commissioners to accept his withdrawal from the system.

"The commission will consider your request at such a time as it has a quorum," Mason wrote.

Without action by the Senate, McCain could be waiting indefinitely.

Looks like the choice for Lord Queeg is clear: remain "morally pure," abide by the smothering campaign finance regulatory system he has championed for years, functionally shut down his campaign for six months while the Rodham-Obama parade sucks up all the media oxygen and campaign cash ($60 million for B.O. in February alone), and be fifty points behind by convention time, or reveal himself as just another corrupt, money-grubbing pol and bury himself even further with a GOP base most of which will never reconcile themselves to his candidacy and have almost as strong an interest in his crushing November defeat as the Dems do, not to mention the "independents" that actually take that "get money out of politics" nonsense seriously.

The best part of all?  Conservatives don't need to leave fingerprints on John McCain's political corpse, because it'll have expired of its own self-inflicted wounds.  And we've got front-row seats.

Not what I was hoping for when this interminable presidential election cycle started (years and years ago), but with sixteen years of Hillarynista harangues and Obaman happy-face Bolshevism looming on the near horizon, it's the best spectacle available for a looooong time to come.