Battle Of The Mavericks

Well, that's what this stage of the presidential campaign is SUPPOSED to be.  Both candidates taking their bases for granted and tacking towards the center to battle it out for the cliched "independent/undecided" voters that supposedly always determine elections.  Except, of course, for the elections the GOP was winning up until 2006, when after more than a decade of ruling as the majority by way of concentrating on mobilizing the center-right, tighty-righties made perfection the enemy of the good and sent the entire conservative movement into disarrayed exile.

All of a sudden, being in a flat-footed tie with Barack Hussein Obama has gone to John Sith McCain's head, and he's reverted to his turncoat, back-stabbing, grandstanding-to-the-Left form.  With this latest web video, Sailor isn't just challenging Lucifer for the hearts and minds of the Democrat rank & file, he's claiming to be more popular with Dems than the Incarnate One himself:

How's that make you feel, conservatives?  Look how popular the GOP nominee is with the other side!  Look how eager they are for him to "work with" them on center-left legislation!  Why, he's Barack Obama with gravitas!  Whoopee!

And this energizes what are supposed to be his own supporters how, exactly?  But if you're wondering that, you're missing the point: in McCain's mind, the Right is a done deal.  We're so horrified of the spectre of President Hussein that we'll do ANYTHING to avoid it, even backing the Democratic Republican who has been the GOP's enemy within for a decade and whose governance will make us wish Obama had won so that the Democrats would get the blame for it.  No, no, this is about "building the base," this is about "straddling the massive middle," this is about making Obama have to defend his own rear echelon and further discomboluating him.

If McCain was facing a serious, legitimate, seasoned opponent - i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton - first of all, he'd be down double-digits, and second, this flailing marketing schitzophrenia would be seen as desperation, or McCain me-tooing La Clinton Nostra's trademark "triangulation" techniques.  Really, how much experience does one need to recognize when an opponent is self-destructing and simply step out of the way, or even out-flank him by getting to his right while he's trying to get to your left?

Evidently, more experience - and more prudence - than the Chosen One possesses.  His dissing of the Clintonoids over the past two months has left this opening for Maverick, and rather than recognize the strategy and not falling into its trap, BO is diving in head-first:

Yes, but what does Obama himself believe? “I think oil companies are amoral. They want to make as much money as they can for their shareholders, which is what corporations do,” he says. “The difference is the nature of the kind of outsized profits they make that may have no relationship to their investments or their production. The fact, for example, [that] the shortage of refinery capacity could actually increase their profits so the less they invest the more they make indicates that you are not dealing with someone making widgets out there.”

Obama circled back to our conversation when a questioner at yesterday’s town hall meeting asked why he singled out oil companies. This time his answer ventured beyond refinery capacity and widgets.

“So the question is, does it make more sense for the oil companies to pay for it or does it make more sense for the struggling waitress who is barely getting by to pay for it?” he said. “And the answer is, I’m going to fight for the waitress, not because I hate the oil companies but because I think it’s more fair.”

Never mind Obama's cartoonish depiction of "Big Oil" as Snidely Whiplashian, mustache-twirling fat-cats patterned after the emblematic plutocrat character from Monopoly, or the rather gaping complicity of environmental extremists and Donk policitians in barring access to price-lowering domestic supplies.  It's like Obama saw McCain's "original Maverick" ad and the boast that he'll "battle Big Oil," and panicked himself into reflexively going out and declaring, in essence, "Hey, McCain isn't the economy-destroying 'populist," I AM!!!"

Leaving nothing to the vagaries of subtlety, Team Hussein rushed out an ad underscoring (and re-marking) his hard-left turf:

Forget the hoary old lies about the Bush tax cuts and the economic illiteracy that refuses to recognize that high corporate tax rates are precisely what makes job outsourcing more likely.  This is akin to a wife receiving a phone call from the women she suspects of being her husband's mistress reassuring her that, "No, he hasn't been unfaithful, despite the countless times he tried, and you should take him back, because he really does love you."

Barack Obama is actually trying to mend John McCain's fences with the Republican base he's just ball-shot yet again out of an astounding eructation of insecurity that his own base was in jeopardy.

Sheesh, maybe both these men need some couch time.