McCain-Rodham '08

Wouldn't that be the ultimate "maverick" move?  It'd be political suicide for Lord Queeg, but still somehow a fitting final combustion of his presidential ambitions and political career.  It probably wouldn't be such a hot idea for Mrs. Clinton, either, who has 2012 to look forward to after her newbie primary conquerer finishes taking himself down in flames.

But aren't these series of ads - doubtless on the launching pad for months - the next best thing?:

Note how the thrust of the ad isn't sympathetic to Her Nib, but focuses on Obama's radicalism, evasiveness about same, and his ego.  It as much as says what I said last week: BO is sinking in the polls because Americans have learned who and what he really is, yet he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge the need for Hillary on the ticket to reverse his fortunes and unify, if not electrify, his party.  He refused to do what John Kerry, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan all did: either pick the primary season runner-up in order to turn the page to the general campaign, and/or select a running mate who strengthened the ticket.  Instead he went with a guy who is a twenty-year-older version of himself - in order to, so we're to believe, "minimize his biggest weaknesses".

That they're Hillary's lines - and far more likely to be sincere than the lukewarm neutrality she'll be dishing out tonight - is the salt in Obama's self-inflicted wounds.

Here's another, even more obviously piggy-backed, case in point:

Parenthetically, did you ever think you would see the day when a Republican presidential nominee would let Hillary Clinton do his speaking for him and then say, "Hillary's right"?

But in this case, it's the best of both worlds.  She IS right in the sense of Lucifer's being all hat and no cattle, an avenue of attack McCain has long since established and which recent world events have strongly reinforced.  And playing up her own attacks along that line reinforces the meme and helps hold open the wounds of division that the Denver Debauchery is supposed to close.

And, yes, it's also a play for those eighteen million Donks who hung the chad for the Empress:

Well, what the heck?  If the polls are reasonably accurate, nine million of those Donks will "go home" to Father Barry, and the rest will be somewhere close to evenly split between Ralph Nader, staying home, and sticking it to the bastard who stuck it to their heroine by voting for her good, close, personal friend, Senator McCain.  If I'm Team Sith, I'll take either of the latter two options, and the more of the third I can get will be pure gravy.

Besides, nothing in this spot exacerbates the intransigent trust problems between Sailor and the GOP base.  It is another example of McCain exploiting an opening Obama handed to him on a silver platter.  He'd be an idiot not to try and take advantage of it.