The Left "Swift-Boats" McCain

There is no hypocrisy, no heinousness, no viciousness of which liberal Democrats are not capable.  And at no time are these traits more likely to be on full display than when their candidate has just gotten his ass kicked in a debate.

Unable to accept that their messiah had been pounded into the ground by the devil, two lefty memes have emerged from the Saddleback Massacre: McCain the "cheater" and McCain the "plagiarizer":

(Videotape)

SENATOR JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): Defeat [evil]. Couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do it. I will get that done.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Andrea Mitchell, that's a pretty clear contrast.

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, there was the crisp, immediate, forceful response by John McCain, clearly in a comfort zone because he was with his base. And Barack Obama, taking a risk in going there but seeing an opportunity. And a much more nuanced approach. The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: He seemed so well prepared.

News flash to these two "journalists": Yes, Senator McCain got a peek at the questions "Reverend" Warren was going to ask - as did Senator Hussein:

So it turns out that Pastor Rick Warren, in an effort to increase the candidates’ comfort level with his pioneering format, gave each of them a heads-up on several of the hardest questions he asked Saturday night during his “the Saddleback Civil Forum on the presidency.”

A source close to Warren tells Playbook that the candidates [plural] knew in advance they would be asked their own greatest moral failure, America’s greatest moral failure, and the three wisest people in their lives.

The source said Obama also knew he would be asked if he’d be willing to commit to an emergency plan for orphans, like President Bush has for AIDS. Give Obama credit for answering candidly: “I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea.” [emphasis added] 

So much for meme #1.  Which leads to a rather embarrassing question for the zombies of Obamanation: If their god, with the assistance lent to his omniscience, knew the questions that were coming, how is it that he still managed to hem, haw, "ummm," and all-around bungle them so badly?  Is he really that incapable of sounding coherent, much less eloquent, without a teleprompter screen in front of him?

How badly did the Weasel of the Tribe of Jeremiah strike out - on stage and in the post-"forum" spin?  The Lamb's shephard wasn't even buying his performance:

When you asked Obama about when life begins, he punted, saying 'it's above my pay grade.' Should someone running for the highest office in the land have a clear answer to that, or is that kind of ambivalence acceptable?

No. I think he needed to be more specific on that. I happen to disagree with Barack on that. Like I said, he's a friend. But to me, I would not want to die and get before God one day and go, 'Oh, sorry, I didn't take the time to figure out' because if I was wrong then it had severe implications to my leadership if I had the ability to do something about it. He should either say, 'No scientifically, I do not believe it's a human being until X' or whatever it is or to say, 'Yes, I believe it is a human being at X point,' whether it's conception or anything else. But to just say 'I don't know' on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me...

Some Obama supporters are claiming that McCain saw the questions before the forum began, giving him a leg up on Obama.

They're dead wrong. That's just sour grapes. They both did fantastically well. The only question he knew, I gave them the first question and I was changing the questions within an hour [before the forum began.] I talked to both of them a week before the debate and told them all the themes. I talked personally to John McCain and I talked personally to Barack Obama. I said, 'We'll talk about leadership, talk about the roles of government,' I said I'd probably have a question about climate change, probably a question on the courts. I didn't say, 'I'm going to ask which Supreme Court justice would you not [nominate]. They were clearly not prepared for that.

A source at the debate tells me that McCain had access to some communications devices in the few minutes before he went on stage with you and that there was a monitor in his green room, in violation of the debate rules.

That's absolutely a lie, absolutely a lie. That room was totally free, with no monitors—a flat out lie. [emphases added]

But "Barack" did "fantastically well," which must be why his campaign is so desperate to save face that it is not only accusing McCain of making up his story of seeing a guard draw a cross in the dirt in his Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, but ripping it off from the writings of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.  Or maybe just an anecdote told by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.  Or maybe he stole it from one of his fellow POWs.  Or maybe the North Vietnamese planted the story in his subconscious in the process of "Manchuria-izing" him.

And their evidence for this otherwise character-assassinating charge?  Crickets.  Unlike the instant response of Team Sith:

The only similarity between the two stories is a cross in the dirt, but it is hardly an unlikely coincidence that there were practicing Christians in both Russia and Vietnam, or that in the prisons of those two Communist countries the only crosses to be found were etched in the dirt, as easily disappeared as the Christians who drew them.

But those desperate to discredit Senator McCain's record will have to impugn his fellow prisoners as well. Orson Swindle, who was held as a prisoner of war along with McCain, tells the McCain Report that he heard this particular story from McCain "when we first moved in together." That was in the summer of 1971, Swindle said, though "time blurred" and he couldn't be sure. He said it was some time around then that the Vietnamese moved all "36 troublemakers" into the same quarters, where they "talked about everything under the sun."

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others. John McCain has often said he witnessed a thousand acts of bravery while he was imprisoned, and though not every one has been submitted into the public record, they are remembered by the men who were there (one such only recently reported by Karl Rove though it escaped mention in any of Senator McCain's books). But as Swindle said, this is a "desperate group of people trying to make something out of nothing."

At the very least, a group of people who, like their candidate, are not deep thinkers and don't consider the possible consequences of their words and actions before launching into them.  Such as the folly of attacking McCain's patriotism after whining about McCain supposedly attacking Obama's.  And focusing public attention on McCain's greatest strength and one of Obama's biggest weaknesses.  And actually doing to a REAL war veteran now what Democrats falsely accused the Right of doing to the combat fantasist John Kerry four years ago: smearing and dishonoring his record of service to his country.

How cement-headed is this flailing counterattack from Team Messiah?  They've got moi defending a guy I don't even support.  Can they keep it up long enough to by main force haul my fat ass into voting for that betraying cracker?  Even I'm starting to wonder.