Cone of Stupid

Fools living up to their names, the usual experts have already proclaimed McCain as the "winner" in the Great Purpose-Driven Circle-Jerk this weekend, sponsored by the Saddleback franchise of JeebusCo, a division of God, Inc., blah blah blah. And in terms of preaching to the self-selecting choir, of course McCain won; these people, in their spasms of Pharisaic false piety, were simply looking for affirmation. No news there. Gee, the two-note thumbsuckers at Dobson's turd farm suddenly got religion on him. Didn't see that one coming. Shouldn't they still have the vapors from Ellen DeGeneres getting hitched that same day?

Perhaps counterintuitively, I would propose some sort of loose equation, to the effect that outside the megachurch, the larger the overall viewing audience, the better Obama does. Look, Warren's flock was McCain's in the first place, so going there to win them over was really a waste of McCain's time. To win, he either has to energize the base sufficiently, which is iffy, as he consistently peters out ~44%, or he has to poach the disaffected Clintonistas.

And most of those sob sisters are not going to appreciate McCain's pro-life stance, which he was quite clear about. They've stamped their wittle feet plenty now; once they cool down with a nice Sea Breeze and a Sex and the City/Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants/Beaches estrogen-fest, they'll think a bit more clearly about what their temper tantrum will ultimately bring them. Play a little ball, and maybe your gal would be up for the next SCOTUS seat (which actually would be a pretty good choice).

Until recently, POST had been very effective at milking that maverick label to the extent that most people couldn't really pin him down with clarity on the issue of abortion. Finally he's getting called on it, and his increasingly antagonistic relationship with a suddenly skeptical media is boxing him into a real corner. He's hugged an evangelical tar-baby here, and he can't extricate himself without alienating one or another major potential bloc.

His choice of running mate, whatever it is, may very well seal the deal; if the evangos are insufficiently enthused, they stay home, if he whips 'em up, he loses the independents and Clintonistas. The poor bastard already has to skulk around and avoid being seen with fundraising buddies like Ralph Reed and George W. Bush.

And again, he's already losing his media pals, and they're really the ones that got him to this point in the first place. Of course, they'll always be around for a booty call, but it won't be quite the same. They might be starting to get a little wise to his self-serving horseshit.

He's been running ads on NBC throughout the Olympics, but has the balls to say that its networks have it in for him. He now bookends his professed reluctance to talk about his time in the Hanoi Hilton with boilerplate aphorisms about his time in the Hanoi Hilton, which is starting to wear a lot like John Edwards' "daddy was a mill worker" card. (And for anyone who wants to insist that military service is sacrosanct in a political campaign, I have two words: Max Cleland.)

POST also whines that Andrea MitchellGreenspan is in the tank for Obama. I suggest someone take him up on that one, and openly speculate how he, John McCain, could lose the heretofore thoroughly establishment Greenspans. Maybe it's at least partly because, as he himself admitted and later denied saying, he doesn't know much about economics. Or, as it turns out, much of anything else. And if Biden ends up getting the veep nod, McCain's (fictional) foreign-policy advantage is done for.

Which would bring McCain full circle, turning him into what he once despised, a butt-boy for the very same thumpers who worked him over in South Carolina in 2000 at Fredo's behest.