EVERYONE HATES MCCAIN!

From Crooks and Liars, some news on how Republican presidential candidates are doing in Iowa:

UI political scientists note that McCain has been passed in popularity not only by former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who earned 5.2 percent support, but also by a Democratic challenger, Obama, who is supported by 6.7 percent of Republicans.

More here.

You know, I always used to like McCain. I mean, don't get me wrong, he's conservative as all get-out, but I liked the guy. I liked his "straight talk." I liked how he told the fundamentalists to go to hell back during the 2000 campaign. I even liked how he broke ranks with other Capitol Hill Republicans during the US Yugoslavia intervention to support Clinton. Clearly, McCain's maverick image was well deserved; a conservative, yes, but not one of those lock-step right-wing pigs that have been all over the place for the last fifteen years or so, a guy a liberal could negotiate with.

I even felt sorry for him when his election hopes against Bush finally faltered due to a Karl Rove engineered "black love-child" whispering campaign during the Southern primaries--if he'd remembered that the reason he lost is because Rove successfully smeared him, he might actually be a front runner right now. Instead, he decided that "straight talk" wasn't what voters wanted, and turned himself into a GOP clone, supporting a war he knows is bullshit, reaching out to the right-wing Christian lunatics he hates.

Apparently, absolutely nobody buys it. He's now polling below a Democrat. Among Republicans. He should just quit now. I bet the only reason he hasn't is that he hopes to continue fund raising in order to pay off campaign debt.

This is all just sad.

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