reality-based educator

John McCain has spent the last two years sucking up to George W. Bush and the conservative base, hoping to avoid another Rovian ratfucking like he got in 2000 when Karl Rove started a whisper campaign during the South Carolina primary that McCain was a "Manchurian candidate" brainwashed by the Red Chinese during his Vietnam imprisonment, had a "black baby" (actually an adopted Korean child) and a drug addict wife (McCain's wife had sought treatment for a pill problem.)

McCain has since helped raise funds for lots of conservative candidates, has been a staunch supporter of the president on all the Sunday talk fests and cable news shows, and even asked for his supporters to vote for Bush during a 2008 presidential straw poll among delegates at the Southern Republican Conference this past weekend. Anything to raise his stature among conservative voters and evangelicals.

But it may not be enough, because the whisper campaign against McCain has already started. And it's coming from his right.

This morning Lloyd Grove, gossip columnist extraordinaire at the NY Daily News, published this piece of news (hat tip to Atrios):

Is John McCain a lesbian? Maybe we'll learn the answer from Edward Klein, who insinuated as much about Hillary Clinton in his 2005 biography — largely a clip-job of hit pieces, reviewers said — and is apparently hard at work on a poison-pen book about the Arizona senator. According to Crain's New York Business, Klein claims he'll chronicle the Republican presidential front-runner's "sexual infidelity, chronic gambling and anger management." I can hardly wait.

Over the weekend Matt Drudge snarked McCain over his call to supporters to put Bush's name on their straw poll ballots, saying basically that McCain knew he couldn't win the straw poll and therefore was just trying to save face.

And then Lou Dobbs tonight ran a Bill Schneider spot on McCain entitled "The Real McCain?" that was not quite a hit piece, but came awful close. Schneider noted that some people in the GOP think McCain is two-faced hypocrite, trying to be both "GOP Maverick" by pushing lobbying reform and his anti-torture bill while still being a "GOP loyalist" who sucks up to Bush in order to get the GOP money machine to raise funds for his 2008 campaign. The Schneider piece left no doubt that McCain has some real enemies in his party who will do anything to stop his march to the White House.

It sounds like the anti-McCainites in the GOP are looking to bring him down a notch or two long before the primary campaign starts and will be trying to find an Anybody But McCain candidate to settle on by 2007. From the straw poll results at the Southern Republican Conference, George Allen and Mitt Romney seem to be the frontrunners for the ABM candidate.

That's fine by me. I would love to see either Allen or Romney take the GOP nomination in 2008. First off, Tweety Bird and Imus and all the other media suck-ups would lose their McCain hard-ons, which would be a good thing for all of us, and secondly, I think Allen or romney could very easily be beat in 2008.

So go get McCain, boys. And let the Rovian ratfucking festivities continue all the way through 2007.

I, for one, would love to hear more about McCain's sexual infidelities, chronic gambling problem, and anger management issues.