with friends like these

At the very same time Senator Asshole was on the floor of the Senate shilling for the current president’s war, McCain’s top two campaign aids were announcing that they were no longer going to work to make Johnny Mac the next president.

“Ironic,” says Joe Sudbay over at AMERICAblog:

In 2000, the Bush team destroyed McCain's presidential aspirations by running a fiercely negative campaign against him. In 2008, the Bush team destroyed McCain's presidential aspirations because the Senator remained fiercely loyal to the failed policies of the failed presidency of George Bush.

Most likely, both Bush (who did his own fantasyland fear mongering on Tuesday) and McCain will spin all of this as the story of two men of conviction standing side by side, come what may. But the reality is more tawdry.

McCain has been contorting himself and twisting his “straight talk” for the better part of this decade in a failed attempt to find his party’s ideological sweet spot, while the president McCain has chosen to mimic stands more or less frozen, increasingly desperate for allies, and even more desperate for approval from his daddy’s generation.

McCain clings to his lead-lined life preserver while Bush grasps at any straw man that will have him—even one going down in flames. It’s getting so it is hard to tell who is the greater liability for whom. Is it worse for McCain to be seen as so tied to Mr. 29%, or is it worse for Bush to have Senator McFlop as his biggest cheerleader?