Wonkette
Mark McKinnon is the saddest of sad Republicans in all the sad land. This weekend he sadly penned a column for Tina Brown’s Toothsome Amphigory Concerning Certain Swamp Monsters about how his old friend John McCain was forced, by the economy, to run a mean campaign about nothing. Also, John McCain is Seabiscuit and Barack Obama is Secretariat. That means Obama, like FDR, will win the “Triple Crown” of the Presidency (i.e. polio).
John McCain’s awful campaign has been so unfortunate, and unavoidable, and sad, and everybody would think David Axelrod was an idiot if his candidate weren’t winning.
There is a fundamental question we always ask in political polls. Is the country headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track? [...] Only nine percent of respondents think the country is headed in the right direction. I know what you’re thinking. “Who are those nine percent?”
So, by this measure, John McCain should be polling at about nine percent. And yet, Schmidt and company ran a good enough campaign that McCain went into the Republican Convention tied. And came out of it ahead. The only real surprise in this race is that it was ever close.
Nine percent? That is setting the bar really low. But anyhow! Many months ago Mark McKinnon looked into a crystal ball and saw that his hero John McCain would turn into a despicable loser by the end of the campaign, so he got out early. Good for him! But does this make John McCain any less of a despicable loser, for running a campaign full of awful stunts and dumb cheerless ads and racist innuendo? No, but that does not matter, to Mark McKinnon! What matters is turncoats like Mike Murphy taking potshots from the sidelines:
Of course almost all the shots come from consultants and hacks who didn’t get hired, or were fired by the McCain campaign. Or were part of some past presidential campaign in which they still revel in the glory and clink toasts to one another as if they cured the measles. Many of these people, who profess to “love McCain,” are firing blistering shots at the campaign through the press, which serves only one purpose. And it ain’t to help McCain.
Yes MURPH you have killed the dead ghost of John McCain’s dignity instead of curing measles. PWNED, the end.
The McCain Mutiny [The Daily Beast]
I thought he had to run a dirty campaign because Obama refused to have 80 trillion fixed town halls with him?
Don’t worry Walnuts, there is still a small corner in Oklahoma that loves you.
So Mike Murphy is the devil because he knew well enough to save his reputation by not letting it ride the Titanic? What a bastard turncoat Benedict Arnold.
shortsshortsshorts: And Iraq and Congo (Namibia is no longer so sure): http://www.economist.com/Vote2008/
Seabiscuit not a comparison I like much because 1) Seabiscuit was cute and lovable and 2) Seabiscuit beat the champion against all odds. So 1) is patently not true about McAngry and 2) is too scary to contemplate.
You watch. John McCain will come from behind!
I’m not saying he will win. But he will come from behind.
I liked him when he was in ‘The Kids in the Hall’ and ‘Slings and Arrows’.
Though Seabiscuit did have a deep and loving long-term relationship with a jockey named Red, and that WOULD be an interesting similarity.
If you think about it, everything about the McCain campaign has been some stunt or another. Whether it be his choice of running mate, or the suspending the campaign bullshit, or his plan to buy up all the bad mortgages, or his unofficial third running mate “Joe the plumber” everything he’s done so far has been the result of a fruitless search for a “game changer” which, if you think about it, is just another word for gimmick.
Sorry John, but you failed… and you failed big.
9% of Americans feel the country is heading in the right direction. 60% of Americans have the balls to do something about it.
Does this mean that John McCain is going to break a leg and have to be put down on the track? I never saw Seabiscuit, so I’m not sure how it ends, but no movies with horses tend to end well.
I ask you, is there anything sillier than a grown man wearing a cowboy hat?
What? Modern Republican politics is full of self-serving opportunists utterly devoid of principle and integrity?
I am shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that there is gambling going on in this casino!
(Is that McCain over by the craps table with Rick and Ilsa?)
It’s tough to fudge resume employment history these days. Only 9% successfully get away with it.
grendel: Really, i thought it was because he didn’t get the nomination last time he turned into Gollum
Murphy, McCain, McKinnon.
Clearly, the campaign needed to diversify their alphabet usage from the very start.
I know he is old and has sold his soul to the devil that is Karl Rove and his minions, but I am starting to feel bad for the old fool. He is going to be blamed for everything as Bible Spice uses him as a stepping stone to RNC greatness and he will have to return to the Senate a broken man. If I were him I would give them all the proverbial finger and switch parties upon return to the Senate.
That would be Sofa King Awesome.
Heh. The very fact that McKinnon has advised such intellectual heavyweights as Chimpy and Charlie Wilson explains everything about his continuing wank for WALNUTS!
AnnieGetYourFun: You should read the book–excellent.
Hopey is giving a good speech right now
Based on the picture, I thought this was a post about Brokeback Mountain. I feel cheated, but strangely turned on…
http://www.swotti.com/tmp/swotti/cacheYNJVA2VIYWNRIG1VDW50YWLURW50ZXJ0YWLUBWVUDC1NB3ZPZXM=/imgBrokeback%20Mountain1.jpg
Brokeback WALNUTS!
I wish I could quit you, Election!
Oh, Jack I swear…
9% of the electorate accounts for the people at Palin rallies screaming about Teh Muslins, then you factor in flagrant racism, 2nd amendment mouth breathers, the morbidly obese, Bobby Jindal supporters, and Texas. Then you have to account for overlapping. So, John McCain should easily have 11% locked down.
dano: a grown man wearing a cowboy hat at a political convention?
I have felt from the beginning that the GOP saw the race as not winnable and turned to the “maverick” McCain (not a true Republican, nor much of anything else but an opportunist) to make him walk the plank. I don’t think they stopped to think of what he could do to the rest of the ticket; I think they thought he would staunch the bleeding, but the opposite has happened. Ditto for Mooselini. Given the lack of support at what should be the very heart of his campaign, McCain has done depressingly well, a sad comment on the Reagan Hornswoggle that still envelopes much of the land. And the election ain’t over yet, despite what we read. Bad weather and low turnout could trigger a nasty episode of Harry Truman Syndrome. The fat lady hasn’t even warmed up yet.
Write a book, you bitter bastard hack. And Murphy should challenge him to a duel on the Mall - Pay Per View.
Gawd - all the damn books we will be treated to when this is over. “Sarah Palin - My Story” etc.
And Mike Murphy’s best seller “Mayhem on the Mall - How I Shot a Dickhead and Snacked on His Brains”
CNN is already reporting the end of Palin’s political career, (they just don’t realize it.
When she heads back to the frozen tundra after November 4th to do some relaxing by killing a few animals (BLAM! saying TAKE THAT you UPPITY neegro as she blasts away at a caribou) when she will suddenly collapse. People will point to THIS CNN article to counter any conspiracies.
Meanwhile former McCain advisers will be leaning back in their overstuffed chairs, sipping cognac, chuckling to themselves “that’ll teach that bitch ot go off-message”
The 9% who still love John McCain will be the first to die once Premier Obama is sworn in and transforms our once-proud nation into an atheist terror state called Abortomerica.
Delicious: Not sure if that was a dirty joke or not, but in any case it made me laugh out loud. Excellent comic timing. Thanks.
AnnieGetYourFun: They shoot horse’s asses, don’t they?
I feel like I’ve just read a reprint of, “I’m Okay, You’re Okay”.
Besides to make nice to Schmidt and Obama simultaneously, what was the point of Marky’s article?
NoWireHangers: And that would be why McCain is polling so well in Utah
…and the end of the election can we ship WALNUTS! out to the glue factory?!
Wait . . . if McCain should only be getting 9% of the vote, is McKinnon suggesting that he is responsible for the clusterfuck that is our country right now? Or is he accepting that McCain will have the same policies as W?
Wow, if only Walnuts could have kept this communications dynamo on staff he may have had a chance!
lawrenceofthedesert: yeah, but note, more people have early voted in GA already than voted TOTAL in 2004. And most of those are registered Dems. I think early voting is going to make a huge difference in this election.
Delicious: Walnuts is the kinda guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around.
As an actual horse racing fan, I find this Seabiscuit comparison offensive. McCain is clearly Zippy Chippy, an aged gelding who lost more than 100 races.
Murphy, McKinnon, McCain… Walnuts! is the President of Ireland? Did Hillary lock that title up during last St. Patrick’s Day?
NoWireHangers:
Beautiful.
McKinnon was a folksinger in Denver before he somewhat belatedly attended the University of Texas and edited the paper there. All the campaigns he’s worked on (Ann Richards, Bob Lanier, George W Bush, John McCain, plus his unwillingness to campaign against Hopey) have had an aspect of folk-heroism to them, the drugstore folk-hero Bush notwithstanding. McKinnon’s true calling is as a longhair version of David Gergen or David Brooks, proffering an alt-country version of national greatness themes.
Neilist: Doubledown!!! Doubledown!! This is the only strategy, vision, gut, faux wisdom McCain knows. He justs takes a dump, plugs up with his favorite dice, pulls those magical dice out of his ass, and rolls em again, and again. I guess that’s why they call it craps.
Ahh, god, that may be my favorite picture of a political figure I hate, ever. It’s like it was taken the exact moment McKinnon got the terrible vision that his hero Walnuts would throw away everything he ever stood for and be remembered only as a detestable old wreck.
I don’t know who McKinnon is other than the saddest rodeo clown ever.
An animated ode to John McCain’s terrible campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjomYMe6t_U