Yesterday I left you with two maddening exit questions regarding Senator McCain. Sorry – they were trick questions. Whether the Senator planned his remarks about Romney or spoke out of temperamental pique is irrelevant, and completely so.

The past week has been John McCain at his worst. He has carefully calibrated his moods, oscillating between anger and arrogance. And what was bugging John McCain? The fact that his attempt to shove an immigration bill down the collective American throat that only he, George Bush and Ted Kennedy loved was taking on water.

Substantively, it was an awful week for McCain. Putting aside the merits of his immigration “reform” boondoggle (not that there are any), he championed a bill that the Republican electorate hated. Immigration is a huge issue to the Republican regulars, and any bill that deals with the current batch of 12 million without pro-actively preventing the next 12 million strikes them as seriously offensive.

Republicans don’t even want to talk about “paths to citizenship” while the border remains unsecured. And the McCain-Kennedy bill made no serious efforts to secure the border. The inevitable result of its passage would have been another 12 million flowing into the country while this 12 million collected their government issued Z-Visas. It would have created a moral hazard for potential immigrants, both legal and illegal, on an unprecedented scale.

Beyond the substance, there was McCain’s style. McCain said he wished YouTube had been there with its cameras to tape his incident with Senator Cornyn just to show how small a deal it was. Beyond the generational misunderstanding of how YouTube functions, the phrase, “[Expletive] you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room," even if delivered in soothing happy tones, would still betray a certain arrogance.

AND THEN THERE WERE McCAIN’S comments about Romney yesterday. I don’t want to argue about whether they were funny or not. Some people found “Alice” side-splitting because Flo was a hoot. That’s why they make 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins.

But even for those who think this was the most hilarious riposte in the history of American politics, there remains a sobering question for Senator McCain. He has crafted and is pushing a bill that is wildly unpopular with the American public and the Republican base. Until thwarted yesterday, he was trying to rocket the bill through the Senate before anyone either in the general public (other than Hugh) or the Senate had actually read it.

I know the McCain campaign doesn’t eagerly hang on my advice, but this would seem an appropriate hour for the Senator to substantively defend the bill that he and Ted Kennedy have written. He should be selling it to Republicans, because as things stand now, Republicans hate it regardless of whether Senator McCain “knows more about this than anyone in the room.” In other words, McCain can’t undo all the self-inflicted damage by taking potshots at his rivals.

It’s a moot issue whether he declines to substantively defend the bill, either in public or before other Senators, out of arrogance or because the bill is in fact indefensible. The political fact on the ground is that John McCain, after spending two months trying to desperately make nice with the Republican base, has once again caused mortal offense. And he and his campaign don’t seem to know it.

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