I know I should have blogged more today, but frankly I’ve been inconsolable. Yet another John McCain conference call with the blogosphere has come and gone, and once again I wasn’t invited. I guess Dr. Rosenheifen and I will be spending another week discussing those inferiority complexes that come from having been a social pariah in junior high school. (It wasn’t my fault – most of the other kids supported John Anderson for president. Should have I even aspired to be liked by such cretins?) Anyway, I should really send the bills to the McCain campaign.

Truth be told, I actually wish I was on this conference call. It sounds like I missed a seminal moment in Campaign ’08. Most of you probably know the quote by now, but for those of you just arriving to the party, I’ll bring you up to speed. When asked for a response to his opponents who criticized his Spruce Goose of an immigration bill, the ever-statesmanlike McCain said of Mitt Romney:

“Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if it changes, since it's changed in less than a year. Maybe his solution would be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn or something."

Aaah, as Robert Duvall said in Apocalypse Now, I love the smell of a campaign imploding in the morning. At least I think that was the quote.

WHEN I FIRST HEARD OF THIS STORY, my mind raced back to the immediate aftermath of the 1988 New Hampshire primary. George H.W. Bush had come back from the brink of disaster and thumped Bob Dole, and for a few seconds the two bitter rivals (who really didn’t like each other) shared a split screen. Tom Brokaw asked Bush if he had any messages for Dole, and Bush offered some trite bonhomie about looking forward to seeing Dole on the trail. Brokaw then asked Dole if he had a message for the then-Vice President, and Dole snarled, “Stop lying about my record.”

Dole’s intemperate outburst didn’t cost him the nomination, anymore than Howard Dean’s unfortunate scream cost him the 2004 Democratic nomination. The results of both days’ voting had effectively cooked the candidates before they could make their legendary boners.

With Dole, his anger was a way of snapping back at fate (and George H.W. Bush) for denying him the presidency. He knew it was over, and there was no longer any sense in being polite. So he gave the Vice President a piece of his cranky mind.

Like most of the Republican Party, John McCain has likely been stunned by the anger provoked by his good natured leap across the aisle into Teddy Kennedy’s sweaty embrace. McCain had more skin in the game than most Senators, though. Republicans typically nominate for president the guy whose turn has come. A lot of people mistakenly thought it was McCain’s turn, foremost among them McCain himself. But the events of the past five days make it all but impossible that McCain will be the Republican nominee. If the McCain campaign had enough cash on hand to do a poll over the weekend, I can only imagine how brutal the results were.

Just as Bob Dole unleashed his inner grumpy old man when defeat presented itself, McCain is now doing the same. Not that it matters at this point, but if McCain wants to save his campaign from dying at the hands of the immigration issue, he’s going to have to do a lot better than hurl childish insults. He’s actually going to have to convince the Republican Party that he’s right.

Now, as an homage to my favorite blogger, two exit questions: Was the McCain crack spontaneous or planned? And which one would be worse vis-à-vis what it reveals about the present mindset of the curmudgeonly Senator?

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