Did John McCain need to do the kinds of dramatic things that he attempted to do over the last week? If you take him from the beginning of this crisis when Lehman went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago, his first statement was, as everybody knows off-key. He said "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" and then quickly backpedaled from that statement. He did not necessarily seem to have a clear sense of where he was heading at that point. Then last week he suddenly decided this crisis was so severe that he needed to come back to Washington. He wanted to postpone last Friday night's debate, suspended his campaign and called for concrete action before he resumed his campaigning. Ergo, he went back to Washington and attended a meeting where he barely spoke and which ended in tumult and instead of bringing people together resulted in driving them further apart. He then decided to go into the debate even while negotiations were still ongoing on the bailout saga.
Yesterday, he in many ways, tried to take credit before the vote on the bailout took place and then the vote blew up. Today, John McCain was picking up on the theme that House minority leader John Boehner brought up yesterday - that it was somehow Nancy Pelosi's fault that a partisan section of her speech angered some Republicans so that they ended up walking away from the vote. Well, today we've had Republican after Republican, big Conservative Republicans, come out and say - That's a bunch of baloney since John Boehner is making a ridiculous argument and that is not the reason that people voted against this measure. So now we have Republicans having their fight with one another with Conservatives saying that is not the reason that drove them to vote against this package.
John McCain merrily out on the road and blissfully unaware of any memo outlining the conflict, was now aligning himself with Boehner and the House Republican leadership who aren't particularly popular in their party right now because those quote unquote renegade Republicans had ideological differences with the bill from the very beginning.
Most of the House minority members are in very tough re-election battles and they've already tested what their constituents want and they don't like the bailout plan (which incidentally is morphing into the 'rescue plan'). Those in tight races don't want to infuriate their base because they are going to need every single one of those votes come November. What is McCain's next move? Stay tuned or as is oft said "Depends which way the wind blows".
As I'm writing this, I'm getting word that Senators Obama, Biden and McCain are all going to be present tomorrow night and will vote on the bailout plan on Capitol Hill.
