McCain - Straight Talker, Maverick, New Lincoln...Toast

John McCain's had more titles attached to his name than Tiger Woods. He's been called a "straight talker", a "maverick", been given the tongue-in-cheek epithet of "Saint McCain" by critics who suspected his motives over his almost-stand against government torture policy, memorably the "new Lincoln" by sycophant John Hindraker and "deluded" in the recent week as his idiotic pronouncements about improvements in Iraq met reality under a heavily-armed escort.

Now his new title is "Toast". In an interview with MyDD, John Kerry has alleged that McCain's staff approached his campaign about potentially filling the Vice President slot on the Democratic ticket in 2004.

Shaun Mullen, over at The Moderate Voice, writes:

Mark April 2007 on your calendar as the month that John McCain’s bid for the White House crashed and burned.

McCain worked hard through the winter to betray his purposely vague “values,” which included a whistlestop tour in which he kissed every right-wing Republican butt of consequence below the Mason Dixon Line while hewing to a hard-line view of the Iraq war that vast swaths of the electorate have long stopped believing because they know that it is sheer fantasy.

Now, coming hard on the heels of reports that McCain considered defecting from the Republican Party, is having trouble raising money and made a fool of himself befitting Michael Dukakis in the most heavily armed photo op in president campaign history, is the news that John Kerry says that he sounded him out about joining him on the 2004 presidential ticket — and not the other way around has had been rumored.

...I once hoped that I might have a chance to vote for McCain some day. I used to like him that much. But that opportunity will never come and I now certainly don’t regret it. He’s made an utter fool of himself — whomever himself is.

Even the folks at Powerline sound are clutching at straws in their attempt at spin:

If this is true, it means of the end of McCain's 2008 run. A candidate can get away with flip-flopping over many issues, but the question of whether Bush or Kerry should be president isn't one of them. However, to the extent that McCain denies Kerry's claim (and in the absence of proof of that claim), Republicans should give McCain the benefit of the doubt, given his strong and arguably indispensable efforts on behalf of Bush's re-election.

Mmmmm...toasty!