Hit Parade

Oh god! why, why are you doing this to me?
Please, make Karl stop....

It looks like a contract has been issued for John McCain's political head. Right wing site, Newsmax, has a lengthy hit piece on McCain's "fitness" to serve as president. And it sounds suspiciously like some of the Rove-directed attacks on McCain in 2000.

As portrayed by the mainstream media, McCain is an engaging war hero, a man of political moderation positioned between the left and the right.

But to insiders who know him, McCain has an irrational, explosive side that make many of them question whether he is fit to serve as president and be commander in chief.

...

Another former senator who requested anonymity recalled an exchange at a Republican policy lunch. McCain turned on another senator who disagreed with him.

"McCain used the f-word," the former senator said. "McCain called the guy a ‘sh--head.' The senator demanded an apology. McCain stood up and said, ‘I apologize, but you're still a sh--head.' That was in front of 40 to 50 Republican senators. That sort of thing happened frequently."

I don't doubt any of this. I am more than curious, though, as to who ordered up the hit. We've had plenty of reports of Bush's own temper tantrums, mostly studiously ignore by the mainstream press and especially by outlets like Newsmax.

Bush, whose obscenity-laced temper tantrums increase with each new setback and scandal, abruptly ended one Camp David meeting by telling everyone in the room to “go fuck yourselves” before he stalked out of the room.

Senior aides describe Bush as increasingly “edgy” or “nervous” or “unfocused.” They say the President goes from apparent coherent thought one moment to aimless rambles about political enemies and those who are “out to get me.”

“It’s worse than the days when Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s began setting in,” one longtime GOP operative told me privately this week. “You don’t know if he’s going to be coherent from one moment to the next. What scares me is if he lapses into one of those fogs during a public appearance.”

I would agree that having someone like this in the Oval Office would be bad. And it is. So why the hit on McCain? Besides, I thought it was only liberals who were unhinged and unfit for command.

Maybe there really was friction over the McCain torture amendement.