Whither McCain?

With Ol' Fred gearing up to get into this race, I've always felt that his looming presence would displace one of the "Big Three". It's starting to look very much like John McCain will likely be the one displaced.

Now Sen. McCain and I go back a ways in that he is the reason why I registered as a Republican in 2000. Prior to that (as many of you may already know) this Ex-Donk was officially unaffiliated during most of Clinton's second term. But that's another story.

So having watched his candidacy and career fairly closely over the last seven years I can't say as I'm completely surprised that by this turn of events. McCain has a great story, an inspirational one in fact. But as the convential wisdom goes, John McCain is a great American, a lousy Senator and an awful Republican. The excitement his candidacy once generated ran it's course a while ago.

It really boggles my mind how this man - in words and deeds - seems to have gone out of his way to alienate himself from his party while still convincing himself that he's the best guy to lead it.

If McCain earned the nomination, I'd vote for him. I believe he's personally a swell guy, he can attract enough independents to win and he "gets it" when it comes to the threat we're facing. The stakes are just too high to risk allowing a Democrat in the White House for maybe the next eight years. But with all the alternatives - Guiliani, Romney and, yes, Ol' Fred - I can't imagine McCain getting it.

Rudy Giuliani's leadership abilities seem to offset some people's reservations about his stance on social issues. The more that people see of Mitt Romney, the more they like him (as this Frank Luntz analysis seems to confirm). And the lastest word is that Fred raked in $220 Million Thousand in online donations over 18 hours.

McCain is as known a quantity among Republican voters as you can have. And I think many of them have been giving him chance after chance to show them that he's the guy. And everytime he ended up disappointing them. Me, included.

UPDATE:
Oh, and apparently Steve-O has already installed the Fred-a-palooza donation bot in the sidebar. In case you want to add to that $220,000.

Brain Fart Alert!
Did I say $220 Million? Sorry 'bout dat. In my world I abbreviate "thousand" with the Roman numeral 'M', rather than 'K' (screw the metric system) - as in $220M. That's what I pictured in my head as I typed and somehow it ended up as million. Wouldn't it be great if life really worked like that?