Champagne Music

John McCain has one really difficult job tonight. Imagine being the front man for the republican brand at this time? Now that’s a selling job for you. But I’ve got the music down. Lawrence Welk playing his Champagne Music will be the theme with bubbles bursting all over the stage at Belmont University in Nashville.

McCain will be quick to point that last year’s leading man, ****** *. ****, is not to be confused with his personal hero, the host of TV’s Death Valley Days, Ronald Reagan. There’ll also be some confusion about McCain’s relationship to the Republican Party since while it is technically correct that he is that party’s nominee, he’s actually running against them, except for the part that calls for campaign donations and votes. He’s a maverick, you know.

McCain’s mantra of saving $18.5 billion annually in earmarks kind of pales in the face of the $10 billion a month be burned up in Iraq, especially since about a $100 billion in tax breaks for business and earmarks is what it took to bring his republican congressmen on board with ****’s bailout of the financial sector last week. He’s going to name names of the culprits, but only if he’s elected.

He’s also caught by the format of the debate, a town hall meeting in which the inmates ask and expect something akin to answers to their questions asked as compared to Sarah Palin’s total kiss off of the need to even listen to the question before spouting the next talking point on her pad. She’s a maverick too, you know.

It’s going to take some doing to twist questions about the economy into links between Obama and Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, but John’s going to do his best. I suppose it would go something like, “Yes, the stock market’s in the tank, but Barack Hussein Obama’s pal, Bill Ayers, hates the market and all it stands for and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, prayed for the fall.”

But McCain has to keep in mind that Obama has a list of talking points in his hip pocket about the much older candidate’s poor judgment in dealing with the Savings and Loan crisis in which he was charged with exercising poor judgment in dealings with Chuck Keating, the felon whose methods were not far too different than those used by the bad boys in the present debacle.

Speaking of old, Obama is being tagged with unfair campaign practices in pointing out the differences in the ages and physical condition of the two major candidates. It is a fact that McCain is seventy-two years old and has had four bouts of serious cancer and that Obama is forty-seven and in good health. What’s unfair about stating those two facts? While McCain is just a kid to me, I’m not running for president – at least until 2012, at which time the republican nominee, Sarah Palin will probably call my rheumatism to the attention of voters. Darn right that would be unfair.

That old elephant logo sure is an endangered species. If McCain and Palin get beat in November, McCain won’t be the only one trying bag it. There’ll be all out war within the party and the neocons and evangelicals better watch their backs as the geriatric crowd of cloth coaters still surviving from the Daddy ****, Gerry Ford and even the Eisenhower days will be spitting mad and looking to kick some butt. Darn right.

Tune in tonight and see if John McCain can reach into that bag of republican manure and pull out the pony he’s been looking for since he was a young ’un. He’ll be tryin’; darn tootin’.

And I ain’t b.s.n’ ya