DESPERATE AND CRAZY, McCAIN GOES FOR ROMNEY'S JUGULAR ON IMMIGRATION, TOUTS PERMANENT WAR FOR IRAQ

Last night you heard the mainstream Democratic candidates, despite the best efforts of Wolf Blintzer and the rest of the mainstream media to turn them against each other, treat each other with respect and even admiration. Hillary Clinton had some lines that resounded well:

“This is George Bush’s war. He is responsible for this war. He started the war. He mismanaged the war. He escalated the war. And he refuses to end the war... The differences among us are minor. The differences between us and the Republicans are major. And I don't want anybody in America to be confused."

Obama had a similar moment when he refused to answer a Know Nothing, red meat anti-immigrant question which he threw back in Blintzer's face while the audience applauded.

Meanwhile Republicans are busy attacking each other with increasing viciousness. McCain, now in 4th place, a laughing stock and desperate-- as well as a leader of two of the most hated Regime policies (Bush's approach to immigration and the Bush-McCain-Lieberman axis on Staying the Course in Iraq)-- is lashing out in ways that will hurt whomever wins the GOP Primary.

Yesterday McCain alerted the press that he plans to savage Romney for "pandering for votes."

The attack, in a speech Mr. McCain is to give today, marks a sharp escalation in the war of words between two of the leading Republican presidential contenders. It also represents a risky gambit by Mr. McCain to right the course of a presidential campaign that has been consumed by attacks on his immigration stance, with Mr. Romney among his most vocal critics.

Basically, McCain is asking Flip Flop Mitt, widely viewed as a rich dilettante with neither solid solutions nor discernible character, to put up or shit up. Romney has pounced on the anti-immigrant xenophobia to gain traction at McCain's expense but has no solutions to the problem himself.

In fighting back, Mr. McCain is challenging Mr. Romney and other opponents of the Senate’s immigration plan to offer counterproposals explaining what they would do with the nation’s illegal immigrants, which he estimates could number 12 million. And his campaign has taken to pointing out what it calls Mr. Romney’s shifting stances on immigration, and his lack of specificity on any workable alternative.

Mr. McCain’s speech is to be delivered today in Florida, where a large number of Cuban-American Republicans have a different perspective on the immigration issue. While he does not mention Mr. Romney by name in the speech, McCain advisers say Mr. Romney is the target of the criticism.

“I would hope that any candidate for president would not suggest doing nothing,” Mr. McCain plans to say. “And I would hope they wouldn’t play politics for their own interests if the cost of their ambition was to make this problem even harder to solve. To want the office so badly that you would intentionally make our country’s problems worse might prove you can read a poll or take a cheap shot, but it hardly demonstrates presidential leadership.”

“Pandering for votes on this issue, while offering no solution to the problem, amounts to doing nothing,” Mr. McCain plans to say. “And doing nothing is silent amnesty.”

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said that Mr. McCain’s criticism reflected his desperation at holding a position unpopular with Republican primary voters.

“Opponents who favor this flawed approach are going to offer all sorts of distortions based on the fact that they cannot make a case on the substance for the bill they are advocating,” Mr. Madden said. “I think the McCain campaign is lashing out because they are feeling the political pressure and they don’t know what to do.”

And if Republicans are repulsed by McCain's immigration agenda (cheap labor), normal Americans are increasingly turning aginst him for his unrelenting Stay the Course palaver. Campaigning in Iowa this weekend, he said he foresees U.S. forces occupying Iraq as far into the future as the eye can see.

"The key to this issue is not American presence, but American casualties," he told a standing-room-only crowd of about 250 employees at Nationwide Insurance's offices.

"We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds," McCain said. "If you stay a long, long time, but have the Iraqis doing the fighting, and your people are back in the bases and away from the firing line, I think Americans would be satisfied."

Out of touch and out of his mind is the best summation of what crazy old John McCain has turned into.