WHILE McCAIN AND THE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS AVOID BUSH, McCAIN AND THE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS EYE EACH OTHER WARILY

I'm in DC today and it seems like everyone is talking about how McCain is trying to distance himself not just from Bush, but from the congressional Republicans as well. Look at that headline: "McCain snubs President Bush’s fundraising dinner." And that June 18 event is one of the biggest Republican fundraising events of the year for GOP House members. McCain first claimed he was going to be in Chicago that night and then said he would be in Texas-- basically anywhere but around Bush and his colleagues who, just like himself, rubber stamped the whole toxic Bush Regime agenda. “Maybe he found a better dinner?” Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chair of the event for the NRCC said.

Even the most craven Republican rubber stamps, mindless automatons like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), are running from Bush and the hated and disastrous policies they saddled the country with-- trying to deny the last seven and a half years. This week Ros-Lehtinen barraged the local Florida media with press releases recounting instances where she claims she differed from Bush, just as McCain has. But the same way that McCain's voting record stands as a stark and undeniable account of grotesque rubber stampism, so do members of Congress like Ros-Lethinen. According to her desperate and panic-stricken campaign coordinator, "For the past seven years, Ileana has been mistakenly classified for partisan purposes as a rubber stamp for Bush while she has actually been an independent voice for her district. Ileana has deep roots to her district and understands the needs of her constituents. She has never come down with Beltway fever."

Ros-Lehtinen has participated in 63 roll calls regarding Bush's war in Iraq since the October 10, 2002 votes to authorize the use of force which she rubber stamped. It may have been tough but she found one vote out of the 63 where she differed from Bush and Cheney-- a bipartisan proposal suggesting that half the $20 billion reconstruction budget being poured into Iraq in 2003 be in the form of a loan instead of a grant. It passed overwhelmingly with 277 votes on October 21, 2003 and the "independent voice" went back to rubber stamping every single proposal Bush and Cheney sent down the turnpike-- as well as all 22 bills that damaged the well being of our active duty military personnel while opposing every bill that was proposed to help war vets (24 roll calls). But it isn't just bad votes on Iraq, military personnel and vets where she backed Bush over her duty to America. She even joined the radical Republicans die-hards who opposed S-CHIP legislation for needy children's health care.

Her voting record doesn't stand out from the majority of Republican members. Hers is neither better nor worse than the rest of the rubber stamp brigade, pretty much identical to GOP backbenchers like Todd Platts (PA), Jon Porter (NV), the Diaz-Balart Brothers (FL), Randy Kuhl (FL), and Shelley Moore Capito (WV), who blithely and mindlessly rubber stamped away the past 4 congressional terms in the House, just the way screw ups like James Inhofe (OK), Elizabeth Dole (NC), John Cornyn (TX), Norm Coleman (MN), John Sununu (NH), Lamar Alexander (TN) and, of course, John W. McCain did in the Senate.

If the Republican congresscritters are running away from Bush as fast as they can, they're not exactly embracing McCain either, still wary that the third Bush term concept is sticking and having seen 3 Republican candidates McCain campaigned for meet miserable defeats in special elections in 3 solidly red districts. It isn't that McCain didn't have coattails; his kiss was the kiss of death in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi. And speaking of Mississippi, today's Politico ledes with a reminder of what at least one of McCain's Senate collegaues-- the senior Republican senator from Mississippi-- had to say about him in a rare and unscripted moment of candor.

Six months ago, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) called Sen. John McCain “erratic” and “hotheaded” and said that “the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

You won't catch any Republicans saying that in public anymore-- even if they agree with it-- but the Politico quotes an anonymous House Republican aide pointing out the obvious: "there are clear differences between a majority of our guys and the candidate." McCain knows if he's going to be competitive with Obama, he needs to do two mutally exclusive things: shore up the right-wing base by embracing Bush and the failed agenda McCain is trying to deny-- regardless of his voting record-- he supported; and make a case to independent and moderate voters that he is not McBush, again, something that flies in the face of a long and unwaivering voting record.