Will Senate Republicans Make McCain Minority Leader?

Most of the Senate Republicans support-- albeit reluctantly-- McCain for president. Even the ones he threatened, cursed at, and berated, like hapless clown John Cornyn, have endorsed him. And although several have been forced by their state's political circumstances to distance themselves from his campaign-- particularly the spectacularly shady Gordon Smith-- my guess is that the only one who will actually not vote for him is Ted Stevens, who hates his guts and has been known to try obtaining McCain fingernail clippings and hair for some unknown purpose. But while Obama's support (and McCain's lack thereof) among white people turns out to be surprising pundits-- even better than Bill Clinton's was-- I was wondering how deeply McCain's support among white Republican senators really is. Why don't they make him the minority leader of their Senate rump caucus after today's drubbing?

In this morning's NY Times Bob Herbert succinctly defines Obama's phrase “The fierce urgency of now."

Well, if your house is on fire and your family is still inside, that’s an example of the fierce urgency of now.

Something like that is the case in the United States right now as Americans go to the polls in what is probably the most important presidential election since World War II. A mind-boggling series of crises is threatening not just the short-term future but the very viability of the nation.

The economy is sinking into quicksand. The financial sector, guardian of the nation’s wealth, is leaning on the crutch of a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. The giant auto companies-- for decades the high-powered, gas-guzzling, exhaust-spewing pride of American industry-- are on life support.

As the holiday shopping season approaches, the nation is hemorrhaging jobs, the value of the family home has plunged, retirement plans are shrinking like ice cubes on a hot stove and economists are telling us the recession has only just begun.

It’s in that atmosphere that voters today will be choosing between the crisis-management skills of Senator Obama, who has enlisted Joe Biden as aide-de-camp, and those of Senator John McCain, who is riding to the rescue with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber in tow.

The American people have spent over a year looking at McCain's approach and Obama's approach and they've decided, in overwhelming numbers, if the polls are to believed, that they reject McCain's approach-- basically a continuation of the Bush/Republican Party orthodoxy that McCain has supported every step of the way into the pit they have dug for us. But most Republicans still support that approach-- and McCain.

If they feel McCain is so fit to lead the country out of this mess, why don't they make him the minority leader, especially if-- as seems possible-- GOP Senate obstructionist-in-chief Mitch McConnell is defeated today? Let's face it, even though he's not likely to accept defeat with grace and dignity, he's not going to run for president again in 2012 and that distinction will belong to Romney (the Mormon Empire is the biggest bastion of GOP support left outside of the old slaveholding states), Palin (low IQ voters-- Roman Hruska's "mediocre people"-- seem to have found their contemporary G. Harrold Carswell) and Huckleberry... plus whatever fiery bigots or empty suits a party devoid of ideas spews out willy-nilly to save the day.

Meanwhile, if the GOP really wants to stand for more of the same and for staying the course, who better to lead them than John W. McSame, someone who has gotten up before the American people and made it perfectly clear that, although he might move a deck chair facing leeward to starboard, basically he wouldn't make any changes in course whatsoever? Certainly if they were willing to saddle us with him-- despite the erratic, gratuitously nasty, and uncooperative nature they all say privately they detest-- they can have no objections about putting him above themselves, can they? Let's see how they feel after today when there are 8 less of them.

And, of course, then there's Lieberman, who seems to be sending clear signals that he's now a Republican officially. He was whining to the media today that if the Democrats-- his own caucus, supposedly-- reach the 60 vote threshhold, he would fear for the "survival" of America. Now which Democrats campaigned for him over Ned lamont in 2006?