Why I Think McCain Lost

He blew it with the bailout. He had been saying for 2 months, "when these pork bills come across my desk I will veto them and I will make the authors famous..you will know their names".

Then what did he do?

He ran down to Washington like a dumbass and voted for the biggest pork bill of all time...the "bailout".

All he had to do was NOT vote for it or vote against it. The stupid thing would have passed. It had 70 senators voting for it. They didn't need McCain.

Then, he could have kept his moral high-ground with government waste and possibly pulled some libertarian support. Instead, he made himself look like a Bush "yes man" and went right in step with the democrat leaders of the house and senate. It was a complete derailment.

He had the perfect opportunity to show the country that he wasn't like Bush. The he was different than the status quo in Washington. He had the perfect opportunity to show that he is a man of his word and that he stands up for what is right. Also, voting against it would have distanced him from some of the blame for the bailout. It would have made it look like he wasn't the cause of it.

I think the majority of Americans assumed that the Republicans were responsible for the "credit crisis" (cue scary music). McCain never did recover from that point on. He was running a pretty close race until then.

JMO...not that it matters at this point.

Republicans have to do a lot better than that if they want to win in 2012.