Nothing better encapsulates the mood of John McCain’s own party toward his nomination than Rush Limbaugh’s seemingly narcotized endorsement in the latest New York Times Magazine:

“I’ve never even met [McCain], never spoken to him,” Limbaugh said. “I’m sure there are things about him I’d like if we meet. This isn’t personal.” He then delivered a litany of the presumptive nominee’s personal failings — too old, too intense, too opportunistic, too liberal. But, he assured me, he would be with McCain in the fall. “It’s like the Super Bowl,” he told me. “If your team isn’t in it, you root for the team you hate less. That’s McCain.”

That last bit is the part you’ll hear quoted all over, but suffice it to say that a man whose job it is to get a hard-on for any Republican candidate, and whose entire career has been based on making vicious, irrational attacks on his party’s political enemies, has only this to say about the opposition:

“I’ll approach Obama with fearless honesty,” said Limbaugh, who speaks of himself in heroic terms on air and off. “He’s a liberal. I oppose liberals. That’s all that’s involved here.”

Now, he’s answering a question about Obama’s blackness being a factor in Limbaugh’s “coverage,” but what’s striking to me here is the lack of GOP code words.  Usually, when speaking about black people, you’ll here words like “culture” and “crime” and “riots” thrown in to remind everybody who hates black people that it’s o.k. to hate black people as long as you don’t say so out loud. But Rush knows better than anybody that Republican doublespeak isn’t helping anymore, and that John McCain isn’t anybody’s savior, least of all his own.

The news media and their patrons in the Republican Party are  trying so hard to take John McCain seriously as a candidate, it almost breaks your heart to see ol’ Rush give up the ghost like this. He never liked McCain, but the idea that Rush is somehow above lying about things he said in the past must be a knee-slapper even to him.  His fat, stupid heart just isn’t in this one, kids, and without the fierce, mindless, unwavering support of his party, without cheerleaders like Rush, McCain has all the electability of a black guy from the Midwest.

No, wait…

Kos has an excellent write-up on the dishonest numbers game the media is playing so they can keep lobbing “horserace” and “statistical dead heat” headlines at each other.  My guess is that this bullshit can only continue until Obama chooses a running mate.  The bump he receives then will make obvious what no one seems willing to say, that we’ve been living in a post-Obama political environment since late February.  

Anyway, if McCain’s even still alive in November, I think I owe Wishydig ten bucks.