05:26 pm
McWeaksauce: The Prequel
Apparently this isn’t the first time McWeaksauce has tried to weasel out of a debate.
With new polls showing his campaign dead in the water among California Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain has pulled out of a long-scheduled debate with Texas Gov. George Bush, set for Thursday in Los Angeles. . . . Top campaign officials attributed McCain’s decision to Bush’s earlier reluctance to appear at the debate. “We had agreed to do this debate a long time ago, and Gov. Bush said he wasn’t going to do it,” McCain spokesman Howard Opinsky said yesterday. “We aren’t going to hold our schedule together forever.”
. . .Still, just last week, the McCain campaign was openly derisive of Bush’s reluctance to commit to a California debate — and promised its own candidate would be there. “John McCain believes it’s important for the people of California to see and hear the candidates talk about the issues,” McCain communications director Dan Schnur told The Chronicle last week. “Thirty- three million Californians are worth that attention . . . and we’ll be there, either way.”
“Clearly, this is more double-talk from the McCain campaign,” said Alixe Mattingly, a spokeswoman for Bush. “Pulling out of this debate at the last minute is an indication that they’re pulling out of California, where McCain’s antagonistic message clearly isn’t working.”. . . “From a distance, it seems like the ‘Straight Talk Express’ is careening off the exit ramp in California,” said Leslie Goodman, a Republican communications consultant and Bush backer, in a reference to McCain’s campaign bus. “They claimed they’d make California a priority because it was win or die, and now they don’t care enough to debate.”
The irony here, of course, is that eight years later, Bush is an unindicted co-conspirator in McCain’s lame maneuver to get out of tonight’s debate.
Hat tip: Slog