From Politico:
"...at a biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, John McCain appears to have volunteered his wife for a topless beauty pageant:
McCain felt so comfortable at the event that he even volunteered his wife for the rally's traditional beauty pageant, an infamously debauched event that's been known to feature topless women.
"I encouraged Cindy to compete," McCain said to cheers. "I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."
As a reader emails, "Miss Buffalo Chip has 'been known to feature topless women' in the same way that Guns and Ammo magazine has been known to feature firearms." Indeed, an ESPN.com columnist describes it as "occasionally bottomless."
I've written before about McCain's risque line-towing, but I'm wondering if new campaign advisor Steve Schmidt (who helped foster the "I'd rather have a beer with Bush" phenomenon in 2004 and made John Kerry French) has been taking McCain out to Hooters in Virginia Beach as part of message training.
Between the belligerent yodeling --"We have to drill here and drill now"--and offering up his wife for a cash prize I'm wondering if this is McCain's attempt to channel the elusive white male voter he so needs to win?
He might as well have called Obama a sissy when ridiculing Obama's suggestion of tune ups and tire inflation as a method of conserving energy. "We're not going to achieve energy independence by inflating our tires," McCain said. Yeah, and drilling here and now isn't the petrochemical equivalent of a Costco run either, Senator.
I think there was even a hint of the famous Bush "heh, heh, heh" as McCain laughed at the idea Americans might actually have to put in a little elbow grease to weather this economic storm.
McCain is embracing the worst kind of Bush-Cheney era affectations. For a man who knows sacrifice, and who built his entire career on the lessons learned of that sacrifice, it is heartbreaking to hear such demagoguery come from his mouth. For a man who is the father of daughters, well, again, what is he trying to prove and to whom? Nothing to women voters, that's for sure.
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