McCain: Warning to All GOP Candidates: Support the War at Your Own Risk [View All]

McCain: Warning to All GOP Candidates: Support the War at Your Own Risk

John McCain's cratering campaign is an object lesson in how to kill a candidacy in three simple steps: 1) locate the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history 2) embrace it 3) implode.

McCain's fate should be a warning to all Republicans seeking office in 2008: continue to back the president's war policy at your own risk.

McCain's fall has been precipitous -- tumbling from establishment GOP front-runner to single-digit also-ran.

Through much of 2005 and 2006 he was widely regarded as the presumptive Republican nominee. Hypothetical 2008 matchups regularly had him beating presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in December 2006 had him beating Hillary by 14 points -- 50% to 36%.

That's when he decided to go all-in on Iraq, anointing himself head cheerleader for the surge.

On January 5, 2007 -- less than three weeks after that poll had him trouncing Hillary -- McCain gave a widely-covered speech at the American Enterprise Institute in which he advocated a "substantial" and "sustained" escalation in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, tying himself to President Bush and his delusion-driven New Way Forward.

--> Lately McCain's main competitors have clearly taken note. A story this week in the LA Times claimed that the three leading GOP presidential contenders "have been quietly backing away from any commitment to continuing" with the delusional Bush surge.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/mccains-fall-a-warning-t_b_56291.html