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Because what the country can't get enough of is more coverage of Sarah Palin (/snark), George Stephanopoulos asks the question burning brightly in the hearts... minds... crotches of the country... Washington... the punditocracy: Will John McCain endorse former running mate Sarah Palin for the 2012 election?

The answer? Nope.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said, after the election, that Governor Palin has a bright future in your party. Does that mean that, if she does chooses to run for president, she can count on your support?

MCCAIN: Oh, no. Listen, I have the greatest appreciation for Governor Palin and her family, and it was a great joy to know them. [..]But I can't say something like that.

Ouch. Kind of hard to deny all the rumors of rancor between the two when you get put in that spot (take that, Bill Kristol), but McCain's choice of phrasing to chide Stephanopoulos on this line of questioning was more than a little unfortunate, especially considering how his age and health made Sarah Palin's position that much more critical:

MCCAIN: ... my corpse is still warm, you know?

Overlooked perhaps in the historic vote that made Barack Obama the nation's first African-American president is something that didn't happen. With the defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket and its extremist anti-abortion platform, Americans voted against an abrogation of women's reproductive rights that might have taken a generation to undo. And by rejecting draconian ballot measures in Colorado, South Dakota and California, voters protected a woman's right to choose - at least for now.

To be sure, Obama's victory prevented the emergence of conservative Supreme Court supermajority committed to sweeping away Roe v. Wade. With the potential retirement of Justices Stevens (88) and Ginsburg (83), Obama may the opportunity to make at least two nominations to the Court. (There may be 14 openings on the nation's appellate courts, all but one which currently has a Republican majority.) Given Justice Kennedy's condescending and paternalistic opinion in the 5-4 Gonzales v. Carhart case upholding the so-called federal partial birth abortion ban, the direction of the Court and the fate of Roe surely hung in the balance last Tuesday.

On that point, John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republican Party were quite clear. McCain not only supported judicial appointees in the mold of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, he reversed course to support overturning Roe v. Wade. And to be sure, the 2008 Republican platform incorporated Palin's extremist views on abortion, banning the procedure even in cases of rape and incest:

"We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

In Colorado, anti-abortion activists tried – and failed - to enshrine the GOP plank's logical extreme in the state constitution.

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Although this segment of The Rachel Maddow Show aired before the election, it does bring up an important point about one aspect of the McCain campaign tactics we haven't discussed yet: as polls showed McCain dropping further and further out of contention, McCain--effectively, the head of the Republican Party--did nothing to help down ticket races, some of which were very, very tight (at the time of writing the Coleman/Franken race in Minnesota was heading to a recount).

Did McCain's refusal to campaign in any of these locations help or hurt the Republican brand? Tim Pawlenty tries to deflect the question by saying that Obama didn't come to Minnesota to stump for Franken, but I don't know that the comparison is apt. While Obama never did any appearances with Franken, the Obama campaign's ground forces did do an amazing job of canvassing and registering more Democratic voters, which would only help Franken.

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John McCain's concession speech was gracious and warm. A warm round of applause.

[H/t to Heather for the video.]

Back in May, I argued that with the American electorate's across-the-board preference for Democratic policies and a historically unpopular Republican president, John McCain's campaign would turn the November election into a "character war." In September, campaign chairman Rick Davis confirmed the GOP would follow its tried and true strategy from 2000 and 2004 when he announced "this election is not about issues" but instead about "a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." On Tuesday night, Americans will learn not only whether Barack Obama won the election, but whether voters literally thought he was a better man.

Heading into Election Day, Senator Obama looks like to outperform his recent Democratic predecessors across a range of policy and demographic measures. An October Rasmussen survey showed that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans across each of the 10 issues tracked. The party of Obama enjoys double-digit leads on the economy (by 13%), Social Security (12%), health care (20%)and education (by 19 points).

That issue advantage, compounded by John McCain's feeble response to the economic crisis and the GOP's increasingly xenophobic line towards immigrants, is helping fuel Obama's strong performance among critical voting blocks. As I detailed last week, media myths notwithstanding, Barack Obama will approach traditional levels of Democratic support among Jewish voters and outpoll Al Gore and John Kerry among Hispanics. And with his backing among white voters reaching 44% in the final CBS News/New York Times survey, the African-American Obama may surpass the levels achieved by Gore (42%), Kerry (41%) and even Bill Clinton (43%). Four years ago, John Kerry lost among white men by a 25 point margin (62% to 37%); according to a Fox News poll, Obama now trails John McCain by only 5 points among the same group.

But from the moment John McCain secured the Republican nomination, his fall strategy rested on creating a "character gap" between himself and Obama. As in 2000 and 2004, I argued, the Republicans would try to turn the race into a presidential personality contest:

And to win it, they need to manufacture a "character gap" between John McCain and Barack Obama...The data is clear. If the election is about the economy, health care and Iraq, John McCain cannot become the 44th president. Only if the GOP succeeds once again in transforming the race into a media medley about lapel pins, angry ministers and Muslim-sounding middle names can the Republicans hope to maintain their hold on the White House.

Sadly, we've been here before. The 2000 and 2004 exit polls clearly show the Republican Party succeeded both in portraying the presidential contest as being about character and in defining the accepted media narrative for candidates Bush, Gore and Kerry.

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It appears that would be President Camacho er,...McCain still doesn't understand that newfangled spellcheck device.

Is it elitist of me to say that if his team can't face a copy editor, how could they face a world leader?

Oh for crying out loud. This is a campaign for the top office in the country and you're running behind. Don't you think it's worth having someone just run the occasional spell check?

Did you notice it? Marc Ambinder did, about 12 seconds in:

EVERBODY? Yeah, that's inspiring leadership.

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What's that old saying? When you point a finger at someone, you have four fingers pointing back at yourself. Well, just like every other smear that the McCain campaign has desperately flung at the Obama campaign, the reality of this new "palling around with anti-Israel types like Rashid Khalidi" looks bad...bad for McCain.

Senator, Senator, Senator...Morals aside, this is the classic problem of guilt by association:

Obama and Ayers gave Khalidi's organizations 80-thousand dollars. McCain gave Khalidi's organizations 448 thousand dollars.

Obama and Ayers. Obama and Ayers. Obama and Ayers... and McCain.

Obama and Ayers and McCain. Ayers and McCain.

Ayers and McCain!

So now, not only is Rashid Khalidi your problem, not Obama's. But now you're connected to Bill Ayers. The only difference is who gave this nebulously nefarious guy with the Arabic name more money, you or Ayers?

Golly, Senator, that'd be you... by a figure of at least 5-1.

Which is also the ratio of your campaign's sleaze bombs that blow up in your own face.

Full transcripts below the fold

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As Election Day nears, John McCain continues to deploy Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher as a human shield against Barack Obama and his plan for middle class tax cuts. But while Wurzelbacher himself admitted he would fare better under Obama, another of McCain's representative Americans is set to receive a massive windfall if the Arizona Senator is elected. No doubt about it, Mrs. McCain - Cindy the Beer Heiress - would pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to her husband.

That the McCains are fabulously well off - as the $100 million beer distribution fortune, the 11 homes, 13 cars and a private jet attest - goes without saying. And as she reported in her two-page IRS summaries, Cindy McCain earned $6.1 million in 2006 and another $4.2 million in 2007. (Most came courtesy of her late father's Hensley & Company, Arizona's leading distributor of Anheuser-Busch products including Budweiser.)

But while as many as 100 million Americans would receive no benefit from President McCain's tax proposals, his wife would be awash in new-found cash. As the Center for American Progress detailed in June, the McCains would reap a $373,000 bonanza should he win the White House:

McCain favors making the Bush tax laws permanent, and also plans to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the dependent exemption and offer tax breaks on business income...Had McCain's tax proposal been in place in 2006, [they] would have done incredibly well - saving even more than they did under the existing Bush plan. John and Cindy McCain would have walked away with $373,429 in their pocket.

Of course, given that McCain's tax plan is radically more regressive than even that of President Bush - it delivers 58% of its benefits to the wealthiest 1% of American taxpayers - it's no surprise Cindy the Beer Queen can expect a jaw-dropping payout.

But Cindy's winnings don't end there.

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(photo WT)

McCain's economic adviser makes Obama's case for him and against McCain's bogus 5000 dollar tax credit as his health care plan.

Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn't abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic policy adviser.

"Why would they leave?" said Holtz-Eakin. "What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit."

dday elaborates on it...

One day after proclaiming on Meet the Press that he and George W. Bush share a common philosophy, John McCain took to a stage in Cleveland Monday to attack the President's economic policies. As it turns out, of course, when it comes to ideology and policy on the economy, John McCain and George W. Bush are virtually indistinguishable.

The feebleness of McCain's effort to distance himself from Bush was revealed in its brevity. Despite the AP's headline that "McCain says Bush policy on economy is wrong," McCain's critique was limited to a single sentence. And in those nine words and the attack on Barack Obama that followed, John McCain wasn't telling the truth:

"This is the fundamental difference between Senator Obama and me. We both disagree with President Bush on economic policy. The difference is that he thinks taxes have been too low, and I think that spending has been too high."

Leaving aside for the moment his dissembling on the Obama tax plan (which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded would offer larger tax cuts to Americans at every income level below $112,000), McCain simply lied about parting company with George W. Bush.

A quick glance at their shared approach to tax cuts, the deficit and health care confirms that George W. Bush and John McCain are joined at the hip.

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The rats are jumping from the ship, and the biggest rat of them all, Karl "I should be in jail" Rove, sits down with Chris Wallace to admit that indicators are not good for the McCain campaign:

WALLACE: One thing that we are witnessing already is dissension within the ranks of the McCain campaign. There's a big article today in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about it. There have been a bunch of other reports. People pointing fingers at each other about what went wrong with the McCain campaign even before we get to the election. Why do you think that this has started so early and so publicly?

ROVE: Well, look, we've seen this a couple of times this year. We saw it in the Clinton campaign. Now we're seeing it in the McCain campaign, where before the election is totaled up, before the votes are all cast, before the decision is made, people start pointing fingers and blaming each other. It is a sign of undisciplined people who do not have the loyalty that they ought to have to the candidate whom they're serving and it's -- it's a sad sight to see. Nobody makes themselves look good by this process.

WALLACE: It is not generally a phenomenon we see in winning campaigns, however, is it?

ROVE: Occasionally you see it. You're right, it's in campaigns that are behind and people want to make certain they escape with the best reputation they can.

Frankly, considering how many of them came from Rove's coterie, I think that ship has sailed. Rove also acknowledges the fact that even Sarah Palin has gone "rogue" with a non-answer answer that points to the end of John McCain's presidential aspirations:

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How low can John McCain go?

The McCain campaign has authorized another vicious robocall that claims Barack Obama and Democrats would cut off funds for the military, have accused American troops of "war crimes," and pose a threat to national security.

Boston.com:

Ever since John McCain discovered "Joe the Plumber," he has exalted "small business" owners -- inviting them to announce their professions on signs at rallies -- as the country's only virtuous economic movers.

But now McCain has begun to define the term upward, leaving no mogul or tycoon behind.

On Thursday in Sarasota, Governor Charlie Crist introduced J. Robert Long, the CEO of Marine Concepts as a "small businessman." The man McCain dubbed "Bob the Boat Builder" spent, as Crist noted, most of his career at Wellcraft Marine, which reported revenues of $67 million last year, according to Yahoo! Finance.

At another campaign stop, McCain proxy Lindsay Graham described Cindy McCain as a "small businesswoman," even though Hensley & Co. -- the third largest beer distributorship in the country, is worth some $200 million.

What's next? Bill Gates, the tech guy? Donald Trump, the real estate agent? Jack Welch, the electrician? Rupert Murdoch, the newsboy?

Raffaello Follieri, perhaps most famous for being Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend, has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison this Friday after being pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering.

Raffaello Follieri, 30, pleaded guilty in September to fraudulently obtaining US$2.4 million by leading investors to believe he had Vatican connections that enabled him to buy the Roman Catholic Church's unwanted US properties at a discount.

..."I have dishonored my family name and embarrassed the church I love," Follieri told Judge John Koeltl in US District Court in Manhattan in a statement in Italian that was translated into English.

"I will never be able to wash away the stain. I hope that someday those hurt by my actions will forgive me," Follieri said before the judge handed down the sentence.

He'll be deported after serving his sentence.

Follieri had good connections to both McCain and Rick Davis, for whom he had promised to "deliver Catholic votes", and was the host of John McCain's 70th birthday party, celebrated onboard the yacht of another dodgy character - a Russian oligarch who pretty much owns the tiny state of Montenegro.

In mid-September The Nation's website published a photo of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party hosted by convicted Italian felon Raffaello Follieri and his movie-star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. On the same day one of the largest mega-yachts in the world, the Queen K, was moored in the same bay of Kotor. This was where the real party was. The owner of the Queen K was known as "Putin's oligarch": Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of the Russian aluminum giant RusAl, currently listed as the ninth-richest man in the world, with a rap sheet as abundant as his wealth. By mid-2005 Deripaska had already virtually taken control of Montenegro's economy by snapping up its aluminum plant, KAP--which accounts for up to 40 percent of the country's GDP and some 80 percent of its export earnings--in a nontransparent privatization tender strongly criticized by NGO watchdogs, Montenegrin politicians and journalists. The Nation has learned that Deripaska told one of his closest associates that he bought the plant "because Putin encouraged him to do it." The reason: "the Kremlin wanted an area of influence in the Mediterranean."

Deripaska is himself involved in some political scandal right now - involving both a high level Labour Party cabinet minister, Lord Peter Mandelson who was one of Tony Blair's closest advisors and the current shadow chancellor, the Conservative Party's George Osborne. Both McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis have dubious ties to Deripaska too. Other McCain campaign advisers, lobbyists to a man, have their own shady connections.

John McCain keeps saying he's a reformer and a maverick with no time for the incestuous and often shady dealings of the K Street crowd - but his actions speak louder than his words.

Crossposted from Newshoggers