Those chickens haven't hatched yet. You sure you want to count them?

The perils of premature credit-taking.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition - hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain's campaign's difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.

Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.

"I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now," McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. "Senator Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn't want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation."

McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs-up.

"That's not leadership. That's watching from the sidelines," he added to cheers and applause.

[...]

After the vote, commentators were harsh. MSNBC's Chris Matthews said: "He's like a cavalry commander who said 'Charge!' and the Republicans went into retreat."

Oops. Guess there's only one thing for him to do now: Suspend the campaign again, and refuse to let Sarah Palin debate until a bill gets passed. It's the only hope!

For those keeping score at home, this is how the vote went. Here's the Texas delegation:

FOR:

Brady - R
Edwards - D
Gonzalez - D
Granger - R
Hinojosa - D
Johnson, E. B. - D
Reyes - D
Sessions - R
Smith - R

AGAINST:

Barton - R
Burgess - R
Carter - R
Conaway - R
Cuellar - D
Culberson - R
Doggett - D
Gohmert - R
Green, Al - D
Green, Gene - D
Hall - R
Hensarling - R
Jackson Lee - D
Johnson, Sam - R
Lampson - D
Marchant - R
McCaul - R
Neugebauer - R
Ortiz - D
Paul - R
Poe - R
Rodriguez - D
Thornberry - R

Take a good look, because a stranger set of bedfellows you're unlikely to see anytime soon. Just a guess, but when this comes up again, I expect the split to be more traditionally partisan. For now, look and marvel at the unconventionality of it all.

UPDATE: Rick Noriega, who did win the Blue America Senate contest last week, is talking about the bailout and other matters at C&L.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 29, 2008 to National news