Shooting your future in the foot

You know, for all the hype about the McCain/Iseman sex rumor (I'm not even going to call it a scandal because right now it's just hype) and the likelihood that Captain Maverick J. Reform was giving favors to lobbyists (I find this story of lobbyist and McCain adviser Charlie Black doing his consulting from the Straight Talk Express bus is particularly entertaining, the story that's slowly creeping up that might actually end up hurting John McCain most is . . . McCain-Feingold. He agreed to accept public financing when he was so far behind in the polls that he thought he might drown, and now that he's the last man (realistically) standing, he's trying desperately to get out of a system that he himself designed.

The upside (other than the thought of the Republican presidential nominee facing felony charges before he even gets into office) is that this may force the Republicans' hand on the FEC commissioners. Right now there are four nominees to be commissioners at the FEC, one of whom is Hans von Spakovsky, who has been known to specialize in vote-suppression (and possibly tying helpless damsels to train tracks for fun). Democrats are trying to vote on each nominee separately, so they can torpedo Spakovsky. Republicans want to tie him to more acceptable candidates and vote on all four at the same time. The FEC can't let McCain opt out until it has a quorum of four commissioners (there are currently two) and he can't spend much until they let him opt out. So in order to get their candidate some direly needed cash, it's not entirely unlikely that Spakovsky may get sacrificed for the good of the party.