Postscript on McCain

Looks like Mr. Straight Talk may have violated his own campaign finance reform law:

The California Democratic Party is asking for an investigation of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator John McCain for alleged violations of campaign finance law.

The allegations center on a scheduled March 20th fund-raiser in Beverly Hills in which donors have been asked to contribute up to 100 thousand dollars for the governor and the state Republican Party. McCain is the featured speaker at the event.

At issue is whether McCain's appearance violates restrictions on federal officeholders taking part in events that solicit political funds.

Looking around the right's side of the blogosphere for fallout from the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, I noticed that those who are paying attention on the Right are just as mad about the media's "inevitability" narrative on McCain and those of us on the Left are mad about the similar narrative with regard to Hillary Clinton. Since the media increasingly can only think about campaign politics in terms of the horse race (not a new phenomenon; I remember doing a political cartoon for a American studies class in 6th grade, in 1984, which was basically a bunch of the candidates running around a track in a giant horse race), they must anoint front-runners based on... well, nothing but perception and name recognition, really, being 2 years away from the first primary. With the field wide open on both sides, I predict there will almost certainly be a surprise. Actually there was in 2004 as well: at this point, the prohibitive favorite in the Democratic primaries was Joe Lieberman.

Now that, as I believe, the media is starting to get a bad taste in their mouth with respect to McCain, I think we'll see them anoint another front-runner shortly. Rudy G, this is your moment.