Crabby old rust sandwich John McCain took to the Senate floor today to lambast the dead-ender Tea Partiers in his own political party's House wing, who have been meeting Speaker Boehner's final debt ceiling offer with some resistance. What a saint! Let's just forget the last couple of years of McCain, now that he has criticized the extremely criticizable House Republicans.

McCain quotes this morning's Wall Street Journal editorial which, similarly, has decided today to turn on House Republicans for their intransigence after years of goading them on at every opportunity. It reads:

But what none of these critics have is an alternative strategy for achieving anything nearly as fiscally or politically beneficial as Mr. Boehner's plan. The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against . . . Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.

Heh, Hobbits, indeed. Bon mot, assholes.

After reading this, McCain stepped in with his own quip: "This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell into G.O.P. nominees." That's true. And as others have been quick to point out, it's the same conception of leadership that got John McCain to nominate Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee after five seconds of googling, which we can safely label the Ur-moment of the last few years of Republican politics.

"Is the old John McCain back?" the New York Times asks, as always, after watching McCain's performance today. What does this tired old question even mean? It's not like he ever forgot how to position himself in accordance with the electoral calendar.