WHAT IF THEY GAVE A SHAMELESS PHOTO OP AND NOBODY CAME?

Notice what you don't see in the blog response to John McCain's heavily guarded stroll through Baghdad: any reaction from right-wingers. There seems to be none -- positive or negative. What's more, there's no McCain story topping the Lucianne.com site, and as I type this there are no McCain discussions on the first threads page at Free Republic. If this had worked for him, there'd have been positive Net chatter on the right for days.

There are a couple of positive statements about McCain in this Free Republic thread, but for the most part the Freepers don't care about him -- all they want to talk about is the media:

Yep. The MSM is the scorekeeper for the terrorists.

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The delegation was accompanied by heavily armed U.S. troops ... They traveled in armored military vehicles under heavy guard.

AP just cannot help themselves, even in an article talking about the lack of coverage of the good news and a focus made on the bad, they have to take a shot.

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You're right. The MSM always puts a hugh wet blanket on top of ANY good news. They do make it obvious what their job 'really' is.

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Yes, there is much good information that is not being published by MSM. And the Democrats are purposefully keeping their voters dumbed down....

And on and on. It's as if McCain disappeared from his own photo op.

So, no, this stunt won't help him in the primaries. The message was too complicated -- McCain was trying to make a point about the war and a point about the media. Really, if he wants GOP votes, he should just stay stateside and focus on targeted attacks against "liberal" institutions such as the media. The one detail of the story that actually has aroused the interest of the right is the Matt Drudge claim that CNN's Michael Ware "heckled" McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham. That's the kind of thing that gets right-wingers' blood racing -- the real enemy, the real face of evil, given a name and a face. Alas, it wasn't Dan Rather or David Gregory or "Katie Commie," but Michael Ware will do.

(TBogg, by the way, makes short work of the Ware story, particularly credulity-straining quote Drudge ascribes to his unnamed source. UPDATE: The Carpetbagger Report debunks the story in greater detail. UPDATE: And now video posted at Raw Story proves that there was no heckling.)

By the way, there's an amusing Freudian slip in that Free Republic thread, in a statement of praise for one of McCain's possible rivals:

I'm not ruling out any of the announced candidates yet, but if Fred Thompson jumps in I'm on his bang wagon.

Yeah, I'm sure you are.