McCAIN: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF THE GOP FOR MAKE BENEFIT STRAIGHT TALKER

Does anyone understand what the hell John McCain thinks he's doing these days?

He panders to the right by saying he'll speak to an intelligent-design group, he argues for abstinence and calls for the overturn of Roe v. Wade -- and then alienates just about everybody he's carefully pandered to by denouncing Donald Rumsfeld.

"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement -- that's the kindest word I can give you -- of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," the Arizona senator told an overflow crowd of more than 800 at a retirement community near Hilton Head Island, S.C. "The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously."

Plus, it's a flip-flop:

The comments were in sharp contrast to McCain's statement when Rumsfeld resigned in November, and failed to address the reality that President Bush is the commander in chief.

"While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service," McCain said last year when Rumfeld stepped down.

Plus, McCain said this about the war:

"I have been saying for 3 1/2 years that we would be in this sad situation and this critical situation we are in today," he said.

The war! The sacred war! He sounds like a Defeatocrat!

It's as if McCain is the Borat of the GOP: He's trying to communicate with Republican voters without speaking the same language or knowing the simplest customs. He doesn't seem to have the slightest idea when he's offending them. He seems to have picked up what he does know about Republicans from unreliable sources -- and then garbled that.

McCain's Kazakhstan, I suppose, is the green room of Hardball. I don't know where else he would have derived the notion that GOP voters want "straight talk" on the war (which for them is a religion) accompanied by obviously opportunistic appeals to their Christian conservatism (which even they can see straight through).

All I know is that it's not going to work -- he's not going to be the GOP nominee.