IS McCAIN RUNNING WITH ROMNEY, OR JUST RIPPING OFF HIS SLOGAN?

The first line of John McCain's new ad is: "Washington's broken."

Interesting -- "Washington is broken" was a phrase Mitt Romney repeated incessantly during his campaign.

Maybe this means Romney's the VP choice. Or it may just mean McCain likes to steal things -- he already ripped off Barack Obama's slogan a few weeks ago, recasting "Change You Can Believe In" as "A Leader We Can Believe In."

(If McCain were a Democrat, pundits would be all over this compulsion to change slogans and pilfer the new ones from other people -- they'd be calling him a thief and saying he "doesn't know who he is.")

Oh, and of course he borrowed his current campaign strategy from Hillary Clinton.

For what it's worth, he also refers to himself in the ad as "the original maverick." (Is that supposed to remind us of "original gangsta"? Are pathetic desperate-to-be-hip Republicans going to start calling McCain "the O.M."? If so, please shoot me.)