It's not the sex, it's the lobbying

Jesus H. Christ. It's getting so you can't even leave the house anymore, you might miss something.

Olbermann is covering this little goodie from the "Holy Shit!" file, that was posted at the New York Times web site less than an hour ago:

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

Now, I don't give a shit who John McCain may be fucking (though the fact that this may force the image of John McCain fucking has a decided "Ewwwww!" factor). I'm a lot more concerned that he may have elevated cozying up to telecommunications lobbyists to a new level.

So the question is, what are we to make of this? We already know that sex scandals, whether true or not, are the mother's milk of the corporate media. We've been down this road with John Edwards earlier in a story that had no there there and went nowhere. Alas, so did his candidacy. Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest has a list of Obama smears already coming from the right. But it's kind of interesting that the day after McCain pretty much cements his nomination, suddenly an eight-year-old sex and lobbying scandal shows up. Gee, someone doesn't want John McCain to get this nomination, and I don't think it's the Clintons; after all, they have their own problems to deal with right now. So given how adamant activist Republicans have been that McCain is not the nominee they want, I don't think you have to be a genius to do the math on this one. The direction is clear, the only question is the source.

So let's perform some speculatio on this story, shall we? Who's behind it? Does it fatally wound McCain's candidacy? And if so, who becomes the Republican nominee? Does God really want Huckabee after all? And what about Mitt Romney, who didn't withdraw, but only "suspended" his campaign? And....how do I make my voice do this?

Have at it.