Next Up, Changing Water Into Wine

The GOP is desperate this year. I mean, really desperate. The party has lost three House special elections in a row, the last one in a Mississippi district that President Bush won easily in 2004 and where Vice President Cheney personally campaigned this year. The president is radioactive, and anyone who campaigns based on how close he or she is to the White House is asking for trouble. And that includes John McCain, who says that his administration will only continue Bush's disastrous policies.

So perhaps it's understandable that the Republicans are invoking something of a higher power.

At the convention during which the Georgia Republican Party officially designated their slate of delegates as supporting McCain, state party chair Sue Everhart made a rather surprising comparison: "John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross. He never denounced God, either."

Now, I'm not expecting a fuss like back in 1966 when John Lennon said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus," but it does raise eyebrows. I mean, comparing a political candidate to the Christian Messiah is a bit of a tall order.

Everhart realized that her statement might be seen as, well, tacky and backed off somewhat. "I'm not trying to compare John McCain to Jesus Christ," she backpedaled, claiming she was actually referring to when he was a POW in Vietnam and was pressured to denounce the United States. "I'm looking at the pain that was there."

That's not quite true, however. Granted, he did it under duress, but McCain did indeed "confess" in captivity: "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."

In any event, that was forty years ago. More recently, given the free ride that McCain has largely received from the media (John Hagee, anyone? Rod Parsely? All the lobbyists running his campaign?) one can hardly claim that he's been in severe pain. Certainly not like back in 2000, when Karl Rove ran a loathsome whispering campaign among South Carolina Republicans, claiming that McCain's Bangladeshi-born daughter was actually the result of a tryst with a black prostitute. But that's ancient history.

So with McCain now being the anointed GOP candidate, I suppose we can look forward to seeing TV ads showing him walking on water, healing the sick and making the blind see. These guys are literally looking for a savior.