From now on always speak as if everybody in the world agrees that John McCain image as a straight talking maverick is a thing of the past.  Don't ask if it is, don't suggest its true just say it and move on.

And don't say it when you are talking about John McCain.  Say it when the Republicans start talking about the effectiveness of McCain's attack ads on Obama.  Here is an example:

Repundit: These attacks have really hurt Obama.  We are seeing his numbers drop.

Demopundit: That may be true, but I think the real question is was it worth the price.  McCain may have brought down Obama's numbers but he hasn't raised his own.  And, now that he has destroyed his reputation as a straight talking maverick, I don't know how he is going to get those numbers up.

The key idea to get across is this: McCain built up an impressive amount of political capital since the Keating Five Scandal, he decided to spend it on a week's worth of silly lies and distortions to drag Obama back into a tie in August.  What does he have left now? Cause that capital is spent, he doesn't get to keep it.  He traded his "honest politician" reputation for these sad little ads.

Now, the Republican has a few choices here. 

1) They can ignore the assertion.  Then after its repeated a few hundred times and is completely unchallenged, it simply becomes true.  Don't believe me?  Go back and follow how the word "successful" became surgically attached to the word "surge" in the last few months.

2) The Republican can fight the allegation. 

Then you talk about the lie that was the soldier ad (everyone, right and left, agrees it was a lie), talk about the insulting "Obama caused high gas prices" ad, talk about the Paris/Brittany ad which McCain's own mother called stupid, talk about the massive flip flops on taxes, torture and everything else to the Bush position. 

Here's McCain lying last week. He claims he led the fight to establish MLK Day.(WARNING: This is painful to watch)

They will almost certainly revert to speaking in the (ancient) past tense.  About how McCain was such a maverick eight years ago and he was so honest during that window between when he left his wife and took massive bribes from Keating and about two years ago.

What you need to do then is say, that is great.  He used to be the straight talker, but now he is lying pretty much every day.  Here is a good question to ask the McCain defender: "How many lies does he get to tell the American people before we can all stop pretending he is so honest?"

See what just happened? 

They had set up an attack Obama segment and you just turned it into an attack McCain segment.  Look familiar?  They do it to you ALL THE TIME!

3) I suppose they could call Obama a liar, then feed right back into the more or less acknowldeged McCain lies.

4) I was fairly stunned earlier today to see a fourth option I hadn't aniticipated with this video thanks to the sorely missed Sam Seder. 

In it we see three "journalists" manufacturing an excuse for McCain he has never offered himself (Damn liberal media!!).  They insist McCain is still as principled and honest as ever and is only taking to the stump and lying because his campaign staffers are lying to him and he has no idea what is going on.

Do you need help with this?  I hope not. 

In case you do, here some helpful phrases: "out of touch", "clueless", "led around by the nose" and, the big one, "If McCain has already lost control of his own campaign to the Rovites and its not even Labor Day, what the hell makes you think he can run the United States Government?"

My favorite part of this is when Mrs. Greenspan says (apparently seriously), "There's a lot of anecdotal stuff out there in this internet age, with the blogosphere and things are just ricocheting around and I think he just, as the candidate, there's no way he can be tracking all of this himself."

So her theory is that no matter how furiously John McCain follows the blogs, he just can't possibly keep up with everything.  

She says this with a straight face.