Too early to call it desperation,
Then what should we call it? Whining? Throwing a temper tantrum? Attention whoring?
but there should be a few people who should be canned after this debacle from that campaign..
McCain was unwise in choosing the Rove team to begin with. He saw what Rove pulled off in '04, but seems to have missed his abject failure in '06.
I belong to the club that thinks Rove's good at dirty tricks but was never actually as bright as he's been given credit for -- my favorite summary of the man was "How smart do you REALLY have to be to be Bush's brain, anyway?"
That being said, the offshore drilling has more to do with being less reliant on the house of Saud for oil.
But as you say, it has to do with a feel-good Band-Aid fix for a much deeper problem. It's the standard Republican tactic of blaming the Democrats and government regulation for economic woes and everything else.
The trouble is that it's this same song and dance that got us into this mess in the first damn place. And as I've said before, while the average American isn't an expert in economics, the average American DOES remember the economy was a hell of a lot better when we had a Democrat in the White House.
As far as taxes go, both presidents appear to have much different ideas for how to restore the economy. I see that point as valid as much as I would see McCain's point as valid for the time being until more details become obvious in time.
I'm not sure what that actually means.
McCain initially opposed Bush's tax cuts, but now that he's running for President he supports them. Again, that's something that might win over some of the true believers, but you can't win an election trying to dig your way out of a hole. The economy's in the tank, and McCain is campaigning on continuing the policies that put us here in the first place.
Substitute any other issue for the economy and the sentence still holds. It is not a good time to be a Republican.