And Finally, A Piece Of Advice For McCain And The House Leadership:

You own the defeat of the bailout bill.  For better or for worse you own it.  The American people will view it as your doing because (a) many of them believe you still control Congress and (b) the American people think of Republicans more than Democrats as the party that doesn't like bigger government.

Your response today was the absolute worst one imaginable.  The finger-pointing and lame excuses about partisan speeches from the House Speaker are the worst possible reason, for a public that is very tired of finger-pointing and lame excuses.  In the end the bill failed for one reason:  People were pissed off about government spending $750 BILLION to bail out Wall Street.  Your rank-and-file figured this out, as did much of the Democratic rank-and-file.  We are in a populist moment.  But populism (as opposed to progressivism) contains TWO great dislikes: Wall Street and Congress.  This bill was seen as an unholy alliance of the two.

You now need to claim ownership of this defeat, which is already assigned to you.  The argument is simple: "We are not going to vote for the $750 BILLION in spending of taxpayer dollars for Wall Street, the one proposed by President Bush and Nancy Pelosi."  You need to do the reverse of what President Clinton did -- they need to triangulate against the President and the House Democratic leadership.  Neither of them is very popular, and McCain is increasingly unlikely to win.  Drop them and run against them.  If Pelosi brings up a bill farther to the left, 190 Republicans need to vote against it.

You own this.  The American people think you stopped this bill.  They want to know why.  There is an argument for why which will resonate with them.  You need to start making that argument, before the Democrats and the press start making it for you, while you keep arguing that you don't own this defeat.

That might kill the economy.  But that die has already been cast, long ago.  I think the bailout bill might have helped, but not stopped this.  But there were also helpful signs today -- increased liquidity from the fed, the buyouts, rather than bailouts, of WaMu.  The Dow fell 7% today, a lot, but far less than the 23% it fell in October of 1987.   Maybe the bankers who would be bailed out by this bill's failure aren't the best people to listen to when they scream about impending doom.  Maybe, just maybe, we can weather this storm.

I think today was a political mistake, but I think the worst thing the GOP could do is to be perceived as weak, and trying to deny what is obvious to many Americans.  For better or worse, you now own this defeat, and it is time to take a stand on whatever it is you own.