Is There Still Some Popcorn?

Looks like John McCain can’t stop lovin’ those blondes.  Blonde lobbyists for torture contractors like CACI, that is.Take a bow, Vicki Iseman!

Let’s see what this story does to McCain: – It pisses off the Fundies and gives them even more leverage in a choice of running mate. Expect him to drop Tim Pawlenty like an old wife in favor of a shiny new model snake-handler.  (Rick Santorum, anyone?)– It allows us to talk about the circumstances of McCain’s second and current marriage. Namely, how he dumped his first wife Carol for his second wife Cindy.

Carol was the mother of his first three kids, and once was a tall willowy model. But in 1969, while he was in prison overseas, she was crippled by a car accident that took four inches of height from her and gave her in return a lot of pain and a serious weight gain. Ten years later, John McCain met a twenty-five-year-old willowy blond named Cindy Hensley, who had the added advantage of coming from a fabulously wealthy Arizona family — and John needed money for his budding political career. He would divorce Carol in April of 1980, marry Cindy one month later, and be a candidate for Congress by early 1982, with an official residence in the proper Arizona congressional district and plenty of money in the war chest.

Do you think McCain wants us to talk about that? I sure wouldn’t, if I was him. But the NYT story brings it all to the surface.

UPDATE:  Oh, my — it’s not just the NYT:

The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with Vicki Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain. The New York Times suggested an inappropriate relationship between the Arizona senator and Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. The New York Times quoted anonymous aides saying they had confronted McCain and Iseman, urging them to stay away from each other, before his failed presidential campaign in 2000.

This ain’t going away soon, folks.  If it was just the NYT, McCain could possibly,
possibly bury this among the MSM by this weekend.  But it’s not.

Boy, John Weaver must really hate McCain’s guts.

UPDATE 2:  Per Emptywheel just now, discussing the role played by Bob Bennett, McCain’s top publicity flack, in attempting to make this story go away:

— This story broke in the NYT. The last time we saw Bennett (before he was giving Jose Rodriguez’ story when Rodriguez refused to do so himself, I mean), he was standing in a hallway in the Prettyman Courthouse accepting Max Frankel’s thanks … “you did a good job for us today.” Meaning “us,” the NYT. In some twisted way, Bennett only recently rescued the NYT from its embarrassment named Judy Miller. But here his next big client save one is, having his Presidential aspirations seriously rocked by the same NYT. If I’m Bob Bennett right now, I’m bitching about those ingrates at the Times.

— And let me remind you, this is the Bob Bennett who set the standard for working the press. When you hire Bob Bennett, you hire him to work the press for you. How well did that work out for John McCain? Maybe Bennett let his McCain guard down in favor of his book tour… but Bennett is frantically trying to work the press to put this genie back in the bottle.

— And what about Bennett’s most famous client before that? No, I don’t mean Cap Weinburger. I mean Bubba Clinton, in the Paula Jones matter. Either McCain is just an idiot, or he didn’t think twice about the optics of having a guy who represented his potential opponent’s husband in a matter that erupted (sorry) into the biggest political sex scandal of all time. You want to bury the story of the pretty blond lobbyist, you don’t hire Bob Bennett.

Oh, yes: McCain’s been trying to get the NYT to snuff this story for months now. So much for that idea.

UPDATE 3:  TNR’s saying that the only reason the NYT published is that TNR was working on a story on what chickenshits the NYT folks are (h/t litigatormom).