The wingnut meltdown over the filibuster compromise hasn’t ended, it’s just become more grammatically correct:

Then there is John McCain, who is a party unto himself. Add to that John Warner, who decided to go against his party for what can only be called constitutional vanity. He sees himself as a lion of the Senate. He has been around so long that perhaps he feels ownership, if not authorship, of the Constitution itself, and he allowed himself to be convinced by Byrd, an even older lion, that together they were saving it.

Had it remained at those five, the judicial filibuster — the bastard child of Democratic bitterness over recent lost elections — would now be banished.

Enter two latecomers, DeWine and Lindsey Graham, who were prepared to vote for the nuclear option but decided to cross the aisle and make the tough choice to join the lionized center. They both say that if the Democrats start to filibuster again, they will defect back to the warm embrace of Frist and go nuclear. Will they be willing to forfeit their newfound celebrity and stature as statesmen? That would be a profile in courage.

Leaving aside the fact that Lindsey Graham looks like nothing so much as an overfed chipmunk and that most people couldn’t pick DeWine out of a lineup therefore not so much with the celebrity rock-star thing, I have to say after reading this with my morning coffee and slogging through the tepid New Yorker profile of McCain that Tena mentioned below, the 2008 Republican primaries are gonna be fun, fun, fun.

I can’t wait. The Hanoi Hilton Veterans For Truth are gonna drag out that confession McCain signed under torture, and flash it around, and talk about how can we have a commander in chief who could be tortured into doing something like giving Saddam Hussein a presidential pardon? Bob Dole will stand up and say John McCain didn’t bleed enough, and McCain will yet again debase himself by sucking up to Pat Robertson, all to no avail, as Robertson will reveal God told him over amaretto sours the other night that Vile Richard (Santorum, and my apologies to Helen Fielding) should be our next president. That’s who they’ll nominate, some snivelling creep who satisfies the James Dobsons of the world.

And then whatever warm body we pull off the bench (probably John Edwards though Wesley Clark would do well in a debate with a wax dummy like Rick) will whip his ass, and they’ll wonder how they got so sold.

And we’ll sit back, sip our whiskey-spiked lattes, and say, “Are you kidding? Didn’t you read that Krauthammer article in 2005? It was all downhill from there.”

A.