John McCain has recently shown Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham the same deeply abiding loyalty that his campaign staff once showed to Governor Palin. In other words, the wheel on the bus are going thump, thump, thump. The issue leading to the latest tergiversation from “Our Friend” Senator McCain is Cap and Trade.

It seems he’s found a really cool way of pretending he’s still a Republican. He now opposes the Cap and Trade legislation being crafted in the Senate. Politico.com describes how McCain has sawed his good old buddies off at the knees.

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain.

“Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.”

I never imagined I’d say this, but somewhere by the banks of The River Styx, the incubi are having a snowball fight. I feel glad that Senator McCain is a invertebrate, disloyal, back-knifing, weasel. God bless his gelatinous spine.

Now that people actually contemplate voting for Republicans, Our Good Friend has decided that it might be smart to at least act like one. This has lead to the following atypical behavior. Here’s Politico describes the latest Rouge behavior from Senator McCain.

McCain refers to the bill as “cap and tax,” calls the climate legislation that passed the House in June “a 1,400-page monstrosity” and dismisses a cap-and-trade proposal included in the White House budget as “a government slush fund.”

Senator Graham, in the words of cartoon character Johnnie Test, didn’t see that one coming. He must really feel like the rube that went to bed with a Roadhouse Harlot and woke up the next morning nursing a tequila hangover and without his keys and wallet. Senator McCain’s “Good Friend” voices his incredulity.

”I wouldn’t be here on this issue without him,” said Graham, a South Carolina Republican who spent much of last fall campaigning for McCain. “He’s the guy that introduced me to the climate problem.”

Well, Lindsay Old Bean, he’s now introducing you to the dung heap of used up friends. John McCain is selling his shares in the coming apocalypse the way people of Lindsay Graham’s intellectual caliber wish they’d sold their investment portfolios with Bernie Madoff.

One advantage of having a spineless rock-o-tofu like John McCain in the party is that he serves as a barometer of where the winds on a given issue are blowing. He has a knack for getting out of “bubble issues” before the pop. Tell Senator McCain that no one with a Ph D. in Climate Scatology can explain the “Ten Year Warming Holiday,” and he feels no moral imperative to remain stuck on stupid. It’s what you can expect from this rotting, old husk of a once great man, who generally feels no moral imperative at all.

As you can glean from just two paragraphs of this, I like John McCain about as much as I appreciate my Jockey shorts chaffing. While he glad-hands, befriends you and calls you a Great American, the dagger lies concealed somewhere in the conversation. It’s always good to remember around Senator McCain that only eighteen inches separates a good, firm pat on the back and a roundhouse kick in the Gluteus Maximus.

What Lick-spittle Lindsay and “Holy” Joe Liebermann forgot was the essential nature of John McCain. He’s prototypical of nearly every “Friend of The Earth” in modern political life. He’d love to save the planet – as long as you guarantee his fee. Just because John McCain hasn’t garnered the ROI to match Al Gore, don’t think for one second that the man supports Global Warming hysteria out of misguided moral decency.

People who go on Crusades do so with a sense of great commitment and decency. They do so prepared to fight and die for the cause. John McCain is no Crusader. He rides gravy trains. As the political winds hue to a different tack, the gravy has run out and it’s time for “Mavarick” John to go cut a dashing figure elsewhere.

For Barbara Boxer, George Miller and Henry Waxman, losing McCain is a bellwether. Losing him on Global Warming is a tell. It tells us that they’ve lost momentum. They are no longer chic, they are no longer in, they are no longer with it. Nobody watched the Hollywood movies or went to the rock concerts. Al Gore recently received the Nobel Bull-fertilizer Prize.

Nobody in their right minds wants their Senator to vote for a Cap and Trade Bill. Senator McCain enjoys remaining Senator McCain. Senator Webb and Senator Landrieu would prefer to remain Senators Webb and Landrieu. This Cap and Trade Bill will get no warmer than the actual planet it would supposedly protect. This we learn from observing, in his natural habitat, a spineless jellyfish named Senator John McCain.

Cross-posted (with slightly more accurate title) at: The Minority Report