McCain to Send Lieberman to Georgia

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 4:34 AM on August 14, 2008.

The war that's broken out between Georgia and Russia is just the international incident that McCain needed to switch the discussion from the economy and healthcare onto national security. Now McCain is dispatching Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to Georgia (ostensibly as members of the Armed Services Committee).

The Bushies insist they knew nothing about what the Georgians were planning, Condi Rice phoned it in despite the fact that she's a Russia specialist who met with Saakashvilli on July 9, and Karl Rove was suspiciously in the area with Saakishvilli shortly thereafter. Throw in McCain's lobbyist ties to Georgia and you've got quite a constellation of events that just happened to play to McCain's perceived strengths.

As Greg Sargent notes, at the very least it looks like "McCain's announcement of his key campaign allies' trip abroad also seems designed to shoulder Bush aside as the primary GOP leadership figure here."

I realize it's a delicate situation, but other than moving Evan Bayh to the top of the VP list in response (and potentially handing a Senate seat to the Republicans), where's Obama?

Today's Pew poll says that the race between McCain and Obama has drawn even:

An even greater percentage of voters than in June now see McCain as the candidate who would use the best judgment in a crisis, and an increasing percentage see him as the candidate who can get things done.

McCain is moving quickly to use the Georgia situation to his advantage (whether it blows up in Bush's face or not). He's got the stage to himself at the moment, and he's using it.

Tagged as: bush, russia, lieberman, mccain, georgia, lindsey graham, saakishvilli

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.