John McCain has what it takes to be the Commander in Chief (we know because Hillary Clinton told us so). He’s a tough guy who survived torture at the Hanoi Hilton. He’s strong enough to lead our nation as President (Better than Bush, at least). And he’s strong enough to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

Too bad he isn’t strong enough to stop the small time slimemeisters in his own party from running racist smear campaign ads against Senator Obama:

John McCain promised at a town-hall meeting today that he would bring “every pressure to bear” to stop the North Carolina GOP from running that ad hitting Obama over his controversial pastor, an issue that McCain said wasn’t a legit one. […]

Indeed, a top McCain strategist is now telling Time magazine that the ad won’t be running at all — the implication being that McCain managed to put the kibosh on it behind the scenes.

But guess what — a spokesperson for the North Carolina GOP just told me that this isn’t the case. Here’s the statement I just got from the spokesperson, Brent Wilcox:

I’m not sure where this gossip is coming from but that is not the case. The ad is still scheduled to run early next week.

The spokesperson added that it’s set to run statewide.

So is McCain gotten weak in his dotage? Is he now a — a wimp? Or is he just letting other people take the hit for these personal attack tactics that he keeps saying he hates? Well, Reed Hundt seems to think he ought to man up and take responsibility for going down this slimy road to Swift Boat Hell:

It ought to be beneath senator McCain to have his side label Obama as a terrible person because he has failed to shun a fellow who did wrong 40 years or is not a patriot because he neglected to wear a flag on lapel, or declined to disavow a Korean War vet and pastor because he spoke too harshly one Sunday. McCain went to Vietnam to re-open peaceful relations, so he knows the place of forgiveness. He is a man of military honor and knows how to respect a friend and a foe. Hence, it ought to be beneath McCain to tolerate attacks against Obama that closely resemble the despicable charges bush launched against McCain in South Carolina in 2000. It should be the case that mccain doesn’t just pretend to stop these attacks, but actually does so. Aside from his laissez-faire positions on iraq and the economy, McCain’s primary disqualification for the oval office is that he knows these vile, crazy attacks are wrong for America but he won’t stop them.

No wonder they call him John McSame as Bush. After all, he’s been taking advice on an informal basis from Karl Rove who knows how to build in plausible deniability when you want your candidate to appear to be the guy in the ten gallon white hat and the other guy to be the unpatriotic, effete, elitist, terrorist sympathizing traitor.

Yep, that’s John McCain, your Republican Party’s “straight talking” snake in the grass. Same as the old lying, cheating, war loving snake in the grass.