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Anyone in the press who says they expected U.S. Senator John McCain to be able to make a political comeback may be pulling your leg. McCain, who had been vilified by many in his own party for abandoning the conservative viewpoint of the tough on border security, rough on illegal immigration approach looked all, but dead in his 2008 campaign for the White House. The money had dried up people were leaving his campaign right and left. He had pulled pretty much all resources out of the crucial early state of Iowa. His campaign manager in Iowa former state legislator and Iraq war veteran Chuck Larson had to be let go because they couldn't afford to pay him. It looked as if this heroic former prisoner of war had made his last stand at running for the White House.

The once darling of the media had found his campaign starved for attention. McCain's pull numbers seemed to be in a political downward spiral. It seemed hopeless; he seemed to be stuck in a quagmire of sorts that he couldn't find his way out of. McCain stuck to his guns though. He refused to be strayed off message despite a lackluster mid summer campaign showing. McCain showed unequivocal support for the troop surge in Iraq. This was a move that was no doubt controversial as other candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination began to abandon Bush; McCain remained firm. McCain became more and more strident with his message that it was due to the lack of principle guiding the Republican Party nowadays that cost them the 2006 mid-term election. Indeed, it was the lack of restrain when it came to spending and maintaining a reasonable size of government in McCain's eyes that had his party fall out of power.

In the spending issue McCain was able to endear himself again to many voters who found him as a reasonable alternative to the 2000 consensus candidate of George W. Bush. Within this issue McCain was able to tell jokes about how drunken sailors would be offended by the amount of spending that has been done by the most recent twelve year run of Republican Congressional control. When news of an earmark requesting funding to study the DNA of polar bears in Montana came to light McCain seized the opportunity. McCain once again broke out the humor by saying he wasn't sure if the earmark was requested as a part of a paternal suit or a criminal matter. Audiences around the country seem very responsive to this type of jocularity that has helped McCain stride back to the spotlight. When other candidates seemed

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