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that Sen. McCain's nomination could be derailed presupposes that the allegations are true, for under no other circumstance could their revelation now have any meaningful impact on his candidacy. Even if the Times grossly miscalculated their impact, it is wholly unreasonable to believe that a story, unsubstantiated in fact, and incapable of producing supporting evidence, could achieve this objective months before the Republican Convention and more than half a year before the general election. The story, because there is no story, would simply die.

2. Sen. McCain's nomination is not guaranteed. Surely no one can reach him in delegate votes, but as the Democratic argument on the loyalty of those delegates at the convention has proven, they are not bound to tow the popular line, especially if no clear winner has been determined by the time of the convention. If the allegations surface now, they could affect those voters in Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania. It is not impossible to believe that if enough voters bought into the story, one in which a crusader against special interests is exposed as a hypocrite, and a family man is revealed for infidelities, that Sen. McCain could emerge in third or fourth place in each of those and subsequent contests, without sizably adding to his pledged delegates and propel either Mitt Romney (who suspended, but did not terminate) his campaign, or Mike Huckabee (still in the running) back into viable status.

This hardly seems like the kind of objective a liberal newspaper like the New York Times would embrace. A more plausible scenario, if they were so inclined, would be to break the story a week before Sen. McCain faced his Democratic rival in the general election, a time when questions, legitimate or not, may linger in decisive voters minds.

The Break:

If the allegations are false, there is no sensible reason for the Times to have rushed this story to print, regardless of the contention that they did not want to be beaten on their own story. The whole point of rushing a story to print is the foreknowledge that another newspaper or outfit is working on the same story and wanting to lay claim they were the ones to "break" the story. But, if the Times knew the story was without merit, and they knew another source was going to run it, and their objective was not to humiliate themselves, but discredit Sen. McCain, why not let the other source "break" the fabrication, take the fall and save their own reputation? In doing so, the objective

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