They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

They euthanize horses on the track when they suffer broken legs in full view of the spectators. We saw that last May at the Kentucky Derby with Eight Belles, the three year-old filly who placed. Oh, sure, we’ve moved beyond the brutal methods of euthanization that involve a bullet in the brain but the end result is the same. It’s all done in the name of mercy.

Why hasn’t the mainstream media done this with John McCain? Far from placing in a two horse race, McCain pretty much came up lame right out of the gate, saw himself lapped by Mayor Rudy before he, too, came up lame. But everyone loves a horse race. Johnson trounced Goldwater in ’64, Reagan creamed everyone in ’80 and ’84, Dole never really had a chance against Clinton. But the last two horse races between Bush and Gore then Kerry. Well, that’s what I call a horse race! That’s that gets the people to the track.

So, during this race, the helpful mainstream media shot McCain with steroids and painkillers, taped his busted ankles, surgically implanted pins in his rickety bones and have, by God, made this a race again even as McCain dodders and shuffles his way to Minneapolis.

Because no one wants to bet on a race in which the outcome is obvious before the horses even come out of the chute. It’s bad for business.

But the MSM breathlessly calling the race are saying that McCain’s behind Obama by just a nose, even though in reality the big, beautiful thoroughbred out of the Windy City has McCain lapped. They’ve conveniently lost count.

McCain’s race should have, according to the dictates of conventional wisdom and common sense, have ended at least at this point in the home stretch. This past week, McCain made a casual joke about killing Iranian civilians with lung cancer, advanced an economic policy that offered no details whatsoever, fooled 300 leading economists into endorsing said policy when all they signed was a 400 word summary, tried to distance himself from former Sen. Phil Gramm when he called America “a nation of whiners” for bringing up the recession and asking for help.

This and about a half a dozen other gaffes should add up to a three-legged horse in the twilight of its usefulness to the idiots who bet on him, gaffes during a torturously long marathon that could fill an entire racing form. We should’ve euthanized McCain on the track just as we did a psychopath Mormon, an insane terror-mongering big city mayor, a narcoleptic former senator, an immigrant-hating maniac out of Colorado and a whole stable full of other lame nags. But the race must go on. It’s good for business.