Yeah, you heard me. This was all posturing. Even Mike Huckabee thinks it was failed posturing, and one of McCain’s former campaign staff members says McCain’s cynical strategy was weak:

The whole episode left even conservatives admitting that the McCain campaign looked erratic and a bit foolish with no apparent direction or guiding principle.

“It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology,” said Republican consultant Craig Shirley, who advised McCain earlier in this cycle. “In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The ’steady hand in a storm’ argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain.”

Shirley added, “My guess is that plasma units are rushing to the McCain campaign as we speak to replace the blood flowing there from the fights among the staff.”

As it turns out, McCain was saying “Maybe” to the debate as of this morning, but his campaign staff had already constructed a web ad saying they’d won the debate he hadn’t decided to attend, and they even started running the ad on the web. From Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post:

Although the fate of tonight’s presidential debate in Mississippi remains very much up in the air, John McCain has apparently already won it — if you believe an Internet ad an astute reader spotted next to this piece in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning.

“McCain Wins Debate!” declares the ad which features a headshot of a smiling McCain with an American flag background. Another ad spotted by our eagle-eyed observer featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: “McCain won the debate– hands down.”

McCain’s Tonto to his Lone Ranger, Rick Davis, evidently has the ability to see the future. Why wasn’t he around to fix this financial crisis before it started, then? Was he too busy taking money as a lobbyist from the miscreants who screwed up?