(h/t Jamie)

Via The New York Times:

Senator John McCain’s campaign advisers will ask the White House to deploy President Bush for major Republican fund-raising, but they do not want the president to appear too often at his side, top aides to Mr. McCain said Sunday.

But even as the consensus was that Mr. McCain needed to “stand in the sun” on his own, as one adviser put it, without the large shadow cast by Mr. Bush, left unsaid was the difficult calculus the McCain campaign faces: Using Mr. Bush enough to try to make the tough sell of Mr. McCain to conservatives but not so much that he will drive away the independents and some moderate Democrats that Mr. McCain is counting on in November. Read on...

We have a sitting president that is so toxic that the front runner in his own party doesn't want to be seen with him that much and the front runner himself is equally despised by the base of the party. To make matters worse, McCain is vowing to follow directly in W's footsteps with more wars, more torture, less jobs and more tax cuts for the rich -- the list goes on and on and it's not selling with Independents and "moderate" Democrats.

Are we looking at two of the most hated men in the Republican party? If this is the face of the 2008 GOP ticket, it's going to be a very long year for them, indeed...