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During the roundtable discussion on today's This Week, "journalist" Mark Halperin shows yet again that he's fully in bed with John McCain. As Donna Brazile, Cokie Roberts and the always flaky George Will do the usual back and forth, Halperin chimes in with a zinger that is so ridiculous that even host George Stephanopoulos can't let it slide:

Halperin: " My hunch is that this is going to end up being one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates, but it's Barack Obama. I believe this has opened the door to not just Tony Rezko in that ad, but to bring up Reverend Wright, to bring up his relationship with Bill Ayers. I think that the Obama campaign agressively jumped on something -"

Stephanopolous: "Don't you think that was going to come up anyway?"

Of course it is, it already has and Halperin knows that. He speaks as though John McCain hasn't already been running a nasty, Rove-designed campaign already. Halperin's talking points sound eerily familiar to those of another McCain hack, Joe Watkins. Perhaps they're feeding at the same trough?

UPDATE: (Nicole) Oh, this is too good. Balloon Juice's John Cole awards Halperin an award of merit for his servicing of McCain. (h/t Bill W.)