McCain wins debate before he decides to participate in debate?

Apparently, John McCain won tonight’s debate this morning before he even decided that he would participate in tonight’s debate. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to me either. Here’s the scoop:

McCain had this ad on the Wall Street Journal website this morning:

OK, there are two obvious problems with this:

1. The debate had not occurred yet. How the hell do you win a debate that hasn’t actually happened?
2. This ad went up before McCain even announced that he was going to participate in tonight’s debate.

The first point can be overlooked.  There may have been some miscommunication between McCain’s camp and the WSJ about when the ad was supposed to be put on the site. It’s not honest, but it’s at least what we would expect from most political campaigns. The second point, however, is much more damning. The fact that they had this ad ready to go makes it clear that this whole plan to not debate was just a political stunt to get attention. Not that we’re surprised–we predicted this two days ago!