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John McCain does not believe in
prescriptive regulation like “net-neutrality,” but rather he believes
that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best
deterrent against unfair practices.

It has been a fascinating few days watching John McCain come alive.
The difference between his talking about, say, energy policy or the
economy, compared with the chance to have a visceral military conflict
with Russia is a valuable glimpse into what makes him tick. It isn't
just his comfort with military force. It's classic good McCain too. The
pattern throughout his career has always been seeking out the supremely
moral position in a losing conflict. And here comes Georgia, plucky
little Georgia, doomed throughout history to be perched between Russia
and the Black Sea, with a newly elected McCain-like figure, Mikheil
Saakashvili, thumbing his nose at the biggest bully on the block.
What's not for McCain to love? The hushed, Churchillian speeches and
press conferences, the thrill of breaking war news, the existence of an
enemy, an ancient, cold-blooded enemy against which to pivot. It's all
a wet dream for the Arizona senator.

No one should doubt that McCain's heart is in the right place.
McCain long championed the persecuted people of Iraq; and he came to
the defense of the beleaguered Bosnians. He is passionate about Burma
and Darfur. You name a lost cause and he will rally to it. And no
position fit him better than the role of lone crusader for the surge in
Iraq in 2006, a military exercise that in his mind would snatch victory
from the jaws of defeat, and punish enemies as disparate as Saddam
Hussein and Don Rumsfeld.

His position on Georgia makes much more sense if you see it in this context.

In his own narrative, he is always the one man who kept the faith while
so many lost theirs. Only McCain had the courage to champion Petraeus;
only McCain was in intimate contact with Saakashvili before most others
had even heard of him; only McCain can rescue Iraq; only McCain will
defeat Iran and Russia and China, because only McCain has the moral
clarity to see them as the evil they are, and only McCain has the balls
to defend the weak and the defenseless (unless, of course, the CIA has
them in a locked, dark cell).

That the world and America might need other virtues in the current
global context does not occur to him. That these often admirably
intentioned crusades might require more prudential reasoning,
restrained caution and delicate diplomacy is not in his play-book. What
Americans have to decide is whether, after the last seven years, this
kind of with-us-or-against-us crusade against enemies near and far is
the right approach to the current crisis. or whether it is part of the
reason we are already in so deep.

• 14% of registered voters are undecided
• Of those 14%: 33% are Democrats, 19% are Republicans, and 48% are unaffiliated/other.
• So, 4.5% of all registered voters are undecided Democrats; 2.5% of all registered voters are Republicans, and 7% of all registered voters are undecided independents.
  
• Of all registered voters: 41% are Democrats; 32% are Republicans, 27% are unaffiliated/other.
• We get that 10% of registered Democrats, 8% of Republicans, and 26% of independents are undecided.
• Via Rasmussen's tracking poll, we get that 78% of Democrats are currently backing Obama, 86% of Republicans are backing McCain, and unaffiliated voters are "evenly divided".
• Combing these results, we get that about 12% of Democrats are currently backing McCain, while about 6% of Republicans are currently backing Obama.
• Over the last 20 years, party unity numbers have tended to increase as election day approaches (in 2004, Kerry won 89% of Democrats, Bush won 93% of Republicans)