He’ll never learn his lesson, will he?

Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is trying to tap a new audience of potential voters by taking his campaign message straight to liberal and nonpolitical issues-based blogs, which reach millions of readers but don’t often delve into conservative politics.

So he’s inviting all these lib bloggers to join in “the conversation.” I’ve told you this before, Johnny, but these people on the left are not your friends, and they never will be. You treat them as such, and they’ll screw you over every single chance they get. Like terrorists, you don’t talk to them, you defeat them.

There is an upside to this, though…it has some of the lefty bloggers at war with one another:

The strategy was in full swing yesterday when Mr. McCain invited non-conservative bloggers to join his regular blogger conference call, just hours after he delivered a major speech previewing his war strategy and other priorities for a first presidential term.

It already has started a war among liberal bloggers over how to react to Mr. McCain’s overture.

In answering the first question on the call, Mr. McCain said his likely Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, lacks the judgment to be commander in chief, which set him up for a bruising from the readers at TalkingPointsMemo.com, a liberal-leaning site that joined in the call.

Blogger Greg Sargent said it amounted to “what may be [Mr. McCain's] most direct attack yet on Barack Obama’s national security credentials.” But commenters were split: Some took aim at Mr. McCain, some said they were thankful for the intelligence on “what the enemy is planning,” and others lashed out at Mr. Sargent, saying he should have been harsher in evaluating Mr. McCain’s attack.

“This IS a Democratic blog, and as such, it would seem to me that there SHOULD be SOME bias with regards to how YOU report of McCain’s craziness, as opposed to treating his ranting and attacks with a sort of dignity they and he DO NOT deserve,” wrote one emphasis-abundant reader.

First of all, if TPM is simply “liberal-leaning”, then I’m Joan Of Arc. It’s a flaming lib website, for heaven’s sake…there’s no “leaning” to it at all.

Second of all, if McCain’s idea here is to start a cyber-war among liberal bloggers, then I’d say that’s a good strategy, on a par with Operation Chaos. It gets these people worked up and fighting with each other, rather than devoting their time doing their usual activist b.s. (you know, like throwing pies at conservative speakers, slashing tires, and registering dead people to vote for Dem candidates).

If that’s McCain’s goal, then great. But I doubt it is. I think he’s thinking he’s dealing with the likes of the New York Times, who treated him somewhat kindly until he announced he was running for President. If he thinks, even for a second, that he’s going to get a fair and honest shake from liberal bloggers, well…he’s even more out of touch than I thought he was. And that’s saying a lot.

Update: I’m with Michelle. If McCain will take questions from lefty bloggers who are hostile towards him, why won’t he invite some of us righty bloggers who are hostile towards him, as well? I’ve been invited to do conference calls with several Republican Presidential candidates since this election season kicked off, but McCain’s people have “mysteriously” not chosen to invite me. I don’t have the readership of Malkin, not by a long shot (she has more readers in five minutes than I get all month), but I’m not a small-fry in the blogosphere, either (more like a junior cheeseburger, I think).

The money-quote from Malkin? This:

This is indeed an instructive example of how a McCain White House would run: He’ll talk to the far left. He’ll talk to “acceptable” conservatives. But the grass-roots Right? Immigration enforcement proponents? You’ll be as out of luck as you would be with Barack Obama in office.

Exactly.

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